The column “Aftertaste”, is an interrogation of those elements external to food which still exist as an inherent part of eating and dining. Here is our first installment.
I’ve always valued the vantage point afforded me by my job title – server. The Restaurant, particularly in diverse communities such as Toronto, is a veritable laboratory for cultural interactions albeit on a microcosmic scale.
The gig itself isn’t too shabby either and while I’m sure there are other places of work where co-workers spontaneously and simultaneously burst into “Fernando” [I’m sure you’re familiar with the hit song by Abba, there’s no need to play games] there is indeed merit behind the “works well under pressure” bullet point on all our resumes. See, much like our aprons us servers, we’re cut from the same cloth. We lead quite a paradoxical lifestyle; after hours of playing spectator to the indulgences of others I ask you wouldn’t it seem natural or at the very least understandable that we would be inclined to partake in a like manner? Thus some of us [yes not all, many servers have families, mortgages and the like and thus can only indulge in one or two beers] tend to vent or suppress these tokens of our bipolar occupation. Yes I am aware, the suits and ties partake in a similar type of post-work co-worker communion but I posit that this sort, the “server-sort” is one of a more amplified form and as you might imagine our paradoxical lifestyle has its concomitant destructive side effects.
The amplification I speak of is due in large part to the “face” of a server particularly in higher end chain restaurants where I believe a kind of repression continuously takes place as servers’ faces are indefinitely plastered with smiles through spit-storm yells and sometimes misdirected, sometimes substantiated frustrations [all the while wondering if anyone’s ever gonna order the humble pie.]
If I’m honest with myself and with you dear friends, I’d say that I’m at times shocked and at times in awe of the outcomes of the aforementioned see, these cultural interactions I speak of, an interrogation of social graces if you will, help to elucidate the fact that there is indeed a certain ‘something’ that makes one equate being served with being in control.
It’s a scenario strangely reminiscent of Milgram’s and Zimbardo’s prison experiments, this interaction between the server and the served are arbitrarily applied positions really, since they can be switched quite easily, particularly with reference to the server who can become the served quite quickly. But what is really striking, at least to this observer is that accepting the role of being served often leads to a subsequent abuse of this power [yes customers/guests do have power, I beg you to argue otherwise.] If you MUST have examples of these abuses then I will indulge in a few true stories. I’m referring to the kind of talking “down” to the waiter/waitress in question while simultaneously thanking god and yourself that your child, also present at the table, will most definitely never be lowered to such a menial position, too harsh? Ok. Well there are tamer examples at my disposal, such as a sudden attack of a disease that renders everything you eat insipid requiring you to try and subsequently reject every item on the menu and then reject also the bill for these items in a similar fashion and since we’re on the topic of fashion, perhaps the occasions where the fashionable are outraged at the fact that the UN-fashionable are allowed to dine in the same space as they are also fits into this category [the waiter/waitress is then blamed for this obvious oversight - the sore sight of ‘ugly’ people.] Further petty examples – unquenchable anger over the unavailability of the ‘right’ size of glass for one’s milk – see this article – Perhaps the one overwhelming piece of evidence which points to the psychological effects [a la Milgram and Zimbardo] of one’s behaviour relative to their specific position of power or lack there of is the fact that servers too are not immune to this behaviour [there I said it.]
But please believe me, us servers, we’re generally quite amiable people actually, indulge me in an another anecdote…I recall one particular evening after working a particularly long double shift at the ol’ Red Lobster, I – growing tired of haddock and chips with cheddar bay biscuits for dinner ended up at a subway restaurant, encountered a few police officers. There I was behind them in line, them in front of me filling the shape of my guest/restaurant patron mold. I began to engage them in conversation according to this frame of mind – the giddy “can I be of service” type of conversation. Needless to say, I attracted two pairs of suspiciously raised eyebrows. Had I ended up looking more like I was suffering from a case of the munchies rather than merely exhausted and hungry [and unexplainably and understandably loud] after a long day’s work? was the constant rumination of “social graces” eating away at my autonomy like a freshly butter brushed cheddar bay biscuit?
I digress,
But it all relates actually sort of, the issue is essentially one of psychology. Mindset… and with it a sort of quantum-physics-esque construction and alteration of reality.
Oh and the repercussions you ask? besides the early stages of carpel tunnel…. the reaffirmation and maintenance of human psychological vulnerability.
Words by Arianne Persaud.
Photo by Antonio Fernandez.
Dinner and a Show : Aftertaste
The column “Aftertaste”, is an interrogation of those elements external to food which still exist as an inherent part of eating and dining. Here is our first installment.
I’ve always valued the vantage point afforded me by my job title – server. The Restaurant, particularly in diverse communities such as Toronto, is a veritable laboratory for cultural interactions albeit on a microcosmic scale.
The gig itself isn’t too shabby either and while I’m sure there are other places of work where co-workers spontaneously and simultaneously burst into “Fernando” [I’m sure you’re familiar with the hit song by Abba, there’s no need to play games] there is indeed merit behind the “works well under pressure” bullet point on all our resumes. See, much like our aprons us servers, we’re cut from the same cloth. We lead quite a paradoxical lifestyle; after hours of playing spectator to the indulgences of others I ask you wouldn’t it seem natural or at the very least understandable that we would be inclined to partake in a like manner? Thus some of us [yes not all, many servers have families, mortgages and the like and thus can only indulge in one or two beers] tend to vent or suppress these tokens of our bipolar occupation. Yes I am aware, the suits and ties partake in a similar type of post-work co-worker communion but I posit that this sort, the “server-sort” is one of a more amplified form and as you might imagine our paradoxical lifestyle has its concomitant destructive side effects.
The amplification I speak of is due in large part to the “face” of a server particularly in higher end chain restaurants where I believe a kind of repression continuously takes place as servers’ faces are indefinitely plastered with smiles through spit-storm yells and sometimes misdirected, sometimes substantiated frustrations [all the while wondering if anyone’s ever gonna order the humble pie.]
If I’m honest with myself and with you dear friends, I’d say that I’m at times shocked and at times in awe of the outcomes of the aforementioned see, these cultural interactions I speak of, an interrogation of social graces if you will, help to elucidate the fact that there is indeed a certain ‘something’ that makes one equate being served with being in control.
It’s a scenario strangely reminiscent of Milgram’s and Zimbardo’s prison experiments, this interaction between the server and the served are arbitrarily applied positions really, since they can be switched quite easily, particularly with reference to the server who can become the served quite quickly. But what is really striking, at least to this observer is that accepting the role of being served often leads to a subsequent abuse of this power [yes customers/guests do have power, I beg you to argue otherwise.] If you MUST have examples of these abuses then I will indulge in a few true stories. I’m referring to the kind of talking “down” to the waiter/waitress in question while simultaneously thanking god and yourself that your child, also present at the table, will most definitely never be lowered to such a menial position, too harsh? Ok. Well there are tamer examples at my disposal, such as a sudden attack of a disease that renders everything you eat insipid requiring you to try and subsequently reject every item on the menu and then reject also the bill for these items in a similar fashion and since we’re on the topic of fashion, perhaps the occasions where the fashionable are outraged at the fact that the UN-fashionable are allowed to dine in the same space as they are also fits into this category [the waiter/waitress is then blamed for this obvious oversight - the sore sight of ‘ugly’ people.] Further petty examples – unquenchable anger over the unavailability of the ‘right’ size of glass for one’s milk – see this article – Perhaps the one overwhelming piece of evidence which points to the psychological effects [a la Milgram and Zimbardo] of one’s behaviour relative to their specific position of power or lack there of is the fact that servers too are not immune to this behaviour [there I said it.]
But please believe me, us servers, we’re generally quite amiable people actually, indulge me in an another anecdote…I recall one particular evening after working a particularly long double shift at the ol’ Red Lobster, I – growing tired of haddock and chips with cheddar bay biscuits for dinner ended up at a subway restaurant, encountered a few police officers. There I was behind them in line, them in front of me filling the shape of my guest/restaurant patron mold. I began to engage them in conversation according to this frame of mind – the giddy “can I be of service” type of conversation. Needless to say, I attracted two pairs of suspiciously raised eyebrows. Had I ended up looking more like I was suffering from a case of the munchies rather than merely exhausted and hungry [and unexplainably and understandably loud] after a long day’s work? was the constant rumination of “social graces” eating away at my autonomy like a freshly butter brushed cheddar bay biscuit?
I digress,
But it all relates actually sort of, the issue is essentially one of psychology. Mindset… and with it a sort of quantum-physics-esque construction and alteration of reality.
Oh and the repercussions you ask? besides the early stages of carpel tunnel…. the reaffirmation and maintenance of human psychological vulnerability.
Words by Arianne Persaud.
Photo by Antonio Fernandez.