Denny's Waitress

My first waitressing job was at Denny's in a suburb of New Orleans.

Denny's waitresses are a hard-core group. They work grueling 8+ hour shifts that don't ease up for ten seconds. They manage coffee pots, condiments and heavy diner plates with machine-like precision. They make time to prepare complicated sundaes in the middle of juggling way more tables than you would think possible, in absurdly short time frames. They earn respectable livings off 15% tips on $4 entrees, and they don't complain. They do it all while not appearing to rush and calling their patrons "babe" and "darling." Most of them do it into their 70's. I was not one of them.

And they knew it. I trained on the hellish breakfast shift, where not one of the wait staff was less than 65 years of age. Very few of the patrons were, either. Denny's offers discounted meals (less than the normal high of $4 per entree) to seniors, who heavily took advantage of it. Being the most junior waitress, I "inherited" one of the most annoying patrons. Every day, he ordered the Senior Slam breakfast with an off-menu request for poached eggs. Every day he demanded that the eggs be carefully prepared and dried with a paper towel, so they wouldn't be wet. Every day he sent them back to be re-dried. Every day he left me 10% on his $2.70 breakfast.

I never conquered the breakfast shift. Every day was a whirlwind of grueling work, confusion, and pain. It was like trying to survive a tornado...for eight hours at at time. My elderly co-workers relished it.

Luckily, once trained, I worked the overnight 11 to 7 shift, with the teenagers and the drunks. This shift was actually pretty awesome, as far as diner waitressing goes. The kids were way more fun to wait on than the adults, especially since I was barely older than they were. The drunk people on their way home from partying were the best tippers and easiest to deal with. Always entertaining, invariably in good moods, and not picky at all. In fact, the drunks rarely remembered what they ordered; as long as you placed some kind of greasy sustenance in front of them, they ate it. On a few occasions, they also fell asleep in it. They certainly didn't send food back to the kitchen. And because they never felt much like doing math, they always overtipped.

But then I was assigned to the swing shift, 3 to 11pm. Ahhh, dinner time for vacationing families on a budget. This shift lacked the absurd volume of the breakfast shift, and the overtipping of the overnight period. Instead, there was a short but insane dinner rush that mostly involved fixing special kid-proof drinks, fetching crayons, and cleaning the mashed food and trash kids liked to throw under the tables. It also involved dodging said children, who were often allowed to roam free in the restaurant, tripping tray-laden waitresses and screaming like wild animals. We were just killing time during the rest of the hours.

People always mention racism at Denny's, and perhaps it did exist. But not at my restaurant, which was managed by a patient, fair black woman who never would have tolerated racist or otherwise prejudiced behavior. Even towards the large Sunday afternoon crowds of Baptists, who ran us around with special orders and demands, and often actually left advice cards or religious materials in place of tips. Ageism, on the other hand, might've been a different case. Only, in this instance, it was ageism against the younger waitstaff, who routinely took the worst shifts and tables. Perhaps it was because of our lack of commitment: we were never going to put in the 20 or 30 years you needed to before you were accepted as a Denny's insider.

An incident that stands out in my mind: the young daughters of one of my co-workers visited the restaurant with their dad. Their mother, an intelligent, model-beautiful woman who possessed enviable blond hair, blue eyes and chiseled features, had been working at the restaurant all of her adult life (she was maybe 40). Her mother - now in her late 60's - had worked the vicious breakfast shift for many years. So when the waitresses gathered round to coo over the pretty young girls, I guess it made sense to label them "future Denny's waitresses," which is what one of my co-workers did, without a trace of despair. That's the kind of commitment I just didn't sign up for. I left Denny's after a few months to work on Bourbon Street, New Orleans.

Pros:Half-price Grand Slam breakfasts...Denny's french toast and over-easy eggs, you are the breakfast of my dreams. I miss you. Love, Lisa

The look of shock on someone's face when I announce that I used to wait tables at Denny's

Cons:Where to begin?

Photo: Flickr/Thomas Hawk