CSotD: Guess you had to be there
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Tina's Groove is at its best when it reflects life in food service, and today's brings back memories, even though I totalled less than a year in the business. As a wise man said, "It's not the years; it's the mileage."
The access to a free meal is supposed to make up for being paid sub-minimum wages. The sub-minimum wage being based on the riches you will get from tips.
By now, you should be laughing.
Waiting tables during the Great Dinner Theater Scare of the late 1970s didn't so much involve starving on the job as it did the fact that the food simply wasn't very good.
The price point for tickets was based on the extent to which eating a meal while watching recent college grads in a play as bland as the food qualified as a terrific night out.
So the food was a buffet on a par with all-you-can-eat buffets where the all-you-can-eat part is controlled by not making it anything you'd want very much of in the first place.
And given that people had to fetch their own food from the buffet, leaving us to bring them their drinks and bus their tables, you can probably guess how the tips went.
However, we could have all the instant mashed potatoes, canned corn and Salisbury steak we wanted, the nice thing being that we had time to sit down and eat it, between setting up our tables and opening the doors.
Turnover was extraordinarily high, since it didn't take long to realize that you could make more money waiting tables anywhere else, or that you could stay home, not give up a lot of income and get better food.
However, I also worked the grill at a pizza-and-burgers place where the food was actually quite good, but we were limited in what we could have for free, basically burgers and fries.
The trick there was to be on good terms with the busboy, Sebastian, who would sidle past and quietly let you know when half a pizza had come back to the kitchen, giving you a headstart before the piranhas cleaned it to the bone.
Elder son, who had also worked the trade, and I once had a conversation with younger son, when he was high-school age, in which we told him he should get a job in food service, to which he asked us why.
We explained that it teaches you what it's like to be at the bottom of the food chain.
To which he asked us why he would want to know that, and then went out and got a job at the local record store.
I don't remember if he packed a lunch or ducked out to buy something, but I'm sure it was better than whatever drifted down to the bottom of the food chain.
Another inside view
Given the number of people who have worked in restaurants, Tina's Groove is as well-placed as Retail is, given the number of people who have worked mall jobs.
But that's a syndication marketing issue. With the web, you can gather up an audience with insider gags from less widely held jobs, and one of the first to tap into that was Unshelved, which has been delighting librarians since 2002, practically the Dawn of Time.
I spent a lot of time in those days visiting libraries, to talk to classes, to talk to the librarians themselves or to cover school board meetings, and one thing that was universal in all those schools was that you'd see Unshelved strips either displayed for readers or behind the desk.
Apparently 14 years is a long time to keep things rolling, however, and Unshelved is down to four strips a week plus a Book Club posting, plus classics on the weekend. They've got a Patreon under way to step things up a bit.
I don't know if I'm recommending that as a comics fan or a history buff, but I've got a lot of affection for Unshelved on both levels.
Kids' eye view
Continuing our theme, Sleeper Avenue takes a look at Passover from the perspective of a young Ed Stein, the difference here being that he universalizes the experience so that you don't have to have been there in order to get the point.
The strength of his illustrated memoirs is that he takes his personal experience and translates it such that you can relate to something outside your own experience, which is the essence of a good memoir.
In this particular case, I've seen enough Passover seders in movies, read enough about them in books, that I had a sense of what happens.
But it takes memories of being a kid to point out the realities behind the traditions, and it takes a particularly deft touch to do so without being dismissive or contemptuous of tradition.
For instance:
The Passover seder itself was something my sister and I dreaded. After a day of smelling the wonderful odors wafting from the kitchen, we were already starving when we were finally seated at the big dining room table. With all the leaves inserted, it filled the dining room with little to spare. Every chair in the house was appropriated for the meal. With Grandma, Jack and Sarah, my cousins Alan and Ron, Mom and Dad, Linda and me, plus whatever guests had been invited that year, the table might have 16 or 18 people crammed around it.
That's not disrespectful; it's just a realistic kids' point of view.
Imagine Thanksgiving if, in addition to all the stress of a gathered family (which he also covers), you had to sit through a whole solemn ceremony before you could eat.
Good as my memory is, I can't remember if the interminable Good Friday liturgy for Roman Catholics really was three hours long or it if just felt that way.
But I got the same sympathetic chuckles from Ed's memory of Passover that I got years ago from Jimmy Johnson's memory of a Protestant upbringing.
Plus this example
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