Bag Lady on 3
One day I got a bag lady. She sat at table 3, near the
kitchen, and all she needed was water for her tea bag. If
you’ve never worked in a restaurant, it might not occur to
you that each table is money, for the waitress. It was
summer, the busy season, it’s when we try to make up for
the rest of the year. If the kids are going to the dentist,
if anyone is getting a new coat that year, if the car got
tires, it had to happen in the summer. I had 8 tables and
one of them was a bag lady. She was my age. She had all her
bags spread out on the floor around her. She had long
straggly hair and no front teeth at all.
I asked if she’d like a sandwich, and she said, “I don’t
eat meat.” I brought her a vegetarian sandwich and soup.
The cooks filled up a bag of food for her, cheese and
vegetables and German bread. The bread was our specialty;
the recipe was from the owner’s great grandmother, back in
Germany. She ate the sandwich and the soup and then she got
into the bag and ate that, too, even though it was for
later.
“How is it?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I prefer soy cheese.” And then she shook her
bread at me. “And I don’t usually eat debris,” she said.
Debris, now that means rubbish, doesn’t it. Debris, and she
waved her bread at me. Mrs. Schwartz’ recipe, all the way
from Germany.
“Usually I just eat raw food,” said the homeless woman at
table 3. I was busy, my whole section was full and others
were waiting to get in. You don’t give your tables away to
non-tippers, as a rule. You get people in and out. You
don’t throw a table away on someone eating for free.
There’s an ugly side to waitressing that you might not know
about if you’ve never done it before. There is something
inherently corrupting about getting your money from tips,
but there you have it. I just stood at her table, with the
meter stopped, looking at her. “My usual diet is raw
juice.”
“Like orange juice?”
“Juice!” she exclaimed. “From fresh, raw berries.” She
motioned to her bags sprawled out on the floor. “I bring my
juicer with me.” And then she added, “It’s good for the
digestion.”