As I clear the table for bed and breakfast guests, I often boast, “I am a PROFESSIONAL busboy.”
With the viewpoint of a real pro, I go nuts at restaurants when the server places the glass of water on the left side instead of the right Or asks me to hand them the finished dish in front of me. I mean, I have STANDARDS!”
I started out busing dishes at Mannings cafeteria in San Francisco at age 17 in the summer of 1959, living in a fleabag hotel in the seedy Tenderloin district.
Next summer, I graduated to table service at Zephyr Cove Lodge at Lake Tahoe.
I got off to a rocky start: the head waiter hit me in the face with a wet dish towel because I was too slow. I broke so many water glasses that the chef accused me of working for the manufacturer.
To ease the stress, I would sit by the lake at night and talk to it.
Months later, the manager wanted to fire me because I did such a lousy job ironing my shirts, but I must have gotten better. The nasty waiter defended me this time: “He is the best busboy I have ever seen.”
Business was slow, and the waitresses were getting grumpy. They were supposed to give me 15% of their tips, but I knew they were shortchanging me. Rather than yell at them, I counted the change customers left on the tables and confronted one of them nicely. I got my money!
Lake Tahoe was a paradise in the summer. I would lay on the beach in the morning before starting the dinner shift. On days off there was hiking in the mountains. It is still my favorite place in the whole world.
I got an education in working-class people. The servers told horror stories of their broken marriages. Some were holding two jobs to pay off debts. A cook and a waitress got drunk at a casino and returned home husband and wife.
But my naïveté showed through. One of the chefs got fired and persuaded me to “lend” him $5. Of course, he would mail it back to me after he got his new job, he said. A crowd of kitchen staff crowded around him and made him give it back.
Two summers later, I had returned to our home in El Sobrante, Calif., from a month-long trip around the country with my dad. I was only back a few minutes when the phone rang. Would I come back?
I said yes, but this time I wasn’t very motivated. Why should I bust my butt hauling dishes around? I’ll just put in the time and save up my pay for my final year of college.
They had to expand their staff of two busboys to four. The owner came up to me and said, “For you, I guess this year just wasn’t the same.”
Well, no. After I graduated next summer, I would get a real job!
--Drawing by Ron Miller
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