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Loading... Waiting: The True Confessions of a Waitressby Debra Ginsberg
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. I liked reading this-- I'd always wondered what waiters and waitresses were thinking will they served me-- but I though that it could have been just a bit more edgy. The ending seemed especially weak in regards to the rest of it, but up until then it was fun and rather educational. Now if I could only get the rest of my family to read this before we visit a restaurant again... ( )About: Ginsberg describes her long career as a waitress in restaurants ranging from her family's luncheonette to a country club. Plenty of vignettes about ill-behaved restaurant staff and customers here. Pros: The tales and interpersonal relationships she describes on the job can be amusing Cons: I read this book after reading Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip--Confessions of a Cynical Waiter and found that Ginsberg's work paled in comparison. The chapter on waitressing in the media seemed like a tacked on writing class assignment, and her style lacked any "oomph" to hold my interest. Great volume on what it's really like to serve. For anyone who's ever waited tables, here is a book that speaks to your experience, the good and the bad. Not "Kitchen Confidential" but fun to read and rings true to life to anyone who has been a server, even back in the dark ages when I was in college. Very cute, and she hits the nail in the head about this industry. I really enjoyed this, especially having worked in restaurants myself for 7 or so years. no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 0060932813, Paperback)In a truly just world, everyone would have to wait tables for at least six months, just to know what it's like. Failing that, we have writer-waiter Debra Ginsberg's tasty memoir to remind us about life on the other side of those swinging doors. Horror stories? After 20 years of serving other people's food, she's got 'em--and being handed a drunk's vomit-soaked napkins certainly fits the bill. But even though she expresses the usual frustrations with bad tippers and control freaks, in the long run Ginsberg is anything but bitter. In fact, she recently left her publishing job to return to waiting tables, hooked on the freedom, spare time, and ready cash the lifestyle provides. Of course, there are other perks too. Sex thrives in the close quarters and steamy atmosphere of a typical restaurant (not to mention with the high-drama personalities who work there). Fans of Kitchen Confidential will be relieved to know there's as much bad behavior among the floor staff as there is in the back of the house. As in that book, Ginsberg also relates some eyebrow-raising tales about what can happen before your food gets to your table. (The moral here: "It really does pay to be nice to your server.") But Waiting is far more than just a sexual soap opera or a cautionary guide for dining out; it's also the story of one woman's coming of age, most of which just happens to take place while she's wearing an apron. During her tenure as a waitress, Ginsberg thrives as a single mother and comes into her own as a writer--and waiting (as she suggestively calls it) helps her do both. Most of us (including waiters) think of the profession as a stopgap, not a career, but what happens on the way to somewhere else, Ginsberg writes, is every bit as important as the final destination: "Perhaps the most valuable lesson I'd learned was that the act of waiting itself is an active one. That period of time between the anticipation and the beginning of life's events is when everything really happens--the time when actual living occurs." --Mary Park(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:15 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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