[quote=bearishgurl][quote=CA renter]Lordy, that post made me cringe!!!!!

:([/quote]

I completely understand, CA renter. At that time I just made sure my busboy and bartender were taken care of and rolled my coins and stacked up my cash daily (like with like denominations and all the same direction), which I deposited weekly with a walk-up human teller. In other words, laughed all the way to the bank 🙂

btw, this was a very skilled job. Not only did you have to possess an extraordinary memory, but needed to be able to handle a 50#+ serving tray or 25#+ cocktail tray with one arm and hand, carrying the tray stand with the other. You also needed to have table service skills, including wine stewarding, shelling lobster tails, instructing on how to crack and disengage crab from its shell and slice roast beef steaks for your customers, all the while remaining poised and making everything look effortless.

We weren’t even allowed to let more than two cig butts accumulate in an ashtray before silently replacing it or allow a lady customer to rise without first assisting with her chair, so we had to stand like statues in the corner of our stations when not serving customers :)[/quote]

bearishgurl, i remember those days well. Even once certain laws were passed, the discriminatory behavior and habits continued to flourish because employers didn’t understand them or were totally unaware of their existence. Among those employers who were informed, not many took the laws seriously. There weren’t a lot of low-wage employees (and there was a shortage of females receiving high wages in those days) who had the extra money to pursue a discrimination suit that would probably be heard by an unsympathetic judge. It wasn’t until the mid-80s that women were part of the landscape in formerly male-dominated career territory, and even then, their motives were often questioned (a la UCGal’s “getting an EE degree as part of getting your M.R.S.”)

Loved your story…..reminds me of the Gloria Steinem essay on her undercover stint as a waitress in one of the old Playboy Clubs back in the mid-60s. I had my own issues while waiting tables in college in the mid-70s. Not nearly as titillating a story as yours and Gloria’s, but I worked in a fine French restaurant where I and the other female staff were able to work the lunch shift, but not the dinner hours, which is where you made the real money. The owner didn’t make up for it by increasing our hourly wage, with (that was 35 cents an hour) either. We worked just as hard, if not harder, than the dinner waiters, for about 25% of what they were able to earn in a shift. I remember wishing that I was a male, but not thinking that there was anything discriminatory in the owner’s policy.

Waiting tables was a great way to make money for school, and a good builder of character. My experience has been, when I come upon someone of adult age saying “But it’s not fair!”, that individual has never worked in food service. I think everyone should have to do it for three months.