Waitress work culture was based first and foremost on the positive assessment of the occupation held by individual waitresses. To a surprising degree, waitresses valued their work and derived both pride and pleasure from service. Although burdened with adverse employment conditions and stigmatized for engaging in personal service, many working-class women preferred waitressing to the other jobs available to women with little education and training, such as factory, domestic service, or sales work. The attraction was based in part on objective criteria: flexible shifts that could be adjusted to the sleeping and school schedules of young children or a working husband; the possibility of earnings above other working-class jobs; and the security of regular meals and board.

But waitresses also volunteered more qualitative, intrinsic factors in explaining their choice of waitress work: the opportunity to interact with coworkers and customers and to meet new people, the pleasure of leaving a customer satisfied, the gamble and immediate gratification of the tip, the general excitement and challenge of work where face-to-face contact was required. One waitress explained why she preferred food service to secretarial: “I just can't feature sitting at a typewriter all day trying to make out what some longwinded big shot made me Gregg down. Now getting him in a good humor with a sandwich and a cup of coffee, I adore that. I just plain get a kick out of feeding people.” Another emphasized the appeal of ever-changing social encounters: “I have to be a waitress. How else can I learn about people? How else does the world come to me?”65