Although tipping permitted a certain amount of autonomy in service work, it also fostered individual entrepreneurship, competitive behavior, and dampened the ardor for collective effort. With its “remnants of use value,” tipping lay outside the commercial exchange system; this intimate transaction created a more ambiguous kind of worker consciousness than the classic adversarial “us versus them” attitude. Some servers chose to rely on the ephemeral, sporadic tipping system rather than join with their co-workers to push for higher cash wages. Tipping also weakened the potential alliance between customer and worker. At times, workers perceived the customer rather than the employer as responsible for their feeble income. And to a large degree, employers convinced the public that low wage rates were justified because servers received tips and special fringe benefits such as room and board.

Customer maltreatment of waitresses, in part rooted in the tipping system, in part inherent in the unequal financial relation between customer and service worker, was fueled by the condescension of the public toward food service work. Although waitressing had lost its immoral cast in the eyes of the public by the 1920s and 1930s, the status of the work remained low. Waitressing was seen as menial, unskilled work, and waitresses were to be treated accordingly. “The notion that serving food could be as complicated a task to learn and to do as, say, making furniture, never impressed itself on public opinion.” Personal service workers also suffered from the stigma of dependence: instead of having a formal contractual arrangement that provided a living wage, they relied on customer largess.44

In addition to demanding sexual favors or servility, customers looked to waitresses for the fulfillment of other psychological needs. The act of eating and of being fed is overlaid with powerful associations. Diners transferred unconscious memories connected with food onto the waitress. Some had insatiable appetites for recognition, mothering, and emotional nurturance; others wanted witty conversation, entertainment, or a friendly nod as they recounted their daily triumphs and defeats. “Where else can I find a friend and get my lamb chops at the same time?” one customer queried. The waitress herself was part of the consumption exchange.45

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

Waitresses, however, recognized the skills of judgment and memory involved in waitressing and the dignity that attends a basic human service provided in an expert manner. Drawing on the positive aspects of female socialization and women's culture, they defined service as important and skilled work. As one explained: “it's a good experience to serve; I think everybody should have to serve sometime in their life. Serving is giving, as corny as it sounds.” Another waitress of twenty-three years considered her work to be “an art.” “When I put the plate down, you don't hear a sound. When I pick up a glass, I want it to be just right. When someone says, ‘How come you're just a waitress?’ I say ‘Don't you think you deserve being served by me?’” A former farm girl who became a waitress in Memphis told Works Progress Administration interviewers of her thrill in learning the trade. “I was just tickled to death with myself when I got expert. Ten different orders in my head without getting coffee crossed with Coca-Cola was going some for a country girl.”67

Waitresses recognized that their performance could be critical to the success of a business. Many patrons responded more to the personality of the food server than to the quality of the decor or food. Minnie Popa, for instance, was “more than a waitress; she was an attraction.” She pulled in the customers no matter where she worked. “With all the feasting and flirting and merry exchange of wit,” some restaurants came “near being a salon,” with the waitress for their “Madame Récamier.” Even the most determined employer was unable to exert complete control over this service exchange. Waitresses could hurt business by suggesting the least expensive menu item, ignore the poor tippers, offer food and drink on the house, or simply provide lackluster, uninspired service, even though it jeopardized their own tip income. Waitresses could also go out of their way to add that special attentive, anticipatory touch that would cement the customer's patronage.69 Anticipating customers’ needs or “getting the jump” on the customer along with “suggestive selling” could impact on customer spending and hence increase the size of the tip as well as the profit margin.70

Like most service workers, the relationship with the customer gave waitresses a measure of control over their work environment, no matter how intrusive a boss they had.71 Employers defined certain boundaries for acceptable behavior with customers beyond which the food server could not cross, but within those parameters, waitresses exercised a considerable amount of latitude. The sphere of autonomy provided by face-to-face interaction with the customer both strengthened waitress group ties as well as undermined them. On the one hand, the independent relation to the customer promoted a recognition of skill and provided a basis for assertion in the face of employer hostility. On the other hand, waitresses sometimes saw themselves as successful entrepreneurs who did not need group solidarity because they could rely on their own individual “bargaining” with their clients and employers.72

The elaborate group work rules devised by workers rivaled the most sophisticated personnel systems. Workers created job rotation schemes and regulated station assignments. In one restaurant, the waitresses took turns calling in sick when they felt the supervisors had overstaffed. Waitresses assisted each other, but each had her regular customers and other waitresses were expected to honor those previously developed relationships. Valentine Webster explained “the way we worked it” when a new worker arrived. “I'd show…[her] what to do and I'd take the heavy load until…[she] learned the ropes.” Whyte unearthed layers of informal work practices regulating work flow and crises; he concluded that without these work groups the business of feeding would grind to a halt.81

Waitress work culture also helped women realistically interpret the flirtations and sexual games of male customers. Unrestrained by masculine ears and oblivious to the dominant culture's strictures, waitresses talked candidly with each other about sexual matters and the power relations that existed between men and women. These group appraisals of male behavior must have saved many a waitress from being swept off her feet by flattery or from being rushed into a mismatched courtship and marriage.83

Furthermore, the nature of service work itself discouraged idealization of the male. Unlike many working women who were either segregated from or subordinate to men at work, waitresses interacted constantly with male customers, supervisors, and co-workers, often “initiating action” with bartenders, cooks, and customers rather than responding to their demands. They were confronted daily with the foibles of men and could observe first-hand the battleground of the sexes by watching the stratagems of other waitresses in dealing with male customers, co-workers, and bosses. Waitress Mame Dugan's reaction in O. Henry's short story “Cupid à la Carte” was rather extreme: she refused to marry because “after watching men eat, eat, eat…they're absolutely nothing but something that goes in front of a knife and fork and plate at the table.” But many waitresses had “met man face to face” and discovered “that the reports in the Seaside Library about his being a fairy prince lacked confirmation.” The work of serving food and the peer culture developed at the workplace undermined rather than reinforced romantic fantasies.86

Before the 1930s, few American workers were organized: in 1920, at the peak of pre-New Deal organizational strength only a fifth of the nonagricultural work force belonged to unions. The situation changed dramatically during the 1930s and 1940s as workers flocked to the labor movement and for the first time in American history gained collectively bargaining agreements in such major industries as steel, auto, and communications. Nevertheless, by the early 1950s, union growth sputtered to a halt, reaching a high-water mark in 1954 with 35 percent of the nonagricultural labor force organized.1