Dignity For Whores

In contemplation of July 4th - the day when Americans everywhere celebrate long distant forefathers gaining independence from the evil British - I think we should make July 3rd "Are We Sure About This?" Day. 

I don't make a big deal about it, but I'm sorta on the gay side. My "Are We Sure About This?" Day might make this clear.

I'll go first.

Click the link or the title for 40 Tom Daley related reasons... independence might not have been such a good thing.

What this book is not

This is not a book on learning how to sell more items. If all goes well, a book on sales will be forthcoming in 2014. But this is not that book. Wait patiently, and you can buy Dignity For Whores 2: Even MORE Stuff Every Server Should Know when it comes out. This ain’t that.

This is not a book on how to serve wine, or carry a tray, or the exact best way to clear a table.

This not a book on the technical, physical aspects of being a waiter. That kind of book would make the worst POSSIBLE reading and I absolutely refuse to write it. 

Well, crap...I'll give it a shot: 

Hold the mid-sized beverage tray with your left hand, standing behind and slightly to the right of the guest. Carefully remove the dirty plate with your right hand while pivoting backwards 20 degrees so that you don't get the dirty plate in the guest’s hair. Fail. Pretend you don't notice the string of greasy pasta that got caught on the guest's collar and is now dangling down their back.  

Yuck. 

Writing just those two sentences gave me gas. 

Nope. Not gonna do it. I WILL see if I can come up with some way of teaching the physical aspects of serving in such a way that it is entertaining. Maybe a video blog on the web page or a series of cartoons.  I'll get back with you on that.

I am going to publish this little masterpiece later on. But for now... It is going to be released bit-by-bit.

For FREE

This post begins a series of sections directly from the book.

After all, why should you have to wait for me to get the thing published to start reading it?

  How to Use This Book

Most of the time, you don't "use" a book. You just fucking read it. 

You read for a bit, and if you get bored, you throw the book in the back of your car and forget about it. You don't touch the stupid thing again until your best friend reminds you that it is their birthday. Today. And you did remember their party, right? 

Then you dig the book out from under the spare tire, wrap it in old Christmas paper, and present it to your friend, surrounded by friends and family, while choir of singing waiters croon "Happy Birthday" at Red Lobster. 

Alright, maybe that's just me. But you get the point. You don't "use" a book."

Well, my friend. This is not one of those times and this is not one of those books. This isn't just a collection of ass jokes and disgusting stories. It's a tool. And like most tools, it took some work -some research and development - to get to the stage you have found it today. Honestly! This is not the first version. Dignity for Whores; A Concise Guide to Everything Every Server Needs to Know, Ever has been through several incarnations. Each was tested and retested to make sure it worked before being put into print. 

Better be appreciative, bitches. It has been a long road.

Why this book is the way it is the way it is the way it FINALLY is.

In the beginning, I tried the straight-forward: "Do This, It Works" approach. That seemed the easiest and is BY FAR the most common among how-to books. About half-way through, I showed some of my close waiter friends the early stuff. They thought it was pretty good but reminded me to keep it short and sweet. "We just want to know what to do. That's it. Tell us exactly what to do without any fluff or explanation. That'll be great!" 

Turns out those waiter friends of mine were wrong. 

The "Do This, It Works" approach was a miserable failure with all the waiters I tested it on. It turns out that the average server is a lot like the average adolescent. They hate being told what to do without a really convincing explanation. The guinea pigs that I gave the test version to would read a section and then say to me: "But… why?" 

Then they would walk away before I had a chance to explain.

When I tell people I've written a book, the first question is about the title. 

"What's it called?" they ask me.

"Dignity for Whores; A Vulgar Self-Help Book For Waiters," I say. "Or maybe the subtitle will be:  A Concise Guide to Everything Every Server Needs To Know, Fucking Ever.  I haven't decided on the subtitle yet and the cover art dude is getting irritated with me. Maybe both."

I then smile widely. I know what is coming next.

Until the exact moment I said the name of the book, these people were only pretending to be interested. Now they are looking at me, confusion clear on their wide, wrinkled foreheads, beady pig-squinted eyes staring at me in concentration.

"Oh," they say, "What's it about?"

"It's a book that explains to restaurant servers how they can make more money using science and psychology to trick the bastards they are waiting on into tipping them more," I say. "Plus, I tell a lot of funny stories, say a bunch of truly horrible things, and string together huge paragraphs of foul language and disgusting tidbits from my twenty-five years in the industry."

"Yeah, but why call it Dignity For Whores?  Why not Dignity for Waiters or something else less insulting?

"Good question," I say. "Let me tell you why."

This is what I tell them:

The Top 10 Reasons Restaurant Servers are Cheap Hookers, Part 1

10.  Hookers can't pick their street corner; waiters can't pick their station.

In every restaurant there are a handful of good stations and a handful of bad stations. In the middle are a bunch of mediocre, might-do-okay, might-have-a-shit-night stations. Servers are entirely at the mercy of their pimp-boss. 

What tables they have, exactly where in the restaurant they get to work? That is completely out of their hands. 

I've worked in places where some of the girls (and a few guys) have been known to literally give their fat boss a blow job, letting his middle-aged, sweaty balls bang against their nose... for  a few nights in one of the money-makers. 

9.  A hooker's job is to make money for her pimp; a waiter's job is to make a bonus for their boss.

All of the pointless rules, the inane demands, the weird, manager-led bitch-sessions before and after shifts, the insistence on promoting this item or getting guests to fill out that survey,  bizarre, never-explained shifts in policy... all of it happens for one reason: the manager's bonus. A waiter's job - as far as their boss is concerned - is to do everything in their power to make sure the boss gets that bonus. 

The quality of the food, the functionality of the scheduling, the systems and subsystems that keep a well-run restaurant humming along like a well-maintained Hyundai Elantra? 

All of that is entirely secondary.

8. Hookers pretend they "like" their john's; waiters pretend they "like" their guests.

There is no real difference between a cheap hooker's attitude towards the customer they picked up at a street corner and a server's attitude towards the guest who just sat in their station....