Do You like book Waiting: The True Confessions Of A Waitress (2001)?
This book has been on my shelf forever. I'm glad I finally got around to it. This was a fun read...a memoir by a waitress "lifer" (a woman who has been waitressing well past her college years). Ginsberg is a skilled writer and her stories are alternately amusing and frightening. Anyone who spent time as a server will relate to the lecherous customers, the soap opera romances and the unpredictable hierarchy of the restaurant staff. Ginsberg was a single mother and her stories of survival are both uplifting and terrifying. Parts of this are a little dated now but other parts are universal and timeless.
—Diane
This book came at a point in my life when I wanted to justify what I did for a living. I never really enjoyed waiting tables and don't I think the author does either but she made vaild points about the business. It is grueling work, practically running all day on your feet, the organizational skills required, the psychology of every customer (and their personality profile), and how ultimately no one is ever just a waitress or a cook, or a manager owner, everyone gets into the business for some reason and ultimately gets to the point where enough is enough. BUT, when it is good its good, screw that, it is amazing, when everything falls into place or even when you had a rough day or night it reminds you that you are alive and you are capable of amazing feats while ultimately bringing home the bacon. It points out that this job is bringing home the bacon without the on-going stress of coporate america but it still isn't without its own type.This field of work is just unappreciated, and it has terrible reputation. This book tells the audience how it is (at least for one person, who has their master's degree and chooses to continue to do what she does), required for everyone to understand this industry isn't just about food, it should be about experience and culture of a massive growing industry that everyone relies on.
—Pinki
Simply, utterly, brilliant.Anyone who's worked in any kind of customer service industry will read this book and nod your head along with it. Anyone who's been a customer will read it and come away with an appreciation for what people in the customer service industry do.Ginsberg is not only an excellent writer with clever, dry wit, but she's got some genuinely funny stories to tell. She paints the pictures of her colleagues and places of employment vividly, until you feel utterly immersed in her recollections, but she also talks about the industry, the mechanics of a restaurant, and all the ins and outs and ebbs and flows that make a restaurant, a job or a dining experience a very good one, mediocre, or a very bad one.I tracked down this book because I'd read Ginsberg's second memoir, Raising Blaze, about bringing up her unique and gifted son (who also has special needs) and wanted to read more of her work. I haven't yet read About My Sisters, her third book, but it's on my bookshelf, waiting for me to crack it open!But yes, to sum it up. Excellent, funny, and clever. A well-written light read that you'll come away from smiling, and hopefully, with a bit more appreciation for people working in what is surely one of the most under-appreciated professions in the world. I've said it before many times, millions of people work in customer service roles, many are doing it because it's a job, some are genuinely born to the role, and none of them are appreciated enough for what they do. While I doubt anyone's about to write a tell-all book about working in retail, if they did, I certainly hope it'd come out something like Waiting.
—Iamshadow