They Who Serve

Posted on June 23, 2002 in Cafes

I’m feeling a little sluggish after spending the afternoon drinking coffee at Tully’s in Lake Forest. The assistant manager is moving on to other things — he is being shifted by the corporation to his third location which means that the next step for him is going to be manager. One always feels a little sad with the departure of afavorite barriste or store clerk. I had a room mate once who thought I was crazy: why, they’re only store clerks, mere servants, she’d imply. She never slept with anyone who worked with the public except for the occassional corporate sales man. Me, I remember that they are part of the great human circle. When I leave a restaurant, I minimize my mess and nag my wife to do the same. “This stuff isn’t just going to sit there. People are going to have to come for it,” I pester. It just makes them use up time and have to set themselves to reordering the perfection that their managers expect of them. Given that most work for only a little above minimum wage, I feel it is part of my tip to leave them with less work than they should have.

Last week, I found Jerry outside picking up after some yuppies who’d been on a marathon run. They’d moved chairs clear across the patio, left their cups and crumpled napkins on the table. “You’d think,” he said to me, “that if they had the energy to run 18 miles, they could clean up when they are through here.” “That’s the problem, Jerry,” I said. “They don’t have the energy. They are into self torture and once they have finished it, they want to spread a little of the pain they’ve acquired around to undeserving people.” It never seemed to me particularly wise to push oneself to a point near death and then neglecting one’s obligations to others. Nor is it a good thing to treat those who bring me food as levers in a grandiose delivery machine. This goes even for things I supposedly pay for, like the sauce spots, coffee splotches, and sugar minefields I leave in restaurants. I usually wipe up after myself and, in fast food places, stow my trash in the Thank You boxes. One hears that America is becoming “more spiritual”, but this is yet another area in which we seem to fail to meet the challenge of the simplest commandments. We get our practice for violating “Thou shalt not kill” by the easy violation of doing unto others what we’d rather not have done to ourselves.