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When it comes, when ‘99 rolls into ‘00, it turns out to be nothing. No lights go off. There’s no explosions or mayhem. Nothing happens. Nothing, save for cheers and laughter, and a glass of champagne for each of us on the house. It was just a bunch of hype for nothing. So a new millennium starts and is marked not by what it brings, but by what it doesn’t bring: nothing different, nothing new.
I start the New Year by working twelve days in a row. I quit the daytime Italian restaurant job because I make triple the tips at the steakhouse, and this frees me to pick up even more shifts. Every afternoon I go in and set up with the other servers, placing starched white tablecloths and fresh roses on the tables. We have a meeting and a wine tasting before we open, so we can describe the wines to our guests in detail and make recommendations for food pairings. The other servers love this time, swishing the wines around, describing the nuances, and naming the vineyard in Italy where the grapes were grown.
“This one is from the Province of Vicenza,” the head server says to place the Merlot we’re tasting. “It’s less than an hour from Verona, in the Colli Berici Hills.”
The other servers nod knowingly, as though they have toured the region extensively and are familiar with these hills.
“I enjoy wines from the province of Piedmont,” another server says. “The tannins are more polished.”
I smile to myself. It feels like we’re in training to interact with the upper middle class, and these servers are playing the part very well. They talk about exotic vacation destinations, appreciate gourmet food, and buy designer clothes to show off to each other outside of work. In the kitchen and service areas they whisper to each other, making fun of the people who “obviously can’t afford this place, you can tell just by looking at them.” And it’s true, sometimes you can tell. But sometimes you can’t, and I find it funny that the servers here think they have it all figured out.
I’m one of the only ones who seems to be aware of the fact that we might be serving the rich and the upper middle class, but that doesn’t make us rich or part of the upper middle class. The expensive wine we’re drinking is their wine; the money we’re bringing home is their pocket change. I’m distinctly aware of it, and although I play along with my fellow servers, tasting the wines and talking about the fantastic places I’d like to visit, I’m under no grand illusions. Maybe it’s because of the incredible wealth I see flaunted around me that I’m so aware of it, like the people who come in and ask for “the best bottle of champagne you have,” no matter the price. The restaurant intentionally has a six hundred dollar bottle for just these occasions, because no one’s going to impress their table by ordering “the second best bottle of champagne.” If they did, they’d save themselves four hundred bucks. But it’s their choice. So I pour the expensive bottles and serve the extravagant food and listen to the conversations taking place, but I don’t feel a part of it at all.
I’m not the only one who’s aware of our rank here. Dan, a server who’s been here for four years, is also very conscious of his position. Every night he mutters under his breath while fetching drinks or grabbing a dessert, and he complains back in the kitchen about the incredible unfairness of the whole thing.
“Did you see that lucky bastard at table fifteen,” he says, “see his suit and that fat wallet?” A game a lot of rich people play is to pull out their wallets and take a long time to put them away. “Tell him he can send some of that cash my way.”
Dan’s real problem with it, as I’ve pieced together, is that he thinks he should be rich, so he begrudges those who are. He literally can’t understand why they have money when he doesn’t. He’s good-looking, smart, hard-working, charismatic. Everything that should spell success. He should be waited on, not the other way around.
I tease him one night, when he walks up and tells me that the bitch at my table doesn’t deserve that diamond necklace.
“I’m sure you’ll get one of your own if you work long and hard,” I say, giving him a playful pat on the arm. “It’s the Land of Opportunity, after all.”
My joke sets him off. “What opportunity? I’ve busted my ass my whole life. You saying those rich bastards work harder than me?”
“That’s not what I meant. There’s supposed to be equal opportunity here, though, right? Anyone can make it?”
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