Tomorrow will be marked International Waiters Day in the world, I was happy to inform.
It immediately brings me back to one of my first works, somewhere in my youth.
After a job interview, in which I was asked to point out three positive traits in my character (I mentioned: hardworking, smiling and absorbing), I was hired where the last trait turned out to be extremely useful.
The restaurant, which was located in a well-known place of entertainment in the center of the country and became a dance bar at night, was bustling with life.
I loved the customers - they were sociable and left beautiful tips, from which we made a good living for our age.
I loved the deafening music, and from shift to shift I improved my waitress skills in the maze between the kitchen, the dancers and the tables.
Any tray that reached its destination without crashing on the way was for me a hit stamp.
The owner of the place was quite young and full of himself.
We, the waitresses, knew that whenever he approached our basket of tips, it would end badly.
When ordering a professional to fix something, payment was taken from our tips;
When he wanted to buy cigarettes at a kiosk nearby, it was one of our tips;
And even when a customer returned a dish that was not to his liking - it was deducted from there.
We got mad, but kept quiet.
The boss decides, even if he is not right.
This was my first lesson in the job market.
Thursday night was the night of absorption for us, when we were required to serve the table of his friends - ten men, if you can call them that, who represented the ugly Israeli.
They littered the environment with scraps of food and napkins that would be thrown on the floor as a ritual of humiliation, to see us bend down and pick them up while they whistled at us or made sighs.
Thanks to all of this, and because of the statements that came out of their mouths - about how we look and what they would do to us - we attached the nickname Garbage to them.
Tip they never bothered to leave.
Why pay when you can humiliate for free.
For two months I quietly soaked up this hooligan table, then informed the boss that if his gang did not grab itself by the hands (and not the butt of one of us, as they also did), we would shut down the work.
He exhaled my cigarette smoke and replied angrily, "They are my friends at heart, who are you anyway? If I tell them, they will also **** you one by one. Fly to clean the toilet. It seems to me that you have too much free time For idle conversations, and do not leave me an empty gun on the table. "
I went home, stunned.
The next day I checked in at the competing bar, which opened across the road.
I had respectful negotiations about the attitude towards waitresses and tips, and I got ammunition for the gun - we could move to work there.
I gathered the waitresses for an operational call, at the end of which we unanimously decided that as soon as one of the people close to the boss laid a hand on us - a check was launched.
This moment was not long in coming, with a flick in the butt to one of the waitresses, laughter, whistles, sighs and the procedure of the discarded napkins.
We exchanged glances, all six waitresses on duty, and at that moment we left the place.
This time, we laughed and whistled from release.
That was the moment when I made the decision that I would never again let any boss, or his associates, abuse me like that.
When I looked back, I saw the bunch of garbage running in hysteria with trays and dividing the dishes among the dozens of people because there was no one else to work.
That was my picture of victory.
I just hope he came out a friend in the soul, and not above in their tips either.
Nowadays, every waitress I meet makes me wonder if now, when we are already in the MeToo era, something has indeed changed.
I, for my part, have retired from the profession at the peak and have been careful ever since to always leave a respectable tip.
danieller@israelhayom.co.il