At the coolest lounge terrace, the fastest gas station cafeteria, the city’s most refined restaurant, and the busiest beach bar, waiters have rowed to the limit of their strength this summer. I haven’t seen every site, but I’ve seen it everywhere.
Before the season started, hoteliers complained that there were no waiters (which makes you feel young despite all the evidence) because the youngsters didn’t lose their summer and preferred to party rather than work. Hoteliers who seized the opportunity so quickly did not offer jobs to the elderly, although there were waiters hanging their coats when they reached retirement age years ago. Now the waiters are teenagers who often change faces and compete.
The hotelier transfers the entire fee from the waiter to the consumer and this should not be the case. The customer pays the trainee waiter the same wage as a veteran who knows and can serve that beverage well. Coffee is ordered from a company that serves it, and that cup goes for rent, overhead, machinery, taxes, and a share of bar and table service.
The minimum paid in the coffee bar is roasted and ground coffee beans, water, sugar and timely delivery. We may complain about the roadside coffees that go through the mouth like a black teapot and reach the stomach like a knife, but what seems more expensive to us in that place where we sip and chew with pleasure is the tension conveyed by a waiter. He feels like a one-armed octopus with two arms that doesn’t reach the end of the bar and neither hears nor sees when he steps between tables. That waiter has everything you could ask for from a waiter except another waiter. A good menu served at a bad pace makes a meal like this. A tila presented uneasy becomes “Red Bull”. What was missing from the waiter could be attributed to the owner who benefited more from the sweat of the service than the oil you ate and the liquid you drank.