On waiting

Today I saw a tweet about the hotel where I worked weekends as a teenager, and I remarked that the place has changed somewhat. I remember the objectless phrase "waiting on" (waiting on what?) - I never knew whether it was catering industry standard dialect or something more local. I was either washing up, or "in the stillroom" (no stills here!); or "waiting on" or "in black and white". I wasn't "waitressing" - acceptable for me, then, but what did my brother do? (I will always remember the gender neutral Cape Town term, "waitrons" - truly odd to a British ear!) In north America they wait [on] tables but not people; historically in Britain people were waited on; now you might hear of someone "waiting on him", meaning "waiting for him", otherwise these days, people are only waited on "hand and foot".

My first night at the hotel I broke a cocktail glass; I didn't expect to be invited back, but I was. I started off just washing up, which was fine, but the other new staff member, two years younger than me, was waiting on. The tips were shared with the cooks, but not with the stillroom staff - so eventually I went into black and white, with my little pinny, and learnt silver service. Got to know the regulars, especially Roger the solicitor from Appleby, who my dad later performed with in Appleby Players when my parents moved from village to town, and who always tipped fivers (in the 1980s, to a teenager - fivers!). Learnt how to serve the stilton with the port poured in (never seen it since) and just how much cheese my brother and I could eat whilst tidying the cheeseboards away at the end of the night; how to flame Sambuca, though I've never drunk it before or since; the phrase "would you like to" used as an imperative by the cooks ("would you like to wash those huge white sauce pots?" - "well, now you come to mention it..."); about the indiscretions of the hotelier and the au pair; and that although it's the busiest night of the year, New Year's Eve isn't a bank holiday, so double time doesn't kick in until midnight.

I may still have the menu from my last shift before leaving for university...