Why Men Become Waiters.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 2717, 4 February 1892, Page 4

Why Men Become Waiters.

During the season of City dinners, every morning at nine o’clock outside the various hotels and the offices of the caterers curious crowds assemble. Among them may be highly respectable men, and sometimes messengers in Government offices, banks, and institutions enter the ranks to compete with the men who have no regular income, for there are frequently to be seen poor fellows with hardly a coat to their back or shoe to their feet. Inquiry into their antecedents would show that they have had many ups and downs in life, and that drink has frequently been the cause of their downfall. Some of them have filled situations in the best of family houses, and, having lost their characters, are compelled to make a precarious livelihood by waiting. The foreign candidates for work, too have had a discreditable past, and in their ranks, it is said, may be discovered many a political plotter who has fled from his native country to take refuge in England, whilst men who have transgressed the law, and are sought by the police, likewise attempt to conceal themselves, and to evade pursuit, by taking up the life of a waiter Perhaps people would not relish it if they were aware that possibly a blood-stained hand was attending to their creature comforts at table, or that the quiet man who so obsequiously obeyed their orders was in private life in his own country a firebrand of anarchy, who had merely retired from the campaign for a while. The foregoing is, perhaps, the romance, but none the less realistic, view of the subject. Most foreign waiters, however, come to this country in the first instance to acquire the English language, with the fi"ed intention of returning home to Brussels, the Ardennes, the Rhine, the German Spas, Switzerland, the Riviera, or Italy, to which the British and American tourist annually resorts, with plenty os money to spend in tips, and with a propensity to reward the man liberally who can speak a little English and make things easy. Unfortunately, as one Swiss waiter said, when the simple fellows taste the pleasures of Eondon life, they waste their earnings, and are unable to provide for their journey home, and thus continuing to “ eat up their money ” they are compelled to remain in England. On the other hand, there are foreign waiters having just mastered the rudiments of English, are veritable birds of passage, and whatever the season of the year, wherever the sun shines most and holiday-makers congregate, there they will be found, unless they vary their experience by taking a courier’s or valet’s place for a while. These men may be termed the cosmopolitan class, and they do not belong to the same category as the stay-at-home waiters or those who take up a settled habitat in London. There are quite 2,000 Italians, for instance, in the metropolis who serve in the Italian cafes and restaurants. In some of these they have to pay for the privilege, and in others they receive nothing in direct wages, but they are fed at the cost of the proprietor and recoup themselves in the tips. A smart man in a wellfrequented street earns about four pounds a week, and a provident waiter has been known to keep in touch with his less careful customers by discharging their dinner bills for them at the desk, and holding over the accounts until such time as they are in receipt of ready cash. Cassell's Saturday Journal.