New dawn of the dumb waiter
Friday, June 5. 2009
Once thought to be in danger of extinction, the waiter's most esoteric skill has been spotted in use in a seaside restaurant
Picture this scene. I'm sitting in a restaurant in the benighted, south coast necropolis I'm forced to call my home town. I am treating the loose confederation of dysfunctional sociopaths I begrudgingly call my family to a meal. The restaurant has few pretensions save a jaunty, nautical theme and a menu which runs deep to frying and is untroubled by foams. The meal, criss-crossed with the kind of catastrophically unpredictable stresses unseen since the Tacoma Narrows bridge disaster draws to an uncomfortable close and I move to attract the attention of the waiter with that faint-smile-and-eyebrow business that has served me in the finest restaurants in the world.
As my eyes seek his to communicate that age-old message - I wish to complete our transaction, to give you my money and leave - his glazzies swivel like turrets in his head, ranging randomly around the dreary room. At first I'm confused. Some sort of seizure? Has someone, without warning, released a bat? And then I suddenly twig … a surge of recognition tinged with nostalgia. The bastard is trying to give me waiter's eye. I haven't seen that in a commercial dining operation since 1986.
You may have experienced waiter's eye yourself, if you're old enough. It probably reached the level of an artform in the UK around 1953, while menu requests could be refused because of rationing and two world wars had made deference uncomfortable to those forced into service roles. The trick was to avoid the customer's eye until they felt that they had no power to command you. At which point you could drift to the table as if it had been your own idea and be as rude as you could to them without being hit.
I think it was TE Lawrence in The Mint, his record of life as an Air Force ranker, that best explained the offence of dumb insolence. Military codes defined hundreds of ways one could be punishably insubordinate, but found it impossible to deal with a man who just stood, silently radiating resentment. With the invention of dumb insolence, it was finally possible to have him strapped to a gun carriage and flogged for it.
Dumb insolence is easy. Waiter's eye is a trade skill and I've worked with some real pros; people who could plausibly ignore you if you were trapped together for eight months in a space capsule. In Chicago I once dated a waitress who was so good at it she wouldn't catch your eye during intercourse.
But all floor staff bow in honour to the master, Bruno "yeux mort" LeClerc, a waiter at Les Deux Magots who on a dark day in that bleak November of '49, over a period of eight and a half hours, actually ignored an American tourist to death. Sure, he was a manic depressive existentialist with a debilitating astigmatism, but you can't let innate advantage detract from the man's genius. We are not worthy to fold his napkins.
To really have what it takes you need steely, ninja-like self-control, a perfectly-tuned sixth sense for punter tolerances and, most important of all, the ability to always appear to have something more important to look at. That's the trade secret. Find something to fix your eyes on - it doesn't matter if it's the back of that guy's toupee or the wen on his date's upper lip - and look engaged.
It does my heart good to watch it done well, by a pro. It gives me a great welling of nostalgia for the generations of waiting staff who've perfected it. I might not have minded this waiter's eye but as he stood there, slack-jawed and staring like freshly stunned tuna, I could see he just didn't have the focus, the attitude, the professionalism. I wanted to jump up and shake him. If you're going to do it, kid - do it right.
Have you experienced waiter's eye, up close and personal? Ever feel the need to shake the staff out of their stupor?
