So I was killing time waiting for my car to be finished from some maintenance.

The vehicle's display had been yelling at me for various reasons for a few weeks now, and I figured I should probably take it to an actual dealership that specializes in the make of car which I drive. As it turns out, the car just needed the tires rotated, the coolant filled, and the display reset. $20, roughly, because warranty covered the rest. How's that for three shades of awesome?

Anyway, coming back from that little tangent - the manner in which I was killing time was breakfast. I had a book with me, so it lasted me about an hour, including the walk to and from the dealership.

The book, by the way, is called Bookmark Now. I can't remember the name of the editor, but it's a great collection of essays about being immersed in a world of novels and story-writing when some signs point to the idea that people just aren't reading anymore. Admittedly, Rolling Stone does only print one in-depth article per issue, and it's shorter than what their in-depth articles used to be, but people still read it. And novels are still getting sold... even though some of the books that get popular lack anything except the capability to make those that care more about catharsis than character development buy them. Quite useful, considering NaNoWriMo is in 25 days (if you don't count today as part of the total).

And back from tangent number two (I'm probably going to go off on another tangent in a little while, just to warn you), the place I went to eat was a franchise of a restaurant chain which I've been frequenting, at least since July. This establishment was the third such franchise, and something very odd struck me - the staffs had almost the exact same age layout. No, really - the person at the front was always younger, early-to-mid twenties, or at least appeared to be in that general age range. The servers, on the other hand, were always mid-thirties, and have almost invariably been women. Some had wedding bands, some didn't, so that didn't seem to mean much as far as whether or not they got the job.

As I realized that the staff had the same demographics in the other two locations, I started wondering - has this restaurant chain tried so much to get a certain feel that they've convinced everybody running a franchise to hire certain people for these specific jobs? And if not - this is a really large coincidence. Let's just say for a moment that you've got a bunch of younger people that are just looking for a place to work - they get put up front, because they don't have to continually deal with customers, they just say hello. Then you take the more experienced people and toss them in as servers, because they've had enough time dealing with people just wanting to sit down that they figure, "Okay, now they're ready to handle people that just want to eat." And finally... actually, I have no idea what the finally is.

What I want to know is why this particular restaurant chain somehow manages to attract women approaching forty to work jobs as servers, when chances are said women can probably earn more elsewhere, simply because of experience. I'm not quite sure that the employment is totally satisfying - then again, neither is my job, although I LOVE the benefits, and there are more days than not where I do enjoy it - but there must be something that's keeping them there. I haven't the daftest idea what it might be - maybe one woman's divorced, and the husband got the kids, so she has to pay alimony. Maybe another is moonlighting at a jazz club, but it's not enough to pay the bills, so she does this and hopes for a lot of good tips. Maybe another just wants to get out of the house, even though her husband's rich as anything - but there must be something.

Of course, when you're ruminating over that sort of thing while eating pancakes and poached eggs (not together, obviously, but they were in the same meal), it doesn't allow for the most philosophical of conclusions.

Personally, I think it would be nice if they're all actually best friends in a secret women's society that gets together and makes sure that the world's supply of pancake batter never gets contaminated by a host of things that would out-do any of the dastardly plans that villains in James Bond books and movies concoct.

Tags: breakfast, cars, waitresses
Current Mood: contemplative