The law requires that girls in factories and stores have at least one-half hour off for luncheon. This does not apply to restaurant workers. The “one-meal” girls eat before and after serving, but the majority of the “two-meal” and full-time girls have no time at all for meals. They must eat when they can snatch a moment from their work. There were many complaints of indigestion and loss of appetite from the workers as a result of haste and irregularity in taking their meals. One girl remarked, “You’re glad to grab ’em any way you can round here,” and another said, “It’s a wonder more girls aren’t dead, the way they eat all of a rush. Often the smell of food all the time takes away my appetite so I can’t eat any way.”
A regular time off for meals would be of great benefit to the worker not only in allowing her to eat quietly and comfortably, but in giving her a little rest. In some restaurants after the noon rush is over the girls can sit down and do “side-work,” folding napkins, polishing silver, filling salt-cellars, etc. The greater number of girls, however, have no so-called “idle time.” They must be on their job continuously. In other restaurants the girls work on a “split trick,” that is, they have one or two hours off in the afternoon. This is a very unpopular arrangement. Not only does it keep them out late in the evening, but they cannot use their free time to good advantage. There is little opportunity for recreation or social intercourse during these hours because they come in the morning or afternoon when the girls’ friends are all at work. Nor is there ordinarily time for fresh air and exercise, especially in the case of the kitchen workers. A waitress usually has only to take off her apron to be ready for the street, but the other women have not time to change to street clothes and back again in their free period. They stay in the hot kitchen because no other place is provided.
Up at six, away at 6:30, home at 8 o’clock at night worn out by the wear and tear of twelve hours’ toil, a dress and an apron to be washed and ironed for tomorrow—after a day like this, what spirit or strength is left to a girl for play and the friendly relations that safeguard her from moral danger? It is a significant fact that with few exceptions the restaurant worker is not known to settlements and girls’ clubs. She does not share the group interests and social life open to other working girls. Neither does she make friends with her fellow-workers—the spring and vitality needed to win and establish friendships has been lost under the deadening effect of overwork.
According to Miss Mary Van Kleeck’s estimate in her study of “Working Girls in Evening Schools,” less than one per cent. of those attending were restaurant workers. They simply have not the physical strength for outside activities and interests. Time after time in answer to the question “What do you do in the evening?” came the reply, “Oh, I go right to bed.” One girl, who left the work because of broken health, said, “If I went out in the evening I’d be sick the next day, and the boss would say I couldn’t expect to do good work if I stayed out late at night.”
The report on restaurants of the Chicago Juvenile Protective Association, emphasizes a truth too much ignored when it says: “The entire investigation revealed once more the hideous risks of the excessively fatigued and overworked girl, who is able to obtain the rest and comfort she craves only through illicit channels.”[6]
Restaurant Kitchen Opening on Row of Toilets.
Loaned by the Tenement House Department of the City of New York.