In a corner of the main kitchen the steward turned me over to Bridget, who was to take me here, there, and the other place. By 11.30 A.M., I was back where I started from, only, thanks to aged Bridget and her none-too-sure leadings, I was clad in a white cap and white all-over apron-dress, and had had my lunch. Thereupon the steward escorted me to my own special corner of the world, where, indeed, I was to be lord of all I surveyed—provided my gaze fell not too far afield.
That particular corner was down one short flight of stairs from the main kitchen into a hustling, bustling, small and compact, often crowded, place where were prepared the breakfasts, lunches, and dinners of such folk who cared more for haste and less for style than the patrons of the main dining rooms. Our café fed more persons in a day than the other dining rooms combined. Outside we could seat five hundred at a time, sixty-five of those at marble counters, the rest at small tables. But our kitchen quarters could have been put in one corner of the spacious, airy upstairs main kitchen.
Through the bustle of scurrying and ordering waiters I was led to a small shelved-off compartment. Here I was to earn my fifty dollars a month from 1.30 P.M. to 9 P.M. daily except Sunday, with one-half hour off for supper. I was entitled to eat my breakfast and lunch at the hotel as well.
This first day, I was instructed to watch for two hours the girl I was to relieve at 1.30. Her hours were from 6 in the morning to 1.30, which meant she got the brunt of the hard work—all of the breakfast and most of the lunch rush. To me fell the tail end of the lunch rush—up to about 2.15, and supper or dinner, which only occasionally could be spoken of as “rush” at all. I discovered later that we both got the same pay, although she had to work very much harder, and also she had been at our hotel almost two years, though only nine months at this special pantry job. Before that she had made toast, and toast only, upstairs in the main kitchen.
The first question Mary asked me that Monday morning was, “You Spanish?” No, I wasn't. Mary was a Spanish grass widow. Ten years she had been married, but only five of that time had she lived with her husband. Where was he? Back in Spain. “No good.” She had come on to this country because it was too hard for a woman to make her way in Spain. She spoke little English, but with that little she showed that she was kindly disposed and anxious to help all she could. She herself had a stolid, untidy efficiency about her, and all the while, poor thing, suffered with pains in her stomach.
By the time 1.30 came around I knew what I had to do and could be left to my own devices. To the pantry girl of our café fell various and sundry small jobs. But the end and aim of her life had to be speed.
To the left of my little doorway was a small, deep sink. Next to the sink was a very large ice chest. On the side of the ice chest next the sink hung the four soft-boiled-egg machines—those fascinating contrivances in which one deposited the eggs, set the notch at two, three, four minutes, according to the desires of the hurried guest without, sank the cup-shaped container in the boiling water, and never gave the matter another thought. At the allotted moment the eggs were hoisted as if by magic from out their boilings. Verily are the wonders of civilization manifold! The sink and the protruding ice chest filled the entire left side of my small inclosure. Along the entire right and front was a wide work-shelf. On this shelf at the right stood the electric toasting machine which during busy hours had to be kept going full blast.
“Toast for club!” a waiter sang out as he sped by, and zip! the already partially toasted bread went into the electric oven to be done so crisply and quickly that you could call out to that waiter, “Toast for club” before he could come back and repeat his ominous, “Toast for club!” at you. People who order club sandwiches seem always to be in a special hurry.
In the front corner just next the toaster stood the tray of bread sliced ready to toast, crusts off for dry or buttered toast, crusts on for “club,” very thin slices for “toast Melba.” Directly in front, and next the bread tray, came the tray filled with little piles of graham and milk crackers, seven in a pile. What an amazing number of folk order graham or milk crackers in a café! It seems unbelievable to one who has always looked upon a place furnishing eatables outside a home as a chance to order somewhat indigestible food prepared entirely differently from what any home could accomplish. Yet I know it to be a fact that people seat themselves at a table or a counter in a more or less stylish café and order things like prunes or rhubarb and graham or milk crackers, and perhaps top off, if they forget themselves so far, with a shredded-wheat biscuit.
It is bad enough if a man feels called upon to act that way before 2 P.M. When he puts in an order for such after 6 in the evening—then indeed it is a case for tears. I would get the blues wondering whatever could ail adult humanity that it ordered shredded-wheat biscuits after dark.