The talk got around to the strike at the Hotel McAlpin of a few years ago. It was for more pay. The strike was lost. I asked why. “Shure, they deserved to lose it. Nobody hung together.”
We discussed domestic service. Every day at that hotel I wondered why any girl took work in a private home if she could possibly get a hotel job. Here was what could be considered by comparison with other jobs, good pay, plus three nourishing meals a day, decent hours, and before and after those hours freedom. In many cases, also, it meant a place to sleep. There was a chance for talk and companionship with one's kind during the day. Every chance I got I asked a girl if she liked working in a private home, or would change her hotel job if she got a chance. The only person who was not loud in decrying private service was Minnie during this special Thursday lunch. But Minnie was so sore on the world that day. I do believe she would have objected to the Virgin Mary, had the subject come up. Minnie had worked years in private families and only six years in hotels. She wished she'd never seen the inside of a hotel.
That same night at the supper table the subject came up again before an entirely different crowd. Three at the table had tried domestic service. Never again! Why? Always the answer was the same. “Aw, it's the feeling of freedom ya never get there, and ya do get it in a hotel.” One sweet gray-haired woman told of how she had worked some years as cook in a swell family where they kept lots of servants. She got grand wages, and naïvely she added, you get a chance to make lots on the side, o' course. I asked her if she meant tips from guests. Oh no! She meant what you made off tradespeople. Don't you see, if you got the butcher bill up so high, you got so much off the butcher, and the same with the grocer and the rest. She had a sister not cooking long who made over one hundred dollars a month, counting what she got off tradespeople. It is a perfectly accepted way of doing, mentioned with no concern.
But on the whole, that supper table agreed that domestic service was a good deal like matrimony. If you got a good family, all right; but how many good families were there in the world? One woman spoke of working where they'd made a door mat of her. Barely did she have food enough to eat. There were four in the family. When they had chops the lady of the house ordered just four, which meant she who cooked the chops got none.
After lunch this full Thursday I rushed to assist Mary. I loved going down the stairs into our hot scurry of excitement. Indeed, it was seeing behind the scenes. And always the friendly nods from everyone, even though the waiters especially looked ready to expire in pools of perspiration. At Monsieur Le Bon Chef's counter some sticky waiter had ordered a roast-beef sandwich. The heat had made him skeptical. “Call that beef?” The waiter next him glared at him with a chuckle. “An' must we then always lead in the cow for you to see?” A large Irishman breezed up to my Bon Chef. “Two beef à la modes. Make it snappy, chief. Party's in a hurry. Has to catch the five-thirty train”—this at one o'clock. Everyone good-natured, and the perspiration literally rolling off them.
Most of the waiters were Irish. One of them was a regular dude—such immaculateness never was. He was the funny man of the place, and showed off for my special benefit, for I made no bones of the fact that he amused me highly. He was a very chippy-looking waiter—pug nose, long upper lip. When he ordered ice coffee he sneaked up on the Greek à la Bill Hart, ready to pull a gun on him. He had two names at his disposal and used one or the other with every order, no matter who the chef was. In a very deep tone of voice, it was either, “James, custard pie!” or, “Dinsmore, one veal cutlet.” But to me it was always: “Ah there, little one! Toast, I say toast. Dry, little one. Ah yes! There be them who out of force of habit inflicted upon them take even their toast dry. You get me, little one?”
He was especially immaculate this Thursday. I guessed he must be taking at least three ladies out that evening. He looked at me out of the corner of his eyes. “Three, little one, this hot night? Winter time, yes, a man can stand a crowd about him, but not to-night. No. To-night, little one, I take but one lady. It allows for more circulation of air. And you will be that One?”
The Greek this hot Thursday became especially friendly. He twirled his heavy black mustache and carried on an animated broken-English conversation most of the afternoon. Incidentally, he sent over one ice coffee with thick cream and two frosted chocolates.
The little Spaniard next to him, he who served pies and ice cream and more amazing desserts—he, too, became very friendly. There was nothing the least fresh about the little Spaniard. He mostly leaned on his counter, in moments of lull in trade, and when I so much as looked his way, he sighed heavily. Finally he made bold to converse. I learned that he had been two years in this country, eight months at his present job. When I asked him how he spent his off time, he replied in his very broken English that he knew nobody and went nowhere. “It is no pleasure to go alone.” He rooms with an American family on the East Side. They are very nice. For some years he had been in the printing trade in South America; there was something to a job like that. But in New York he did not know enough English to be a printer, and so, somehow, he found himself dishing pies and ice cream at our hotel.
Later on that day he asked me, “Why are you so happy?”