The president, elected representative from the starch room, called the meeting to order from his position at the head of the table in the Village Club House. Every member of the Board shaves and puts on his Sunday clothes, which includes a white collar, for the Board meeting. It is no free show, either. They are handed out two dollars apiece for attending, at the end of the meeting, the same idea as if it were Wall Street. The secretary reads the minutes of the Board of Management. (“The Board of Management was set up by the Board of Directors in July, 1919, as a result of a request from the Board of Operatives for more than merely 'advisory' power which the Board of Operatives then enjoyed in reference to matters of mill management, wages, working conditions, etc. The Board of Management consists of six members, three of whom are the treasurer, the New York agent, and the local manager, and three of whom are elected by the Board of Operatives from their number.... The Board of Management is authorized to settle and adjust such matters of mill management as may arise....”) The Companystatement, up to March 31, 1921, was read. There followed a report from the Housing Committee—first a financial statement. Then it seemed somebody wanted to put somebody else out of a house, and there were many complications indeed arising therefrom, which took much discussion from everyone and bitter words. It looked as if it would have to be taken to court. The conclusion seemed to be that the Board felt that its executive secretary, chosen by the management, though paid out of the common funds, had exceeded his authority in making statements to tenants. We girls rather shivered at the acrimony of the discussion. Had they been lady board members having such a row, half of them would have been in tears. Next, old Mrs. Owens, who shook sheets behind me, wanted to buy a certain house on a certain avenue—company house, of course. Third, one Mr. Jones on Academy Street wants us to paper his kitchen—he will supply the paper. And there followed other items regarding paint for this tenant, new floor for that, should an old company boarding house be remodeled for a new club house or an apartment house; it was decided to postpone roofing a long row of old company houses, etc.
The operative from the folding and packing room was chairman of the Housing Committee, a strong union enthusiast. The representative from the mechanical department reported for the Recreation and Education Committee; all the night school classes had closed, with appropriate final exercises, for the season: the children's playground would beready for use July 1st. The man from the “gray” room and singe house reported for the Working Conditions Committee. Something about watchmen and a drinking fountain, and wheels and boxes in the starch room; washing facilities for shovelers; benches and back stairs.
The Finance Committee reported a deficit on the mechanical and electrical smoker. Much discussion as to why a deficit and who ought to pay it, and what precedent were they setting, and all and all, but it was ordered paid—this time. Webster's bills were too high for papering and painting company houses. He was a good worker, his plaster and his paper stuck where they belonged, which hadn't been the rule before. But it was decided he was too costly even so, and they were going back to the company paperers—perhaps their work would stick better next time. A report from the Board of Directors was discussed and voted upon.... The minutes of the Board of Operatives were posted all through the mill. Did anyone read them? If so, or if not so, should the Board of Management minutes also be posted? It was voted to postpone posting such minutes, though they were open to any operative, as in the past.
Under Old Business was a long discussion on health benefits and old-age pensions. For some months now the bleachery has been concerned on the subject of old-age pensions. Health benefits have been in operation for some time. The question was, should they pay the second week for accident cases, until the state started its payments the third week?
Under New Business the resignation of the editors ofBleachery Lifewas read and accepted. Acrimonious discussion as to the running of theBleachery Life. Again we girls shivered. It was announced a certain rich man who recently died had left the Village Club House five hundred dollars—better write no letter of thanks until they got the money. Should the new handbook be printed by union labor at considerably greater expense, or by an open shop? Unanimously voted by union labor. More health-benefit discussions under New Business. It was voted to increase the Board of Management by two additional members—one operative, one from the employing side. Election then and there by a secret ballot. The operative from the “gray” room and singe house was elected over the man from the office force by two votes. Some further housing discussions, and at 11.15P.M.the meeting adjourned.
“Say, I'm for coming every time.” Perhaps we three girls will have started the style of outside attendance at the meetings.
Whether a wider participation of operatives, a deeper understanding of Industrial Democracy and the Partnership Plan, develops or not, certainly they are a long step on the way to some sort of permeation of interest. For the next morning early, my last morning, as I started work, I heard toothless old Mrs. Holley call over to aged Mrs. Owens, whose husband even these days is never sober: “Hi, Mrs. Owens, what do ye know habout hit! Hain't itgrand we got out over five million five hundred thousand yards last month?”
“I say it's grand,” grinned Mrs. Owens. “More 'n a million over what we done month before.”
“Hi say—over fifteen million the last three months. Hi say we're some bleachery, that's whathisay!”
Perhaps, more strictly speaking, instead of working with the working woman, it was working with the working man. Hotel work is decidedly co-educational! Except, indeed, for chambermaids and laundry workers, where the traditionally female fields of bed-making and washing have not been usurped by the male. Even they, those female chambermaids and launderers, see more or less of working menfolk during the day. So it might be thought then that hotel work offers an ideal field for the growth of such normal intercourse between the sexes as leads to happy matrimony. No need to depend on dance halls or the Subway to pick up a “fella.” No need for external administrations from wholesome social workers whose aim is to enable the working man or woman to see something of the opposite sex.
Yet forever are there flies in ointments. Flossie was one of the salad girls in the main kitchen. Flossie was Irish, young, most of her teeth gone. Her sister had worked at our hotel two years earlier, then had sent for Flossie to come from Ireland. The sister was now married.
Innocently, interestedly, I asked, “To a man she knew here at the hotel?”
Flossie cast a withering eye upon me. “The good Lord save us! I should say not! And what decent girl would ever be marryin' the likes of a man who worked around a hotel? She couldn't do much worse! Just steer clear of hotel men, I'm tellin' ya. They're altogether too wise to be safe for any girl.”
We were eating supper. The table of eight all nodded assent.
Too wise or not too wise—at least there is a—cordiality—a predisposition toward affection on the part of male hotel workers which tends to make one's outside male associates seem fearfully formal, if not stiffly antagonistic. If one grows accustomed to being called “Sweetheart,” “Darling” on first sight, ending in the evening by the time-clock man's greeting of, “Here comes my little bunch of love!”—is it not plain that outside in the cruel world such words as a mere “How-do-you-do” or “Good morning” seem cold indeed?
What happens when a girl works three years in this affectionate atmosphere and then marries a plumber who hollers merely “say” at her?
Behind the scenes in a hotel—what is it all about? To find that out I poked around till the employment-office entrance of one of New York's biggest and newest hotels was discovered. There had been no “ad.” in the Sunday paper which would give a hint that any hotel needed additional help. We took our chances.Some twenty men waited in a little hallway, two women inside the little office. One of the women weighed at least two hundred and fifty, the other not a pound over ninety. Both could have been grandmothers, both wanted chamber work. The employment man spied me.
“What do you want?”
“A job.”
“What kind of a job?”
“Anything but bein' chambermaid.”
“What experience have you had in hotel work?”
“None, but lots in private homes. I'd like a job around the kitchen some place.”
“Ever try pantry work?”
“Not in a hotel, but lots in private families. I can do that swell!” (What pantry work meant I hadn't the least idea—thought perhaps washing glasses and silverware.)
He put on his coat and hat and dashed upstairs. He always put on his coatandhat to go upstairs. In a few moments he dashed hurriedly back, followed by another man whose teeth were all worn down in the front. I learned later that he was an important steward.
He asked me all over again all the questions the first man had asked, and many more. He was in despair and impatient when he found I had not a single letter of recommendation from a single private family I had worked for. I could have written myself an excellent one in a few moments. Could I bring a letter back later in the day?
“Can you fix salads?”
“Sure!”
“You think you could do the job?”
“Sure!”
“Well, you look as if you could. Never mind the letter, but get one to have by you—comes in handy any job you want. Now about pay—I can't pay you what you been used to getting, at least not first month.” (I'd mentioned nothing as to wages.) “Second month maybe more. First month all I can pay you is fifty and your meals. That all right?”
As usual, my joy at landing a job was such that any old pay was acceptable.
“Be back in two hours.”
Just then the employment man called out to the hall filled with waiting men, “No jobs for any men this morning.” I don't know what became of the old women.
I was back before my two hours were up, so anxious to begin. The employment man put on his hat and coat and dashed upstairs after my steward. Just incidentally, speaking of hats and coats, it can be mentioned that all this was in the middle of one of the hottest summers New York ever knew.
The steward led the way up one flight of iron stairs and into the main kitchen. Wasn't I all eyes to see what was what! If anyone is looking for a bit of muck-raking about the hinterland of restaurants, let him not bother to read farther. Nothing could have been cleaner than the kitchen conditions in our hotel. And orders up and down the line wereto servenothingwhich was not absolutely as it should be.
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 11.30A.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 1.30P.M.to 9P.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 twohours 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 icechest. 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 furnishingeatables 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 2P.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.
Just above the counter holding the bread and crackers was the counter on which were placed the filled orders for the waiters to whisk away. It was but a step from there to my ice box. The orders it was my business to fill were for blackberries, blueberries, prunes, sliced oranges, rhubarb, grapefruit, whole oranges, apples, sliced peaches and bananas, muskmelons, and four kinds of cheese. These pretty well filled the upper half of the ice chest, together with the finished salads I kept ahead, say three of each, lettuce and tomato, hearts of lettuce, plain lettuce, and sliced tomatoes.
In the lower half stood the pitchers of orange and grape juice, jams and jellies for omelettes to be made down the line, olives, celery, lettuce, cucumbers, a small tub of oranges and a large bowl of sliced lemons. The lemons, lemons, lemons I had daily toslice to complete the ice-tea orders! The next pantry-girl job I fill will be in winter when there is no demand for ice tea. I had also to keep on hand a bowl of American cheese cut the proper size to accompany pie, and together with toast and soft-boiled eggs and crackers and a crock of French dressing set in ice. Such was my kingdom, and I ruled it alone.
During slack hours it was easy, too easy. In rush hours you had to keep your head. Six waiters might breeze by in a line not one second apart, each calling an order, “Half a cantaloupe!” “Two orders of buttered toast!” “Combination salad!” (that meant romaine and lettuce leaves, shredded celery, sliced cucumbers, quartered tomatoes, green pepper, watercress, which always had to be made up fresh); “Sliced peaches!” (they could never be sliced in advance); “One order orange juice!” “Toast for club!” then how one's fingers sped!
The wonder of it was no one ever seemed to lose his patience or his temper. That is, nobody out our way. Maybe in the café there was some millionaire hastily en route to a game of golf who cursed the universe in general and the clumsy fingers of some immigrant pantry girl in particular. (Not so fearfully clumsy either.)
Between 2 and 2.30 the rush subsided, and that first day I caught my breath and took time to note the lay of the land.
My compartment came first, directly next the dishes. Next me was a beautiful chef with his whitecap set on at just the chef angle. He was an artist, with a youngster about fifteen as his assistant. Some day that youngster will be a more beautiful chef than his master and more of an artist. His master, I found out in my slack hours that first afternoon, was French, with little English at his command, though six years in this country. I know less French than he does English, but we got to be good friends over the low partition which separated us. There was nothing at all fresh or affectionate about that French chef. I showed my gratitude for that by coming over in the afternoon and helping him slice hot potatoes for potato salad while my floor got washed. Every day I made him a bow and said, “Bon jour, Monsieur le Bon Chef,” which may be no French at all. And every day he made me a bow back and said, “Bon jour” something or other, which I could tell was nice and respectful, but—I can't write it down. Monsieur Le Bon Chef made splendid cold works of art in jellies, and salads which belonged to another realm than my poor tomatoes and lettuce. Also, he and his assistant—the assistant was Spanish—made wonder sandwiches. They served jellied soups from their counter. Poor humble me would fill “One order graham crackers, little one!” But to Monsieur Le Bon Chef it would be “Two Cream of Cantaloupes!” “One chicken salad!” “One (our hotel) Plate!” (What a creation of a little of everything that was!) Monsieur Le Bon Chef taught me some tricks of the trade, but this is no treatise on domestic science.
I will tell you about Monsieur Le Bon Chef, though by no means did I learn this all my first afternoon. I only picked up a little here and there, now and then. He came to this country a French immigrant from near Toulouse six or so years ago, his heart full of dreams as to the opportunities in America. Likely as not we might now have to add that, after many searchings, he landed a job peeling potatoes at fifteen dollars a month. Monsieur Le Bon Chef was no Bon Chef at all when he landed—knew none of the tricks of “chefness” to speak of. His first day in America he sought out an employment office. Not a word of English could he speak. While the employment agent was just about to shake his head and say, “Nothing to-day,” a friend, or at least a countryman, dashed up. “I have a job for you,” said the countryman, and he led my Bon Chef to New York's most aristocratic hotel. Monsieur Le Bon Chef could not know there was a cooks' strike on. Down to the kitchen they led him, and for some weeks he drew ten dollars a day wages and his room and board right there at the hotel. To fall from Toulouse into a ten-dollar-a-day job! And when one knew scarce more than how to boil potatoes!
Of course, when the strike was over, there were no such wages paid as ten dollars a day. Nothing like that was he earning these six years later when he could make the beauteous works of art in jelly. I asked him if he liked his work. He shrugged his shoulders and brushed one side of his rather bristly blond mustache. “Na—no like so much—nothing in itbut the moaney—make good moaney.” He shrugged his shoulders again and brushed up the other side of his mustache. “No good work just for tha moaney.” You see he really is an artist. He was my quiet, nice friend, Monsieur Le Bon Chef. Indeed, one night he gave me a wondrously made empty cigar box with a little lock to it. “Ooh La-la!” I cried, and made a very deep bow, and said in what I'm sure was correct French—because Monsieur Le Bon Chef said it was—“Thank you very much!”
So then, all there was on our side of the kitchen was my little compartment and the not quite so little compartment of Monsieur Le Bon Chef, whose confines reached around the corner a bit. Around that corner and back a little way were two fat Porto-Rican women who washed glasses and spoke no English. Beyond them, at the right of the stairs going up to the main kitchen, were clean dishes. They came on dumb-waiters from some place either above or below.
At the left of the stairs were some five chefs of as many nationalities—Italian, Spanish, South American, French, Austrian, who filled hot orders, frying and broiling and roasting. Around the corner and opposite the Bon Chef and me were first the two cashiers, then my special friends, the Spanish dessert man and the Greek coffee and tea man. That is, they were the main occupants of their long compartment, but at the time of lunch rush at least six men worked there. Counting the chore persons of various sorts and not counting waiters, we had some thirty-eightworking in or for our café—all men but the two fat Porto-Rican glass washers and me.
Bridget, the dear old soul, came down that first afternoon to see how I was getting along. I had cleaned up spick and span after the Spanish woman—and a mess she always managed to leave. The water was out of the egg-boiling machine and that all polished; the heat turned off in the toasting machine and that wiped off; lemons sliced; celery “Julietted”; and I was peeling a tubful of oranges—in the way the steward had showed me—to be sliced by Spanish Mary for breakfast next morning.
“I'm sure gettin' along swell,” I told Bridget.
“God bless ye,” said my dear old guide, and picked her way upstairs again.
It was plain to see that down our way everybody's work eased up between 3.30 and 5. Then everyone visited about, exchanged newspapers, gossiped over counters. We changed stewards at three. Kelly, the easy-going, jovial (except at times) Irishman, took himself off, and a narrow-shouldered, small, pernickety German Jew came on for the rest of my time. When we closed up at nine he went to some other part of the hotel and stewarded.
My first afternoon Schmitz sauntered about to see what he could find out. Where did I live, what did I do evenings, what time did I get up mornings, what did I do Sundays? One question mark was Schmitz. One thing only he did not ask me, because he knew that. He always could tell what nationality a person was just by looking at him. So? Yes, andhe knew first thing what nationality I was. So? Yes, I was a Turk. But the truth of it was that at the hotel I was part Irish and part French and part Portuguese, but all I could talk was the Irish because my parents had both died while I was very young. Another day, my Greek friend, the coffee man, said he was sure there was a little Greek in me; and an Austrian waiter guessed right away I was a bit Austrian; and every Spaniard in the kitchen—and the hotel was full of them—started by talking a mile-a-minute Spanish at me. So a cosmopolitan, nondescript, melting-pot face is an asset in the labor world in our fair land—all nationalities feel friendly because they think you are a countryman. But a Turk—that stretched boundaries a bit.
For every question Schmitz asked me I asked him one back. His wife and daughter, sixteen, were in France for three months, visiting the wife's parents. As Schmitz's pernicketyness became during the next days more and more impossible to ignore, I solaced my harassed feelings with the thought of how much it must mean to Mrs. Schmitz to be away from Mr. Schmitz and his temperament and disposition for three blessed months. Perhaps the daughter, sixteen, had spoken of that phase of the trip to Mrs. Schmitz. Mrs. Schmitz, being a dutiful wife who has stood Mr. Schmitz at least, we surmise, some seventeen years, replied to such comments of her sixteen-year-old daughter, “Hush, Freda!”
At five minutes to five Schmitz graciously told me I might go up to my supper, though the law in thestatute books stood five. Everybody upstairs in the main kitchen, as I made my way to the service elevator, spoke kindly and asked in the accents of at least ten different nationalities how I liked my job. Hotel folk, male and female, are indeed a friendly lot.
The dining room for the help is on the ballroom floor, which is a short flight of steps above the third. It is the third floor which is called the service floor, where our lockers are, and the chambermaids' sleeping quarters, and the recreation room.
There are, it seems, class distinctions among hotel help. The chefs eat in a dining room of their own. Then, apparently next in line, came our dining room. I, as pantry girl, ranked a “second officer.” We had round tables seating from eight to ten at a table, table cloths and cafeteria style of getting one's food. The chefs were waited upon. In our dining room ate the bell boys, parlor maids, laundry workers, seamstresses, housekeepers, hotel guards and police, the employment man, pantry girls—a bit of everything. To reach our dining room we had to pass through the large room where the chambermaids ate. They had long bare tables, no cloths, and sat at benches without backs.
As to food, our dining room but reflected the state of mind any and every hotel dining room reflects, from the most begilded and bemirrored down. Some thought the food good, some thought it awful, some thought nothing about it at all, but just sat and ate. One thing at least was certain—there was enough.For dinner there was always soup, two kinds of meat, potatoes, vegetables, dessert, ice tea, milk, or coffee. For supper there was soup again, meat or fish, potatoes, a salad, and dessert, and the same variety of drinkables to choose from. Once I was late at lunch and ate with the help's help. The woman who dished up the vegetables was in a fearful humor that day. People had been complaining about the food. “They make me sick!” she grunted. “They jus' oughta try the —— Hotel. I worked in their help's dinin' room for four years and we hardly ever seen a piece of meat, and as for eggs—I'm tellin' ya a girl was lucky if she seen a egg them four years.”
The people in our dining room were like the people in every dining room: some were sociable and talked to their neighbors, some were not sociable at all. There was no regular way of seating. Some meals you found yourself at a table where all was laughter and conversation. The next meal, among the same number of people, not one word would be spoken. “Pass the salt” would grow to sound warm and chummy.
Half an hour was the time allowed everyone for meals. With a friendly crowd at the table that half hour flew. Otherwise, there was no way of using up half an hour just eating. And then what?
After a couple of days, some one mentioned the recreation room. Indeed, what's in a name? Chairs were there, two or three settees, a piano, a victrola, a Christy picture, a map of South America, the dying soldier's prayer, and three different sad and coloredpictures of Christ. Under one of these was pinned a slip of paper, and in homemade printing the worthy admonition:
“No cursing no stealing when tempted look on his kindly face.”
There were all these things, but no girls. Once in a while a forlorn bunch of age would sit humped in a chair, now and then a victrola record sang forth its worn contents, twice the piano was heard. After some ten days my large fat friend from the help's pantry informed me that she and I weren't supposed to be there—the recreation room was only for chambermaids and like as not any day we'd find the door locked. Sure enough, my last day at the hotel I sneaked around in the middle of the afternoon, as usual, to see what gossip I could pick up, and the door was locked. But I made the recreation room pay for itself as far as I was concerned. Every day I managed to pick up choice morsels of gossip there that was grist to my mill.
After my first supper I could find nothing to do or no one to talk to, so back I went to work—feeling a good deal like teacher's pet. About four o'clock it was my business to tell Schmitz what supplies we were out of and what and how much we'd need for supper. When I got back from supper there were always trays of food to be put in the ice chest, salads to be fixed, blackberries to dish out, celery to wash, and the like. By the time that was done supper was on in our café. That is, for some it was supper; for others, judging by the looks of the trays which passed hurriedly bymy compartment, stopping only long enough for sliced lemon for the ice tea, it was surely dinner. Dinnerde luxenow and then! Such delectable dishes! How did anybody ever know their names enough to order them?
From 6 to 7.30 was the height of the supper rush. What a variable thing our patrons made of it! Some evenings there would be a regular run on celery salads, then for four nights not a single order. Camembert cheese would reign supreme three nights in succession—not another order for the rest of the week. Sometimes it seemed as if the whole of creation sat without, panting for sliced tomatoes. The next night stocked up in advance so as to keep no one waiting—not a human being looked at a tomato.
At eight o'clock only stragglers remained to be fed, and my job was to clear out the ice chest of all but two of each dish, send it upstairs to the main kitchen, and then start scrubbing house. Schmitz let it be known that one of the failings of her whose place I was now filling, the one who was asked to leave the Friday night before the Monday morning I appeared, was that she was not clean enough. At first, a year and a half ago, she was cleanly and upright—that is, he spoke of such uprightness as invariably follows cleanliness. But as time wore on her habits of cleanliness wore off, and there were undoubtedly corners in the ice box where her waning-in-enthusiasm fingers failed to reach. But on a night when the New York thermometer ranges up toward the nineties it is a pure and unadulterated joy to laborinside an ice box. I scrubbed and rinsed and wiped until Schmitz almost looked approving. Only it was congenital with Schmitz that he never really showed approval of anything or anybody. Schmitz was the kind (poor Mrs. Schmitz with her three months only of freedom) who always had to change everything just a little. There would echo down the line an order, “One Swiss cheese, little one” (that referred to me, not the cheese). Schmitz would stroll over from where he was trying to keep busy watching everyone at once, enter the very confines of my compartment, and stand over me while I sliced that Swiss cheese. It was always either too big, in which case he took the knife from my hands and sliced off one-sixteenth of an inch on one end; or too small, in which case Schmitz would endeavor to slice a new piece altogether. The chances were it would end in being even smaller than the slice I cut. In that case, Schmitz would say, “Led it go, anyway.” And then, because he would always be very fair, he stood and explained at length why the piece was too big, if it were too big, or too small, if too small. “You know, it's dis vay—” My Gawd! not once, but every night. There was always one slice too many or too few on the sliced-tomato order. Schmitz would say, “There must be five slices.” The next time I put on five slices Schmitz stuck that nose of his around the waiter's shoulder.
“Hey, vhat's dat? Only five slices? De guests won't stand for dat, you know. Dey pay good money here. Put anoder slice on.”
I was wont to get fearfully exasperated at times.
“But,” I remonstrated, “last time I had on six and you told me to put on five!”
“Yes, yes, but I expect you to use your common sense!”
That was his invariable comeback. And always followed by his patient:
“You see, it's dis vay—If you put on too much the hotel, vhy, dey lose money, and of course you see it's dis vay: naturally” (that was a pet word of Schmitz's), “naturally the hotel don't vant to lose money—you can see dat for yourself. Now on the odder hand if you don't put on enough, vhy of course you see it's dis vay, naturally a guest vants to get his money's vorth, you can see dat for yourself—you've just got to use your common sense, you can see dat for yourself.” Not once, but day after day, night after night. Poor, poor Mrs. Schmitz! Verily there are worse things than first-degree murder and intoxication.
But for all that Schmitz deigned not to allow it to be known that my scrubbings found favor in his sight, my own soul approved of me. The shelves and the sink I scrubbed. Then every perishable article in my ice chest or elsewhere got placed upon trays to go upstairs. By this time it was two minutes to nine. Schmitz, always with his hands clasped behind him, except when he was doing over everything I did, said, “You can go now.”
Upstairs among the lockers on the third floor the temperature was like that of a live volcano,only nothing showed any signs of exploding. Fat women who could speak little or no English were here and there puffily dismantling, exchanging the hotel work-uniform for street garments. Everyone was kindly and affectionate. One old Irishwoman came up while I was changing my clothes.
“Well, dearie, and how did it go?”
“Sure it went swell.”
“That's good. The Lord bless ye. But there's one bit of advice I must be giving ye. There's one thing you must take care of now. I'm tellin' ye, dearie, you must guard your personality! I'm tellin' ye, there 're the men y' know, but guard y' personality!”
I thanked her from the bottom of my heart and said I'd guard it, surest thing she knew.
“Oh, the good Lord and the Virgin Mary bless ye, child!” And she patted me affectionately on the back.
Indeed, I had been getting affectionate pats most of the time, though the majority of them were from the male help. The composite impression of that first day as I took my way home on the sticky Subway was that the world was a very affectionate place, nor was I quite sure just what to do about it.
The second morning I was given a glimpse of what can be done about it. As I was waiting for the elevator on the service floor to be taken down to work, a very attractive girl came along and immediately we became chummy. She had been at the hotel three weeks; her job was to cut fruit. Had she done this sort of work long? Not in this country, but inEurope. Just one year had she been in America. At that moment two youths passed. I saw nothing, but quick as a flash my new friend flared up, “You fresh guy—keep your hands to yourself!” So evidently that's the way it's done. I practiced it mentally. “Lots o' fresh guys round here,” I sniffed. “You said it,” muttered the still ruffled fruit cutter.
Downstairs, Kelly was waiting with a welcoming nod—Kelly, the unpernickety steward. Everyone was as friendly as if we had been feeding humanity side by side these many years. During the rush the waiters called out as they sped by: “Hi there, little one!” “There's the girlie!” “Ah there, sweetheart!” Verily the world is an affectionate place. If a waiter had an order to give he passed the time of day as he gave it and as he collected his order.
“And how's the little girl to-day?”
“Tiptop—and yourself?”
“A little low in spirits I was to-day until I seen you'd come—an' then. You love me as much as you did yesterday?”
“Move on there. W'at y' a-doin' talkin' to my girl! Now, honey, I'm tellin' you this here guy is too fresh for any lady. I'd like one order of romaine lettuce, bless your sweet heart, if it won't be tirin' your fingers too much. That's the dearie—I'm back in a moment.”
Across the way, arms resting on the counter, head ducked under the upper shelf, leaned a burly redheaded helper to the Greek.
Every time the pantry girl looked his way hebeamed and nodded and nodded and beamed. “How you lak?” “Fine!” More beams and nods. Soon a waiter slipped a glass of ice coffee, rich in cream and sugar, under my counter. Beams and nods fit to burst from the assistant coffee man across the way. Beams and nods from the pantry girl. Thus every day. Our sole conversation was, “How you lak?” “Fine!” He said the rest with coffee.
With the lunch rush over, Kelly sneaked around my entrance and jerked his head sidewise. That meant, naturally, that I was to approach and harken unto what he had to say. When Kelly imparted secrets—and much of what Kelly had to impart was that sort of information where he felt called upon to gaze about furtively to make sure no one was over-hearing—when he had matters of weight then to impart he talked down in his boots and a bit out of the corner of his mouth.
“Say, kid”—Kelly jerked his head—“want to tell you about this eatin' business. Y'know, ain't no one supposed to eat nothin' on this floor. If the boss catches ya, it's good-by dolly. Sign up over the door sayin' you'll be dismissedat onceif you eat anything—see? But I'm givin' ya a little tip—see? I don't care how much ya eat—it's nothin' to me. I say eat all ya got a mind to. Only for Gawd's sake don't let the Big Boss catch ya.” (The Big Boss was the little chief steward, who drew down a fabulous salary and had the whole place scared to death.) “See—pull a cracker box out so and put what ya got to eat behind it this way, then ya can sit down andsorta take your time at it. If the boss does come by—it's behind the cracker box and you should worry! Have a cup of coffee?”
I was full up of coffee from my gentleman friend across the way, so declined Kelly's assistance in obtaining more. Every day, about 2.30, Kelly got in a certain more or less secluded corner of my compartment and ate a bit himself. “Been almost fired a couple of times for doin' this—this place is full o' squealers—gotta watch out all the time. Hell of a life I say when a fella has to sneak around to eat a bit of food.”
That second afternoon, Kelly stopped in the middle of a gulp of coffee.
“Say, w'at t' hell's a girl like you workin' for, anyhow? Say, don't you know you could get married easy as—my Gawd! too easy. Say, you could pick up with one of these waiters just like that! They're good steady fellas, make decent pay. You could do much worse than marry a waiter. I'm tellin' ya there's no sense to a girl like you workin'.”
That was an obsession with Kelly. He drilled it into me daily. Kelly himself was a settled married man. Of his state we talked often. I asked Kelly the very first day if he ever went to Coney Island.
“Ustta—'ain't been for ten years.”
“Why not for ten years?”
Kelly looked at me out of the corner of his eyes. “Got married ten years ago.”
“Well, and w'at of it? Don't you have no more fun?”
“You said it! I'm tellin' ya there's no more fun. Gee! I sure don't know myself these ten years. I was the kind of a fella”—here Kelly was moved in sheer admiration to do a bit of heavy cursing—“I was the kind of fella that did everything—I'm tellin' ya,everything. Bet there ain't a thing in this world I 'ain't done at least once, and most of 'em a whole lot more 'n that. An' now—look at me now! Get up at four every mornin', but Sundays, get down here at six” (Kelly was a suburbanite), “work till three, git home, monkey with my tools a bit or play with the kids, eat dinner, sit around a spell, go to bed.”
A long pause. “Ain't that a hell of a life, I'm askin' ya?”
Another pause in which Kelly mentally reviewed his glowing past. He shook his head and smiled a sad smile. “If you could 'a' seen me ten years ago!”
Kelly told me the story of his life more or less in detail some days later. I say advisedly “more or less.” Considering the reputation he had given himself, I am relieved to be able to note that he must have left some bits out, though goodness knows he put enough in. But Kelly's matrimonial romance must be told.
Kelly went with a peach of a girl in the years gone by—swellest little kid—gee! he respected that girl—never laid hands on her. She wanted to go back to the old country for a visit, so he paid her way there and back—one hundred and sixty-five dollars it had cost him. Coming home from a ball where Kelly had been manager—this at 4A.M.—a remark of thegirl's led Kelly to suspect she was not the stainless bit of perfection his love had pictured. So after three years of constant devotion Kelly felt that he had been sold out. He turned around and said then and there to his fair one, “You go to hell!” He never laid eyes on her again.
A few years later Kelly met an American girl. He went with her three years, was making seventy-five dollars a month, had saved eight hundred and seventy-six dollars, and in addition possessed one hundred and ten dollars in life insurance. So he asked the lady to marry him. Y' know w'at she said to Kelly? Kelly leaned his shaggy mop of hair my way. She said, “I won't marry nobody on seventy-five dollars a month!” Again Kelly's manhood asserted itself. Do you know w'at Kelly said to her? He says, says he, once more, “You go to hell!” He quit.
Whereupon Kelly drew out every cent he possessed and sailed for Europe. When he landed again in New York City, d' y'know how much money Kelly had in his pocket? Thirty-five cents. Then he went West for seven or eight years, and tore up the country considerable, Kelly did. He came back to New York again, again minus cash. A few days after his return the girl of eight years before met him by appointment at the Grand Central Station. What d' y'know? She asked Kelly to marry her—just like that. Heck! by that time Kelly didn't give a darn one way or the other. She bought the ring, she hired the minister, she did the whole business.Kelly married her—that's the wife he's got right now.
One of Kelly's steady, dependable waiters approached about 5P.M.“Say, girl, I like you!” Of course, the comeback for that now, as always, was, “Aw go-an!”
“Sure, I like you. Say, how about goin' out this evening with me? We'll sure do the old town!”
“I say, you sound like as if you got all of twenty-five cents in your pocket!”
He leaned way over my counter.
“I got twenty-five dollars, and it's yours any time you say the word!”
It's words like that which sometimes don't get said.
For supper that night I sat at a table with a housekeeper, a parlor maid, and a seamstress, and listened to much talk. Mainly, it was a discussion of where the most desirable jobs were to be had in their respective lines. There was complete unanimity of opinion. Clubs headed the list, and the cream of cream were men's clubs. The housekeeper and parlor maid together painted a picture which would lead one to conclude that the happiest women in all New York City were the housekeepers in men's clubs. The work was light, they were well treated—it was a job for anyone to strive for. The type of men or women in clubs, they remarked, was ahead of what you'd draw in any hotel.
The parlor maid, an attractive, gray-haired woman—indeed, all three were gray-haired—was very pleased with her job at our hotel. She slept thereand loved it. The rooms were so clean—your towels were changed daily just as for the guests. Sure she was very contented. If her mother were only alive—she died two years ago—she'd be the happiest woman in the world, she just knew it. But every single morning she woke up with an empty feeling in her heart for the longings after her mother.
My diary of Thursday of that first week starts: “The best day since I've been trying jobs—Glory be, it was rich!” And pages follow as to the wonders of that one day—wonders to me, who was after what the workers themselves think about the universe in general.
When I found how hard the Spanish woman I relieved at 1.30 had to work, how much more rushed she was from 6 to 1.30 than ever I was from 1.30 to 9, and when I learned, in addition, that she received no more pay for all her extra labors, I told her I would come early every day and help her during the rush. This is all good psychology and I give it for what it is worth. The first few days, this Thursday being one of them, she was very grateful—spoke often of how much it helped to have me there early. My last morning during my two weeks of the hotel job I was so rushed with final errands to do before leaving New York that it was impossible for me to arrive at work before 1.30, my regular and appointed time. The Spanish woman knew it was my last day. But she was so put out to think I had not arrived earlythat she whisked out of that compartment the second I arrived, only taking time to give me one fearful and unmistakable glare. Kelly caught the remnants of it as she swung by him. He sauntered over to my counter. “Say, the nerve of some people!”
That Thursday noon, I ate with the workers in the help's kitchen. So much talk! First there was a row on fit to rend the rafters. One of the Irish girls plumped herself down to eat and raved on about Lizzie, an Armenian girl, and something or other Lizzie had done or hadn't done with the silverware. Everyone was frank as to what each thought about Lizzie. Armenian stock was very low that day. Just then Lizzie appeared, a very attractive, neat girl who had been friendly and kind to me. I had no idea it was she about whose character such blusterous words were being spoken. With Lizzie and the Irish girl face to face—Heaven help us! I expected to see them at each other's throats. Such talk! Finally another Irish girl turned to the Armenian. “Why t'hell do you get so mad over it all, now?” Lizzie stopped, gave the second Irish girl a quizzical look. Slowly a smile spread over her face. She gave a little chuckle. “Ho! Why t'hell?” We all laughed and laughed, and the fight was off.
It seems Lizzie was known far and wide for her temper. She had been fired from waiting on the chefs because she let it loose in their dining room one night. Now they were trying her out up at our end of the service floor. Minnie, the oldest Irish woman at our table and in a decidedly ruffled mood that day,claimed it was the Armenian in her. “They're all like that. Shure, I got a Armenian helper—that kid over there. Wait till he says one word more to me. I'll bust a plate on his head and kick his prostrate form into the gutter. It'll be a happy day in my life!”
They all asked me about my work and how I liked it. Evidently mine was a job high in favor. “Shure you're left alone and no one to be under your feet or botherin' with y' every minute of the day. You're yo'r own boss.”
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. Minniehad 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 saytoast. Dry, little one. Ah yes! There be themwho 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 ajob 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?”
Indeed I was very cheerful and made no secret of it. I had sung every song I knew and then whistled them all as I worked. But Schmitz, who surely had never smiled in all his life, could stand it no longer. “You better not make so much noise,” he said. “You see, it's dis vay—” Poor Schmitz, he had a miserable time of it that afternoon. For my expressions of contentment with the world had spread. Unconsciously a chef would whistle a bit here as he mixed his gravy ingredients, another there as he minced chicken, yet another in still another direction as he arranged a bowl of vegetables. Schmitz's head swirled first in one direction, then in another. Aching he was to reduce the universe to his perpetual state of gloom. But chefs he stood in awe of. He dared silence only me, and every so often I forgot.
So the Spaniard asked me why I was so happy. I had no reason. Only a great multitude of reasons why there was no excuse to be anything else, but I did not go into that. He would know, though.
“What did you do last night?”
“Ho!” I laughed at him, “rode home on the top of a bus!”
A bit later a piece of folded paper landed almost in my French dressing. It was a note from the Spaniard: “Will you go riding with me to-night?” Iwrote on the bottom of the paper: “Not to-night. Perhaps next week, yes?” A few moments later a folded menu landed on the floor. On the back was written: “I will be very pleased whenever you can or wish. Could it be Sunday? I hope you wouldn't take it amiss my asking you this. Frank.”
I really wanted to take that bus ride with Frank. It still worries me that I did not. He was such a lonesome person.
Then there was the tall, lean, dark Irish waiter I called Mr. O'Sullivan. He was a continual joy to my heart and gave me cause for many a chuckle. A rebel, was Mr. O'Sullivan. I heard Kelly call him down twice for growling at what he considered inexcusable desires in the matter of food or service on the part of patrons by telling Mr. O'Sullivan it was none of his —— business. But I loved to listen to Mr. O'Sullivan's growlings, and once he realized that, he used to stop at my counter, take extra long to collect three slices of lemon, and tell me his latest grievance. To-night, this Thursday, he was sputtering.
“Shure and de y'know what now? I've two parties out there want finger bowls.Finger bowls!” sputtered Mr. O'Sullivan.
“Shure an' it's a long ways from the sight of finger bowls them two was born. It had better be a pail apiece they'd be askin' for. Finger bowls indeed!” Mr. O'Sullivan had gotten down to a mumble. “Shure an' they make mesick!”
Mr. O'Sullivan knew that I gave ear to his sentimentsupon such matters as old parties, male or female, who must needs order special kinds of extra digestible bread, and usually that bread must in addition be toasted. While it was toasting, Mr. O'Sullivan voiced his views on Old Maids with Indigestion. Much of it does not bear repeating. When the toast was done, Mr. O'Sullivan would hold out his plate with the napkin folded ready for the toast. “Shure an yo'r the sweetest child my eyes ever looked upon” (Mr. O'Sullivan would say just the same thing in the same way to a toothless old hag of ninety). “Mind you spare yo'rself now from both bein' an old maid and sufferin' to the point where y' can't eat plain white bread!”
This particular Thursday I had even found some one to talk to in the recreation room when I sneaked up at three o'clock. There came a time when Schmitz's patience was strained over my regular disappearance from about 3 to 3.30. There was absolutely nothing for me to do just then in my own line, so I embraced that opportunity daily to take my way to the recreation room and see what pickings I could gather up. But one afternoon Schmitz's face bore an extra-heavy frown. “Say, what you do every day that keeps you from your work all this time? Don't you know that ain't no way to do? Don't you understand hotel work is just like a factory? Everybody must be in his place all day and not go wandering off!”
“Ever work in a factory?” I asked Schmitz.
He deigned no answer.
“Well, then, I'm tellingyouI have, and hotel work ain't like a factory atall.”
“Vell, you see it's dis vay—naturally—”
This Thursday up in the recreation room I found an ancient scrubwoman, patched and darned to pieces, with stringy thin hair, and the fat, jovial Irishwoman from the help's pantry. The three of us had as giddy a half hour as anyone in all New York. We laughed at one another's jokes till we almost wept, and forgot all about the thermometer. The fat Irishwoman had worked at the hotel two years, the scrubwoman almost that long. Both “lived out.” They, too, informed me I had one of the best jobs in the hotel—nobody messin' in with what you're doin'—they leave y'alone. The fat one had worked some time in the linen room, but preferred pantry work. The linen room was too much responsibility—had to count out aprons and towels and things in piles of ten and tie them, and things like that—made a body's head swim.
Realizing Schmitz's growing discomfort, I finally had to tear myself away. The fat Irishwoman called after me, “Good-by, dear, and God bless y'.”
Upstairs at supper that night I had the luck to land again at a talkative table. We discussed many things—Ireland, for one. One girl was she who had come two years ago from Ireland and did salads in the main kitchen. Such a brogue! An Irish parlor maid had been long years in this country. The two asked many questions of each other about their life in the Old Country. “Shure,” sighed one, “Ilove every stick and every stone and tree and blade of grass in Ireland!” “Shure,” sighed the other, “an' that's just the way I feel about it, too!”
Everyone at the table liked working at our hotel. According to them, the hotel was nice, the girls nice, hours nice.
The subject of matrimony, as ever, came up. Not a soul at the table but what was ag'in' it. Why should a woman get married when she can support herself? All she'd get out of it would be a pack of kids to clean up after, and work that never ended. Of course, the concession was eventually made, if you were sure you were gettin' a good man— But how many good men were there in the world? And look at the divorces nowadays! Why try it at all? One girl reported as statistically accurate that there was one divorce in the United States to every four marriages. “You don't say!” was the chorus.
The subject changed to summer hotels. One woman had worked last summer as a waitress at one of the beaches. That was the swellest job ever—just like a vacation! All summer she had two tables only to wait on, two persons at a table. Each table had tipped her five dollars a week. Next summer we all must try it.
The minutes flew by too fast that supper. Before I knew it, 5.30 had come around, and by the time I was downstairs again it was five minutes past my appointed half hour. Poor, poor Schmitz! And yet lucky Schmitz. It must have caused his soul much inner satisfaction to have a real honest-to-goodnessgrievance to complain about. (You see, he could not go up for his supper until I came down from mine.) Schmitz upbraided me, patiently, with explanations. Every single night from then on, when at five he would tell me I could go upstairs, he always added, “And be sure you're back at half past five!” In natural depravity of spirit, it was my delight one night to be able to sneak down at about 5.25 without being seen by Schmitz. Then I shrank into a corner of my compartment, out of his line of vision, and worked busily on my evening chores. At 5.30, Schmitz began his anxious scanning of our large clock. By 5.40 he was a wreck and the clock had nearly been glared off its hinges. Then it was a waiter called out to me the first evening order. With the crucified steps of a martyr, a ten-minute-hungry martyr at that, Schmitz made his way over to fill that order. And there I was, busily filling it myself! Of course, I hope I have made it clear that Schmitz was the kind who would say, “I knew she was there all along.”
The rush of this particular Thursday night! More lettuce had to be sent for in the middle of the evening, more tomatoes, more blackberries, more cantaloupes, more bread for toast. There was no stopping for breath. In the midst of the final scrubbings and cleanings came an order of “One combination salad, Sweetheart!” That done and removed and there sounded down the way, “One cantaloupe, Honey!” Back the waiter came in a moment. “The old party says it's too ripe.” There were only twoleft to choose from. “Knock his slats in if he don't like that, the old fossil.” In another moment the waiter was back again with the second half. “He says he don't want no cantaloupe, anyhow. Says he meant an order of Philadelphia cream cheese.”
But nine o'clock came round and somehow the chores were all done and Schmitz nodded his regal head ever so little—his sign for, “Madam, you may take your departure,” and up I flew through the almost deserted main kitchen, up the three flights to the service floor, down four flights to the time-clock floor (elevators weren't always handy), to be greeted by my friend the time-clock man with his broad grin and his, “Well, if here ain't my little bunch o' love!”
If he and Schmitz could only have gotten mixed a bit in the original kneading....
By Saturday of that week I began my diary: “Goodness! I couldn't stand this pace long—waiters are too affectionate.” I mention such a matter and go into some detail over their affection here and there, because it was in no sense personal. I mean that any girl working at my job, provided she was not too ancient and too toothless and too ignorant of the English language, would have been treated with equal enthusiasm. True, a good-looking Irishman did say to me one evening, “I keep thinkin' to myself durin' the day, what is there about you that's different. I shure like it a lot what it is, but I just can't put my finger on it.” I used as bad grammaras the next; I appeared, I hoped, as ignorant as the next. Yet another Irishman remarked, “I don't know who you are or where you came from or where you got your education, but you shure have got us all on the run!” But any girl with the least wits about her would have had them on the run. She was the only girl these men got a chance to talk to the greater part of the day.
But what if a girl had a couple of years of that sort of thing? Or does she get this attention only the first couple of weeks of the couple of years, anyhow? Does a waiter grow tired of expressing his affection before or after the girl grows tired of hearing it? I could not help but feel that most of it was due to the fact that perhaps among those waiters and such girls as they knew a purely friendly relationship was practically unknown. Sex seemed to enter in the first ten minutes. Girls are not for friends—they're to flirt with. It was for the girl to set the limits; the man had none.
But eight and one-half hours a day of parrying the advances of affectionate waiters—a law should be passed limiting the cause for such exertion to two hours a day, no overtime. Nor have I taken the gentle reader into my confidence regarding the Spanish chef in the main kitchen. He did the roasting. I had to pass his stove on my way to the elevators. At which he dropped everything, wiped his hands on his apron, and beamed from ear to ear until I got by. One day he dashed along beside me and directed an outburst of Spanish into my ear. When I shook myhead and shrugged my shoulders and got it into his head that I was not a countrywoman, his dismay was purely temporary. He spoke rather flowery English. Would I walk up the stairs with him? No, I preferred the elevator. He, did too. I made the most of it by asking him questions too fast for him to ask me any. He was a tailor by trade, but business had been dull for months. In despair he had taken to roasting. Some six months he had been at our hotel. He much preferred tailoring, and in two months he would be back at his trade in a little shop of his own, making about fifty to seventy-five dollars a week. And then he got in his first question.
“Are you married?”
“No.”
“Could I then ask you to go out with me some evening?”—all this with many beams and wipings of hands on his apron.
Well, I was very busy.
But one evening. Oh, just one evening—surely one evening.
Well, perhaps—
To-night, then?
No, not to-night.
To-morrow night?
No, no night this week or next week, but perhaps week after next.
Ah, that is so long, so long!
There was no earthly way to get to the stairs or elevators except by his stove. I came to dread it. Always the Spanish ex-tailor dropped everythingwith a clatter and chased after me. I managed to pass his confines at greater and greater speed. Invariably I heard his panting, “Listen! Listen!” after me, but I tore on, hoping to get an elevator that started up before he could make it.
One day the Spaniard, this tall thin roaster with the black mustache, was waiting as I came out of the locker room.
“Listen! Listen!” he panted, from force of habit. “Next week is still so very long off.”
It so happened it was my last day at the hotel. I told him I was leaving that night.
“Oh, miss!” He looked really upset. “Then you will go out to-night with me. Surely to-night.”