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344
August, 1951
studied the right and wrong ways to merchandise food — and grossed $7,000 during the first year.
CMeara's schools have been attended by former graduate nurses and secretaries, as well as school teachers. They agree, he says, that there is more financial opportunity in restaurant work than in their former careers.
They receive an average of from $25.00 to $60.00 a week in wages, depending on the location and type of restaurant, plus substantial sums in tips. In New York, Chicago, and other comparable cities, many waitresses average from $50.00 to $75.00 weekly in tips.
One recent development has been the return of the five-cent tip. During the war, few diners left an amount that small. Right now, according to O'Meara, there are more five-cent tips than there have been in the past two years. He considers this a sort of barometer to financial conditions in general.
BEING a waitress, however, is not so simple as it seems. It requires a great deal of skill and experience to reach the high-tip brackets. Above all, the girls must be versatile. They are likely to come across many an awkward situation in the course of a day's work.
Consequently, O'Meara teaches his students how to handle amorous male customers. That's one time when the smiles disappear. Girls are instructed to have a ready-made storj' which concerns a father or brother who calls for them every night after work, but
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to keep their refusals of dates polite as well as firm. There is no point in antagonizing a customer who is, of course, a potential tipper.
There is also a brief lecture on the care and feeding of babies. Proper dishes and utensils are important, and graduates learn, among other things, to knot a corner of a napkin so it can be tucked inside Junior s collar to serve as a bib.
One of these days O'Meara would like to approach the situation from the opposite side of the table, and conduct some schools for customers. There are a few rules diners should follow if they want the best service, just as there are rules for waitresses who want big tips.
One of the most common complaints from waitresses is that customers ''hiss" at them when they want attention, or call them "girlie." Neither is good policy. A simple "waitress" or "miss" gets better results.
As for tipping habits, O'Meara maintains that the public wants the right to tip according to service received. He says most people do not resent the custom of tipping, but are willing to pay for the extra little attentions and the smiles. He cites as an example a Midwestern restaurant which inaugurated a policy of prohibiting tips. It went out of business soon afterward, partly, he says, because the customers resented being told they could not tip. And with that attitude prevalent, restaurant work can become one of the most lucrative fields open to young women.
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