Horrible coffee, horrifying coffee sleeve. Look deep into her eyes...
In Maya Gallus’s 2007 critically reviewed “Girl Inside”, she doesn’t shy away from grittier issues – who knew that the Adam’s apple could be surgically shaved down? – in her account of Madison’s emotional journey, dealing with her transsexuality and her passage of changing her physical body to reflect her innate sense of being a woman.
So, we can expect “DISH”, Gallus’s latest documentary feature film, to open up, with scalpel-like precision, the behind-the-scenes world of “Women, Waitressing and the Art of Service” in the female dominated service industry. From sleazier truck stops to the silver-service of haute cuisine to Japanese restaurants where the waitresses will act as your surrogate mother, cajoling grown up boys to “eat more”, you’ll never look at your waitress in the same way again!
In Canada, eating out has become part of the fabric of our everyday life. From our “double double” at Tim’s to kick-start the morning; to a quick bite at the McDonald’s drive through; from cheap ‘n’ cheerful Chinese buffets with plastic table cloths to the starched linens and crystal glass wear of elite restaurants. However, the common denominator, is that we are on the receiving end of being served.
Ask any of your friends what they consider makes a good waitress and what makes a lousy one and you can sit back and listen to anecdotes from all walks of culinary life. Acts of kindness, like the Muslim owner of a Toronto coffee shop franchise who makes sure he keeps an illicit stock of turkey bacon to use in breakfast sandwiches for his Islamic and Jewish customers, to stories recounted with righteousness and indignation: the audacity of the server to arbitrarily substitute other Timbits, when the requested sour cream glazed Timbits had run out!
Of course, none of us like to think of the horrors that could be deliberately perpetrated upon our food in the privacy of the back kitchen if we dare to offend the staff. Twenty-five years ago (before he was a respected healthcare professional, with two Master’s degrees, who lectures at an internationally renowned teaching facility, I might add!) a friend of mine was working at an upscale hairdressers, sweeping hair and bringing clients cups of tea. He described the contempt with which one of the customers treated him and, after the third time she returned a cup of tea because it was not quite to her liking, Simon (not his real name) returned it to her with more than just the two spoonfuls of sugar she requested. He recounted the incident with the calm satisfaction of the vindicated. He explained, in an almost Julia Childs-like instructional manner, “stirring it well makes the spit bubbles disappear”.
So, if reading this has made you take a second look at your double-double, take a moment and let us know your waitress story. Good, bad or stomach churning!
Cheers!
Louise C.B. Wall
“DISH” has its world premiere at Toronto’s annual Hot Docs Film Festival, April 30, 2010 at The Bloor, 506 Bloor St. W., 9:15pm.
