Waiting staff are not robots

OPINION: Please fill in the blank in the following phrase: "Excuse me -----, there's a fly in my soup," writes Joe Bennett this week.

Did you guess "waiter"? If so, you're a fossil. For according to a restaurant review I was reading the other day, the word waiter is destined for the scrapheap.

No, I'm not in the least ashamed. I like reading restaurant reviews. I don't read them for guidance, of course. I read them for titillation. To me they're a sort of low-wattage porn. I especially enjoy the conventions.

Eating out is not a serious business, but reviewers pretend that it is because they are judges and judges like to believe that their pronouncements matter. Reviewers even take seriously the soaring nonsense of menus. They will duly report that their noisette de porc was pan fried, even though there are no known ways of frying other than with a pan. And reviewers never give the correct English translation of noisette de porc, which is "not enough meat".

Reviewers are like spies: they are, most of them, men, they work under cover and they have a female accomplice. For understandable reasons this accomplice is normally the reviewer's wife. But she is never referred to by name. Instead she gets a twee sobriquet. She becomes The Better Half or Madame.

I doubt that Madame minds. Anonymity is not a high price to pay for free grub. Indeed, I would imagine she's delighted that her underpaid hubby has at last found work she can profit from. And The Better Half takes her duties seriously. She always seems to get through at least three substantial courses. I don't blame her.

I have never been to a restaurant because of a review. What matters in a restaurant is not the food but the company. A perfect dinner is one where you don't notice what you eat. And perfect service is when you don't notice the waiter. Which brings me neatly back to today's subject, which is waiters and waitresses. Apparently these two titles are headed for the slop bucket of history.

The reason is both obvious and contemporary. The words waiter and waitress discriminate by sex. And since waiters and waitresses perform the same tasks it is wrong to draw attention to their differences in reproductive tackle. The term waitress in particular is demeaning. I can't speak from first-hand experience because I have never yet been a waitress. But neither have I ever met the waitress who said she found the title demeaning. Nevertheless, if we accept for the sake of argument that the word has to go, and must be replaced by a word of impeccable sexual neutrality, what word would you choose? Exactly, so would I. I would call them all waiters.

But in the exciting 21st century I'm afraid that won't do. Even though the word waiter describes their job precisely and is by definition sexually non-specific, it has been deemed by the people who resolve such matters as unsatisfactory. It seems that usage has smeared the word permanently with testosterone. So another word had to be coined. And the word they came up with is waitron.

When you've stopped laughing I think you'll agree that you can't quibble with the first syllable of waitron. But with the second syllable you can and should. Its connotations are disastrous. Off the top of my head I can think of only four words ending in -ron: cyclotron, electron, neutron and moron. One is a machine for boffins, two are subatomic particles, and one describes the character who invented the word waitron. Because the verbal associations of waitron are much more demeaning than what it replaces.

A waitress serves. Service is not demeaning. We are all called upon to serve at times, just as we are all called upon to be served. It behoves us to do both with good grace. That is the essence of civility.

A gracious waitress is an intuitive psychologist. Her art is to contribute to the joy of the evening without the patrons noticing that she is doing so.

For restaurants are social places. They are civil places. They are where we break bread together, which makes us literally companions. The bread itself matters little. What matters is the joy of company. What matters is the give and take. What matters is the discourse, the happiness. If you go to a restaurant for the food you go for the wrong reason.

 Food can briefly stave off loneliness, but only people can cure it. Restaurants are for talking in, for being with other people. Good waiters and waitresses are among those people. They have a part to play. The word waitron implies that they are robots.

Now that's demeaning. It is our duty to laugh the word out of existence before it gains a foothold.

» Joe Bennett is an English-born travel writer and columnist who lives in New Zealand with dogs. His columns are syndicated in newspapers throughout New Zealand.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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