Ties Undone 1

Ties Undone
by Gwen L. Williams

As she looked out the window, wondering about things that she didn’t need
to know, she fiddled with her apron. She untied and retied her apron several times.
Then she inspected her necktie for stains even though she knew it was as clean as
the day it came off the rack. Then she untucked and retucked and untucked the
linen napkin in the back of her pants. She untucked and retucked her tail.
A tail was what they called it. Every shift, prior to receiving permission to
serve the community, prior to receiving permission to become for a few frantic,
mind-dulling hours a server, they checked to see if the server had a tail. The store
issued linen napkin tail. And that wasn’t all. There was also the check for the
regulation black shoes, black socks, blacks pants creased, black belt, white crisp
pressed oxford with buttoned-down collar, a tie—your choice, get creative—
snugged properly in place around the neck, the store issued apron, the store issued
name tag, and a smile.
She turned from the window and walked to the drink station. She wiped the
counter where someone had dribbled soda. She straightened the basket of straws.
She checked the ice bin. She began to hum a tune, realized she wasn’t humming a
tune, and sighed.
She walked back to the window. She leaned her shoulder against it, folded
her arms across her chest, and waited. She waited and waited. She was, after all, a
waiter. But not in the sense of the waiting that she was doing at that moment. No,
for she was waiting for the host to seat a table in her section. Waiting and waiting.
She waited patiently there, shoulder against the window, arms crossed.
Earlier, when the thirty-minute mark of waiting for a table had passed her by,
she had approached the assistant manager and told him about it. She was miffed.
She had arrived at work before any other servers. She had brewed the coffee and
iced tea. She stocked the ice, sliced the lemons, polished the teaspoons, and
hauled the glassware. She had hokeyed the floor. And yet for some unknown
reason, thirty minutes had passed and she hadn’t a table.
The assistant manager acted as managers are taught to act: he acted
concerned. He nodded his head at appropriate times. He clasped his hands
together as if praying at appropriate times. He smiled the store issued smile. As
they spoke, she became increasingly annoyed with the assistant’s seemingly smooth
handling of a disgruntled employee.
 Ties Undone 2

He spoke of fairness.
She wasn’t talking about fairness, she was talking about making money,
about paying the rent, about earning a living wage.
But it was about fairness, that’s what she was talking about.
No, it wasn’t about fairness, it was about work, she came here to work, she
wanted to work, she needed to work, she needed the money.
But it was about fairness, fairness, that’s what she was talking about, fairness
and meeting obligations.
She knew all about obligations, he didn’t need to tell her about obligations.
Obligations, ha. And she didn’t give a flying fart about fairness, she wanted a table.
His obligations were to his employees, he needed to make them happy.
No, what made his employees happy was getting tables, she would be happy
to get tables, she would be thrilled beyond belief.
He understood how she felt.
He didn’t know how she felt, he wasn’t making $3.09 an hour, she couldn’t
live without tips, she needed tips, she wanted a table.
He valued her as an employee, she was a very good server.
Of course she was an excellent server, she had been in this business a long
time and like all excellent servers, she wanted to serve, servers serve, she was a
server, she wanted to serve a table.
He stated he would take care of it and walked away to apparently do so.
He had returned five minutes later with the news that the host had screwed
up. The host had accidentally missed her section in the rotation. It was all taken
care of. The whole time he delivered this news, she glared at the splotch of
unknown origin adorning his left shoulder and said nothing.
To be sure, people make mistakes. And mistakes are forgivable. So the host
screwed up. So she didn’t have a table. Big deal. But that was at the thirty-minute
mark.
She walked over to the computer station where servers entered their orders.
She touched the screen. The screen displayed the time. She had been waiting for
almost an hour for the host to seat a table in her section. In other words, she had
been at work waiting for an hour. And waiting patiently. She had been a patient
waiter for one hour. At $3.09 an hour.
She briskly walked the whole restaurant, hands behind her back and a smile
on her face. The smile on her face was so courteous it bordered on hostile. She
nodded to customers seated at the tables. She smiled and nodded, nodded and
 Ties Undone 3

smiled as she walked and counted the tables sat. There were twenty-five tables of
customers throughout the whole restaurant. Twenty-five tables.
She walked to the list of servers hanging at the host stand and counted the
number of servers currently working. There were fifteen, including herself. She
quickly made the calculations. Fourteen servers were serving twenty-five tables
(fourteen because she had none), which meant damn near every other server, all
the other servers, had two tables. Two tables a piece and she had none.
She snorted and turned on her regulation black heel of her regulation black
shoe. She walked quite full of deliberation to the drink station. She wiped the
counter where someone had dribbled soda. She dumped the used coffee filter and
grounds into the garbage can. She checked the ice bin. She examined her
fingernails. She unbuttoned her buttoned-down collar, loosened the knot of her tie,
scratched a spot on her neck under the collar, resnugged the tie, and buttoned the
collar back down. She tapped a little beat on the counter with her fingernails.
She grabbed a straw and tore the paper wrapping from one end. She brought
the straw to her lips and blew the paper sheath off the end of it. It propelled
through the air about six inches before sadly dropping to the floor. She looked up
from the straw wrapper littering the floor and met the eyes of a woman with a
paisley scarf flung across her shoulders. The woman glared and then sniffed
disapprovingly into her coffee. She bit her lip as she considered grabbing the
coffee pot and warming the snooty woman’s coffee with the courteous smile she’d
practiced with precision for years.
She marched with deliberation over to the window, ignoring the straw
wrapper littering the floor. She leaned her tail against the window and crossed her
legs at the ankles. She slouched.
And as she slouched and leaned and looked, quite frankly, unusually sloppy,
she thought of several things at the same time. The get-out-of-debt plan she had
systemically scheduled for herself. Her aunt’s varicose veins popping through her
nylons after thirty some years of assembly work on her feet. Her mother’s
humpback and banged up feet. Banged up and gnarled like the roots of an old
tree. The bunion that had appeared on her own right foot. Her degree. Her
college education that the majority of her relatives were more excited about than
she. Her belief that all jobs were degrading in some fashion or degree. Her
comments about the indignities of waiting tables being somewhat easier to suffer
than the indignities of the insurance clerk. That at least everyone clearly knew by
just looking at waiters that they were servants. There was no pretense to it. It was
 Ties Undone 4

quite clear. Her knees and the way she cradled them practically close to tears after
working doubles. The ache in her knees so deep and intense and constant that only
sleep would take it away. The gray hair that sprouted from her eyebrow over night
last week and her discovery of it the following morning. Being told she looked
younger than thirty-five and her strange reaction of being insulted. She had
survived for thirty-five years thus far and wanted credit for it. She wanted every
year lived to be apparent, every day to count. The insanity of waiters earning more
than composition instructors at the community college. The insanity of that but
also the perfect sense it made in these days. These days when she was asked during
inspection—do you have your tail?
She watched the host seat two more tables, not in her section, as she
slouched and leaned her tail against the window. Tables twenty-six and twenty-
seven.
She quickly paced the same triangle several times: from the window to the
drink station to the computer. Her tail and apron strings flapped like little flags she
paced so quickly. She had the suffocating sensation of claustrophobia, of being
trapped, of tottering at the edge of something drastic and full of sheer panic. She
had the suffocating sensation of becoming a bear penned at a zoo, swaying and
pacing a triangle over and over at the corner of its pen, under the constant vigilant
scrutiny of zoo-goers. Her ears pounded.
She dashed to the computer. She touched the screen. She had been waiting
in excess of one hour for the host to seat a table in her section. Sixty-eight minutes,
to be precise. She unbuttoned her buttoned-down collar and loosened the knot of
her tie. She clutched at the knot in her tie and swallowed back a noise that would
have proven embarrassing: it would have been either a laugh-shriek or a laugh-sob.
It seemed she had prepared for what was to happen her whole life. The
meaning of all her past experiences, her convictions, her decisions, her reactions,
her actions, in other words, her whole life up to that very moment, seemed a
preparation for that moment, for the act she was about to do. The decisive and
final act she was about to do.
Or maybe not. Maybe the act was simply impulsive.
Her ears pounded as she punched in the clock-out mode and entered her
employee identification number. Incredibly, the computer screen asked her to
enter a dollar amount for tips claimed. She jerked on the knot of her tie until it slid
to the center of her breastbone. She claimed $0.00.
 Ties Undone 5

She flipped her collar up in the manner of a hoodlum. She turned her tail on
the computer screen for the last time in that restaurant and bolted toward the front
door. Her tie flipped over her shoulder and flapped behind her like a scarf she
bolted so fast. As she bolted, she tore the apron and tail from her body—her
impeccably pressed oxford became somewhat disarrayed as a result.
Near the front doors, she came to a stop where the general manager and
assistant manager and host chatted. As usual, the general manager and assistant
manager looked as ridiculous as they were. Perched on their heads: the ridiculous
paper hair nets that looked like shower caps.
She resisted the urge to fling the store issued apron, tail, and nametag
recklessly in their stupidly dull faces. She resisted the urge to slap them. Instead,
with exaggerated ceremony given the situation, she tucked the nametag into an
apron pocket and folded the apron and tail neatly. Then she patted the garments as
if she were applauding.
The general manager inquired what this was about.
She declared she was leaving.
He said she was joking.
No, she was quite serious.
She was leaving just because she got missed in the rotation, just because she
didn’t have a table.
Servers serve, she came here to serve, to serve tables, she needed tables, she
didn’t get any tables, she was leaving.
So business started kind of slow he said, she would get tables, business
would pick up.
It wasn’t slow, there were twenty-seven tables in the store, twenty-seven, and
none of them hers, apparently too many servers were scheduled as apparently she
wasn’t needed here today.
Again he said she was joking.
No, again, she was quite serious.
She was serious.
Yes, she was quite serious.
She was leaving.
Yes, she was leaving.
She didn’t want to be here.
She absolutely did not want to be here.
So this was it, after a year and a half, this was it.
 Ties Undone 6

Yes, quite frankly, this was it.

The toastmaster finally realized the situation at hand and ended his discourse
by saying with a shrug, “Well, alright.”
And she walked toward the front doors, her necktie fluttering over her
shoulder. And she walked free of her tail, nothing riding her ass but the never
ending bills to be paid and the knowledge that the choice to go or to stay wasn’t
really a choice at all. Just before she stepped out the door, she turned around and
squarely faced the gaping idiots in the shower caps. They knew no shame, standing
there in those ridiculous caps like battery-operated dolls.
In a voice tottering on the edge of something wild and utterly chaotic, she
roared, “The managers are wearing clip-on ties.”