editors: inside: tony schwartz marty porter contributing editors: laura berman bowie brick Sunday mctgctzine books-page four on energy-page five week-in-review- page six Number 11 Page Three December 9, 1973 FEATURES A local the hasi By MARCIA ZOSLAW ED. NOTE: This story is done in a com- posite style. Facts and antecdotes culled from interviews with nearly 40 Ann Arbor waitresses have been used to draw one "typical" character. The same has been done for the restaurant in the story. All the incidents are true, drawn largely from the experience of waiters and waitresses at the Delta, Stadium, Olympic, Wolverine Den, Brown Jug and Betsy Ross Restaur- ants. SOMEPLACES, so the story goes, she is a hardboiled worldly woman, mashing a perpetual wad of gum in her mouth, hand on her hip, hair frowsy bleached blonde, loose change and note pad stashed in her hip pocket. Whether or not this is true, the tough image changes in the mobile Ann Arbor com- munity where student-waitresses are noncareer proletariats, sense themselves as transient in the job. "The desired image is more of the wide-eyed innocent cute looking chick," says Kathleen, "something nice up front for the restaurant, good for service and sales." She is not really beautiful as much as she is presumed to be sweet, young, naive, and in her working world rather dumb. In a glorified hamburger joint, a sit- down restaurant where plastic vinyl booths are set against a background of flashy murals, Kathleen, 21, tall, blonde, a faceless waitress in a high turnover situation, works 16 hours a week for self-support. She wears the traditional black apron, her hair is tied back as per the health regulation to keep it from getting in the food. She stands, delib- erately planning every one of her next ten minutes-get the new spoon that someone's asking for, check on whether the mashed potatoes are real or in- stant, water and menu the new party who's just ente'red, see to the man whose hamburger is up before it turns dead cold. Hungry America with open mouths, they want what they want when they want it-bang, pronto. The Ginos revo- lution has made it a crime to have to wait for a hamburger. They're crying: Miss, m'am, waitress, someone pulls on her skirt to get her attention. Kathleen freezes. What's she supposed to do ... smile? She is no longer a hu- 1 waitress: in GrecoA man being but ten legs and twelve arms or perhaps one big breast. Last night a drunken customer had compared her left breast to a steak. Smile at them, they smile back at you and are inclined to tip better - "It's a really screwed-up system", Kathleen bitches. "Hey waitress, can you get me some cigarettes?" A dollar bill waves in the air. The customer is angry that she seems busy. She wishes for her sake that he would be content to be patient, to sit back and listen to the soothing radio music in the background, "Bridge Over Troubled Water" so mellow it goes down your system like custard. "Can you get it yourself, the machine is straight back to your left? She fishes around for some loose change in her pocket. "I said I want you to get it." "Well I have to get this hamburger first and then I have to do other things." "I was gonna give you a tip," he with- drew the dollar, "but since you're that way about it, I'm gonna leave you noth- ing!" "Can I get you something from the kitchen?," she asks. "Are you on the menu?" Kathleen's heard the line before. "No." "I don't want nothin', then," he gig- gled, then left, a half-empty water glass in his aimless wake. There have been customers worse than him. She remembers two going at each other with knives and forks that night she worked the late shift or the people who ran off with whole place settings or that one time a man walked out after having run up a nine dollar bill, she had to pay for it. She delivers the hamburger. "Any- thing else, sir?" I'll bring you your cof- fee later." She knows his eating habits, he's a salesman who comes every day for a hamburger and two cups of coffee extra cream. He always leaves a quarter tip. She oddly enough knows a lot of people in this town by what they eat and drink. A ten minute break. Her customers' immediate needs have been taken care of, perfect for sitting down and relax- ing, she's exhausted. No sooner does she Slinging America catch her breath and light up a cigarette then the boss comes breathing down her neck. "You have to work, if everybody sits down people will look and see and they won't come in," he says. He is, after all, owner of the joint, to him every little nuance of the "works" ranks of utmost importance, the counters should shine, there are booths to be wiped down for crumbs if you have nothing to do. Ex- cept for the constant turnover of wait- resses he prides himself on running a "tight ship." Kathleen receives her pay in a little envelope with a voucher of deductions and hours worked. No recognition was paid to the de facto overtime, and times when she's come in only to be told to leave early because business is slow. She conceded. "That's the inevitable hazards of a lousy job." "I'm only doing it part-time so it doesn't make much difference to me, and beside I can quit anytime I want to." In compensation, meanwhile, there's always the fact that "they need me more than I need them," -- unless she speaks up, that might be a job risk. Once and only once did Kathleen mention a union to her boss. "If you do that," he said, "I'd fire you, sure, there's some things you have to do. I won't let the waitresses run me. I won't let the students have a union. I won't let some- body else run my business." So, with the boss breathing down her neck she gets up and finds a table to clear. Kathleen scraps off the tip, a 50 cent piece, decent, especially for stu- dents; a lot of them forget to tip. Many people don't realize that that's how waitresses make their money; her base wage is $1.40 an hour gross, it's one of the only jobs where the boss can get by without paying the minimum. The best she's ever made in tips, and that was a weekend night, was 22 dollars. Part of the job is psyching people out, predicting how they'll probably tip. Businessmen tip best of all. The regular stiffers she knows by sight and tries not to seat them at her table. Just as it seems everybody has mater- ialized at once so too all of sudden the place is deserted. Kathleen goes to wipe Daily Photo by STEVE KAGAN off a table and finds three dollars with a note attached: "The two dollars is for you, the dollar is for that old man in the kitchen because nobody thinks about him and we're all going to grow old someday." She remembers the lady who poured out her whole life story to Kathleen in the space of one meal. She has a daugh- ter Kathleen's age and maybe they can all three go out for lunch someday. She's a lovely woman who comments on Kathleen's nice smile, a really lovely person, who seems like an angel in all this grease. The metamorphasis is already taking place, with an hour to go until the end, so she'll pick up, change her uniform, let down her hair so nobody can tell she's a waitress, then go relax, divorce her head from the whole thing. Marcia Zoslaw is a Daily staff writer who has worked at the Olympic restaurant in Ann Arbor. Inno va tive foster care for counter-culture kids By LAURA BERMAN When Paula was 14, she walked out of a juvenile detention home, stuck out her thumb and hitchhiked the thousand miles to Ann Arbor. Paula was angry. She had spent the last four years of her life making the rounds of unsympathetic counselors, so- cial workers and juvenile court judges. She had been shuttled back and forth between an unhappy home and an un- happier detention home. Now 15, Paula is no longer on her own but settled in a new and, she says, hap- pier home. Her 'parents' are two single women, 19 and 26, who agreed to care for Paula as part of an innovative foster parent program run by Catholic Social Services. For want of a better name, the pro- gram has been dubbed "counter-culture foster Care" because it caters specific- ally to homeless teens who have been unable to function in a traditional envi- ronment. The program takes a somewhat radi- cal departure from conventional foster care in its entire approach. Gone are the obstacles to temporary adoption: The red tape, the income requirements, the preference that foster parents be mar- ried couples. "We're trying to appeal to anybody who wants to give a kid a break," says Diane Blumson who heads the program. "We're not looking for a controlling home situation but a sariny one. We with a stable unmarried couple. A University graduate with a degree in social work, Diane approaches her job with a profound sense of compas- sion for the youths who come to her. Most are hard to place 13 to 17 year- olds. Many have been labelled 'delin- quent.' "Communities do a lot of labelling but tions, preferring to assume a stance of defiant independence. "I'm growing up angry," she drawls in her honey-tough voice, "and I'm going to stay angry until things change." But beneath the bravado, there is a sense of the vulnerability and youth. When pressed to talk about her family her voice gets sharper. ceived a $70 per month allottment from the state. Another girl living in the house caused problems because they were cramped for space. And even the small- est demand on Paula precipitated major crises. "When she came here, she wanted everything her own way," one of the v Y, t ..,.. .YU.....,..... .....t..:.v.. . . . . . . . ...{"'4s .v.t . a .- ,n.:.n. vvv .. .v w n........ ...v,?..vJ.- {. 1S, ....v v>+......4v -.. .. .... n.: . .....,v ...... . ... t{, v.... :". . . .:::{t"8r:.:ii;}i~~)":.:: .t..,.... \ ...,., v.. . ... . ..., v,....n vn. . n ..:i ;w:.'t"}t:G)". ........ ...... . . . . "For most kids who come here freedom means having control over their lives. What we're trying to do is help a kid be as free as "But she's only 15 - true, a very courageous, very independent 15." Jean's partner in parenting, whom we'll call Doris, has become the family mediator. "What we expect from Paula is completely different from what her parents wanted," Doris says. "They de- manded obedience. They wouldn't let her smoke or swear-things like that. "We want some respect, some help around the house. And we want Paula to learn how to take care of herself be- cause she is going to be on her own soon." The foster parents say they have learned much from Paula but neither are sure what will happen when their contract for her expires in December. And in her street-wise way, Paula is philosophical about the future. She has learned not to trust the permanence of any situation. "In a way it scares me that they may leave and in a way it doesn't. I can't hold on to them forever." The counter-culture foster care pro- gram has run into some community op- position. Diane Blumson has been criti- cized for "letting delinquents run around wild." It's a small program so far and has been in operation less than a year. Only about 12 parents are in it. But there are more kids waiting for just such homes, Diane says. "For most of the kids who come here," possible within the bounds of society," says Diane Blumson, the program director. . - : . : .. . - .- - . . v : -. - : . . . : : ... , v : . - . v r " : v : N n : . . - these kids aren't bad kids," she says. "They are just unable to fit into the rigid mold society demands of them." She sees Paula as a classic example of the child that has been deprived of a place in society. "Everyone realized she couldn't live at home. But no one put her parents or the judge in a detention home because they had no solution. It wasn't only Paula's problem but her "They didn't want me. They wouldn't trust me past the front door. Fear-they used fear on me to make me behave." But she smiles when she talks about her foster parents. "They're really more like roommates than parents. They treat me on a human basis." Paula and her foster parents, who pre- fer that their real names not be used, live in a three bedroom home on the 'parents' (whom we'll call Jean) says. "She'd been living on the streets and couldn't get used to rules. I would scream at her and because of what her home situation had been, she didn't think I could yell at her and still love her." Like Paula, Jean grew up in an un- happy home and when she left it, lived "on the streets." Like Paula, Jean is