Alienation Effects in Chinese Waitering

Recently discovered in a cigar box: an unpublished set of notes for an unwritten article by the famous East Europeany-type playwright and communist scum-bag Bergamot Beck. It seems like near the end of his career the famous theoretician turned his attention from the stage to the world of foodie-blog criticism. He has certainly left us something to chew on! (don't laugh it's just a blog post).

Imagine yourself walking into any so-called "trendy" restaurant, such as Ottawa's "Town" - a dapper fellow with nice glasses and a slick Hitler youth haircut and a tattoo on the forearm winks your way and casually points you to a table. Watch entranced as he scrawls his precious name, Sydney, Idaho, or Aiden, on your paper table-cloth in a beautifully honed upside-down hand. Ask him anything about the menu; soon you discover he comes from somewhere, enjoys most of the food, has a beautiful smile, is quick witted, loves his band, mom, cat. Presumably your food arrives at some point.

This all-too entrenched form of waitering has, up until this century, been entirely empathetic, and in that sense, Aristotelian, that is, in line with the "cathartic" aspects of the food consumption experience.

Let us contrast the traditional "dramatic school" of Aristotle and the cathartic chefs with the Asian style of waitering. One notices the Chinese have developed the "alienation effect" entirely independently from that of the western Weimar-era Marxist producers (Piscator et al). This can be best observed in a highly developed form at Ottawa's Royal Thai restaurant, where the art of waitering has been honed to scientific exactitude. Before your coat is off you have a tea and a menu; within 30 seconds a new waiter brings you your drinks, inquiring if the bills will be together or separate and nothing about your interests in pomeranians.  Ask about the menu and the answer is either mechanistically accurate or misheard entirely, No divagations. You order food and it is on the notepad before it is off your lips, and a fourth waiter arrives shortly after with your appetizer etc.

At my recent excursion to the Royal Thai, the modes of behaviour shown by the waiters were of a social-historical sort. It was not the "eternally helpful man" that was at my beck and call, but rather the specific hustling encouragement of a man with a definite economic design on you and your wallet. It was the most socially cognizant performance I have seen in my entire career.

The dramatic school of waitering:
-waiters who are gregarious, talkative, sympatico;
- a single waiter to "take care of you";
-waiters with tattoos that they can explain
-make you feel at home at the restaurant;
-give "you guys" lots of time to settle in;
-engage you and your companion(s) on a personal level;
-the meal is a linear plot development that depends on the "effect of the whole";
-service in earnest

The epic school of waitering:
-has stoic waiters, curt, stand-offish
-will send a different waiter for each act, scene, dish, depending on the circumstances - interchangeable masks;
-waiters with tattoos they were branded with in a Chinese prisoner colony;
-will encourage you to eat as quickly and efficiently as possible;
-will have a menu in your face before your coat is off;
-will only treat you as a separate person if there are separate bills;
-the meal is generic and could be experienced in part or in episodes without loss to any "overall effect";
-service in "quotation marks"

The dignity of the thinking being is dependent on its eating habits. Is it not more worthy of a creature aware of its economic and social position to be waited upon in the "epic" manner?

For the dramatic restaurant, the customer always thinks "well, he was such a nice fellow. I should tip him extra" or "well but I felt nothing for her stand-offishness! I'll only give her a little."

In the epic restaurant, on the contrary, one thinks according to dialectical materialism: "everything was so as it was; it would be against the march of the economy not to tip!" In tipping the Chinese waiter, one has no room to tip individuals; one tips the entire culture, the historical and economic process itself.

One goes to the dramatic waiter if one wants to experience the so-called "timelessnesses" or "eternities" of a night filled with unforgettable memories; this is merely a culinary experience and serves as an opiate to the true meaning behind the social forces that encourage fine dining. One thinks "such a fine meal will never come again" and "what a perfect night!" instead of apprehending, coolly and without empathy, the socio-historical circumstances of the present mastication.

The epic waiters, on the contrary, emphasize the historical (transient) situationalism of THIS particular restaurant at THIS particular time - questions such as "why did I come here?" and "I could have gone anywhere else" speak to the true point of dining - that it is entirely and utterly socially determined - that meal types can and will change, have no eternal verities, but only in-stride with social progress. Fried tofu are a means and never an end.

Of course most of western society is not yet mature enough to demand the epic waiter; perhaps it must be forced by the avant-garde. Is it so crazy that we ask restaurants to rush ahead of their public, instead of always lagging behind? The school still requires much development before it is entirely ready to enforce the social change inherent in most forms of pad-thai cooking. Emotional exploitation of base subconscious sympathies must be stopped; it is time the eating public be treated also as a thinking public.