_No. 1470, "Pantry Girl"_
Perhaps, more strictly speaking, instead of working with the working
woman, it was working with the working man. Hotel work is decidedly
co-educational! Except, indeed, for chambermaids and laundry workers,
where the traditionally female fields of bed-making and washing have
not been usurped by the male. Even they, those female chambermaids and
launderers, see more or less of working menfolk during the day. So it
might be thought then that hotel work offers an ideal field for the
growth of such normal intercourse between the sexes as leads to happy
matrimony. No need to depend on dance halls or the Subway to pick up a
"fella." No need for external administrations from wholesome social
workers whose aim is to enable the working man or woman to see
something of the opposite sex.
Yet forever are there flies in ointments. Flossie was one of the salad
girls in the main kitchen. Flossie was Irish, young, most of her teeth
gone. Her sister had worked at our hotel two years earlier, then had
sent for Flossie to come from Ireland. The sister was now married.
Innocently, interestedly, I asked, "To a man she knew here at the
hotel?"
Flossie cast a withering eye upon me. "The good Lord save us! I should
say not! And what decent girl would ever be marryin' the likes of a
man who worked around a hotel? She couldn't do much worse! Just steer
clear of hotel men, I'm tellin' ya. They're altogether too wise to be
safe for any girl."
We were eating supper. The table of eight all nodded assent.
Too wise or not too wise--at least there is a--cordiality--a
predisposition toward affection on the part of male hotel workers
which tends to make one's outside male associates seem fearfully
formal, if not stiffly antagonistic. If one grows accustomed to being
called "Sweetheart," "Darling" on first sight, ending in the evening
by the time-clock man's greeting of, "Here comes my little bunch of
love!"--is it not plain that outside in the cruel world such words as
a mere "How-do-you-do" or "Good morning" seem cold indeed?
What happens when a girl works three years in this affectionate
atmosphere and then marries a plumber who hollers merely "say" at her?
* * * * *
Behind the scenes in a hotel--what is it all about? To find that out I
poked around till the employment-office entrance of one of New York's
biggest and newest hotels was discovered. There had been no "ad." in
the Sunday paper which would give a hint that any hotel needed
additional help. We took our chances. Some twenty men waited in a
little hallway, two women inside the little office. One of the women
weighed at least two hundred and fifty, the other not a pound over
ninety. Both could have been grandmothers, both wanted chamber work.
The employment man spied me.
"What do you want?"
"A job."
"What kind of a job?"
"Anything but bein' chambermaid."
"What experience have you had in hotel work?"
"None, but lots in private homes. I'd like a job around the kitchen
some place."
"Ever try pantry work?"
"Not in a hotel, but lots in private families. I can do that swell!"
(What pantry work meant I hadn't the least idea--thought perhaps
washing glasses and silverware.)
He put on his coat and hat and dashed upstairs. He always put on his
coat _and_ hat to go upstairs. In a few moments he dashed hurriedly
back, followed by another man whose teeth were all worn down in the
front. I learned later that he was an important steward.
He asked me all over again all the questions the first man had asked,
and many more. He was in despair and impatient when he found I had not
a single letter of recommendation from a single private family I had
worked for. I could have written myself an excellent one in a few
moments. Could I bring a letter back later in the day?
"Can you fix salads?"
"Sure!"
"You think you could do the job?"
"_Sure!_"
"Well, you look as if you could. Never mind the letter, but get one to
have by you--comes in handy any job you want. Now about pay--I can't
pay you what you been used to getting, at least not first month." (I'd
mentioned nothing as to wages.) "Second month maybe more. First month
all I can pay you is fifty and your meals. That all right?"
As usual, my joy at landing a job was such that any old pay was
acceptable.
"Be back in two hours."
Just then the employment man called out to the hall filled with
waiting men, "No jobs for any men this morning." I don't know what
became of the old women.
I was back before my two hours were up, so anxious to begin. The
employment man put on his hat and coat and dashed upstairs after my
steward. Just incidentally, speaking of hats and coats, it can be
mentioned that all this was in the middle of one of the hottest
summers New York ever knew.
The steward led the way up one flight of iron stairs and into the main
kitchen. Wasn't I all eyes to see what was what! If anyone is looking
for a bit of muck-raking about the hinterland of restaurants, let him
not bother to read farther. Nothing could have been cleaner than the
kitchen conditions in our hotel. And orders up and down the line were
to serve _nothing_ which was not absolutely as it should be.
In a corner of the main kitchen the steward turned me over to Bridget,
who was to take me here, there, and the other place. By 11.30 A.M., I
was back where I started from, only, thanks to aged Bridget and her
none-too-sure leadings, I was clad in a white cap and white all-over
apron-dress, and had had my lunch. Thereupon the steward escorted me
to my own special corner of the world, where, indeed, I was to be lord
of all I surveyed--provided my gaze fell not too far afield.
That particular corner was down one short flight of stairs from the
main kitchen into a hustling, bustling, small and compact, often
crowded, place where were prepared the breakfasts, lunches, and
dinners of such folk who cared more for haste and less for style than
the patrons of the main dining rooms. Our cafe fed more persons in a
day than the other dining rooms combined. Outside we could seat five
hundred at a time, sixty-five of those at marble counters, the rest at
small tables. But our kitchen quarters could have been put in one
corner of the spacious, airy upstairs main kitchen.
Through the bustle of scurrying and ordering waiters I was led to a
small shelved-off compartment. Here I was to earn my fifty dollars a
month from 1.30 P.M. to 9 P.M. daily except Sunday, with one-half hour
off for supper. I was entitled to eat my breakfast and lunch at the
hotel as well.
This first day, I was instructed to watch for two hours the girl I
was to relieve at 1.30. Her hours were from 6 in the morning to 1.30,
which meant she got the brunt of the hard work--all of the breakfast
and most of the lunch rush. To me fell the tail end of the lunch
rush--up to about 2.15, and supper or dinner, which only occasionally
could be spoken of as "rush" at all. I discovered later that we both
got the same pay, although she had to work very much harder, and also
she had been at our hotel almost two years, though only nine months at
this special pantry job. Before that she had made toast, and toast
only, upstairs in the main kitchen.
The first question Mary asked me that Monday morning was, "You
Spanish?" No, I wasn't. Mary was a Spanish grass widow. Ten years she
had been married, but only five of that time had she lived with her
husband. Where was he? Back in Spain. "No good." She had come on to
this country because it was too hard for a woman to make her way in
Spain. She spoke little English, but with that little she showed that
she was kindly disposed and anxious to help all she could. She herself
had a stolid, untidy efficiency about her, and all the while, poor
thing, suffered with pains in her stomach.
By the time 1.30 came around I knew what I had to do and could be left
to my own devices. To the pantry girl of our cafe fell various and
sundry small jobs. But the end and aim of her life had to be speed.
To the left of my little doorway was a small, deep sink. Next to the
sink was a very large ice chest. On the side of the ice chest next
the sink hung the four soft-boiled-egg machines--those fascinating
contrivances in which one deposited the eggs, set the notch at two,
three, four minutes, according to the desires of the hurried guest
without, sank the cup-shaped container in the boiling water, and never
gave the matter another thought. At the allotted moment the eggs were
hoisted as if by magic from out their boilings. Verily are the wonders
of civilization manifold! The sink and the protruding ice chest filled
the entire left side of my small inclosure. Along the entire right and
front was a wide work-shelf. On this shelf at the right stood the
electric toasting machine which during busy hours had to be kept going
full blast.
"Toast for club!" a waiter sang out as he sped by, and zip! the
already partially toasted bread went into the electric oven to be done
so crisply and quickly that you could call out to that waiter, "Toast
for club" before he could come back and repeat his ominous, "Toast for
club!" at you. People who order club sandwiches seem always to be in a
special hurry.
In the front corner just next the toaster stood the tray of bread
sliced ready to toast, crusts off for dry or buttered toast, crusts on
for "club," very thin slices for "toast Melba." Directly in front, and
next the bread tray, came the tray filled with little piles of graham
and milk crackers, seven in a pile. What an amazing number of folk
order graham or milk crackers in a cafe! It seems unbelievable to one
who has always looked upon a place furnishing eatables outside a home
as a chance to order somewhat indigestible food prepared entirely
differently from what any home could accomplish. Yet I know it to be a
fact that people seat themselves at a table or a counter in a more or
less stylish cafe and order things like prunes or rhubarb and graham
or milk crackers, and perhaps top off, if they forget themselves so
far, with a shredded-wheat biscuit.
It is bad enough if a man feels called upon to act that way before 2
P.M. When he puts in an order for such after 6 in the evening--then
indeed it is a case for tears. I would get the blues wondering
whatever could ail adult humanity that it ordered shredded-wheat
biscuits after dark.
Just above the counter holding the bread and crackers was the counter
on which were placed the filled orders for the waiters to whisk away.
It was but a step from there to my ice box. The orders it was my
business to fill were for blackberries, blueberries, prunes, sliced
oranges, rhubarb, grapefruit, whole oranges, apples, sliced peaches
and bananas, muskmelons, and four kinds of cheese. These pretty well
filled the upper half of the ice chest, together with the finished
salads I kept ahead, say three of each, lettuce and tomato, hearts of
lettuce, plain lettuce, and sliced tomatoes.
In the lower half stood the pitchers of orange and grape juice, jams
and jellies for omelettes to be made down the line, olives, celery,
lettuce, cucumbers, a small tub of oranges and a large bowl of sliced
lemons. The lemons, lemons, lemons I had daily to slice to complete
the ice-tea orders! The next pantry-girl job I fill will be in winter
when there is no demand for ice tea. I had also to keep on hand a bowl
of American cheese cut the proper size to accompany pie, and together
with toast and soft-boiled eggs and crackers and a crock of French
dressing set in ice. Such was my kingdom, and I ruled it alone.
During slack hours it was easy, too easy. In rush hours you had to
keep your head. Six waiters might breeze by in a line not one second
apart, each calling an order, "Half a cantaloupe!" "Two orders of
buttered toast!" "Combination salad!" (that meant romaine and lettuce
leaves, shredded celery, sliced cucumbers, quartered tomatoes, green
pepper, watercress, which always had to be made up fresh); "Sliced
peaches!" (they could never be sliced in advance); "One order orange
juice!" "Toast for club!" then how one's fingers sped!
The wonder of it was no one ever seemed to lose his patience or his
temper. That is, nobody out our way. Maybe in the cafe there was some
millionaire hastily en route to a game of golf who cursed the universe
in general and the clumsy fingers of some immigrant pantry girl in
particular. (Not so fearfully clumsy either.)
Between 2 and 2.30 the rush subsided, and that first day I caught my
breath and took time to note the lay of the land.
My compartment came first, directly next the dishes. Next me was a
beautiful chef with his white cap set on at just the chef angle. He
was an artist, with a youngster about fifteen as his assistant. Some
day that youngster will be a more beautiful chef than his master and
more of an artist. His master, I found out in my slack hours that
first afternoon, was French, with little English at his command,
though six years in this country. I know less French than he does
English, but we got to be good friends over the low partition which
separated us. There was nothing at all fresh or affectionate about
that French chef. I showed my gratitude for that by coming over in the
afternoon and helping him slice hot potatoes for potato salad while my
floor got washed. Every day I made him a bow and said, "_Bon jour,
Monsieur le Bon Chef_," which may be no French at all. And every day
he made me a bow back and said, "_Bon jour_" something or other, which
I could tell was nice and respectful, but--I can't write it down.
Monsieur Le Bon Chef made splendid cold works of art in jellies, and
salads which belonged to another realm than my poor tomatoes and
lettuce. Also, he and his assistant--the assistant was Spanish--made
wonder sandwiches. They served jellied soups from their counter. Poor
humble me would fill "One order graham crackers, little one!" But to
Monsieur Le Bon Chef it would be "Two Cream of Cantaloupes!" "One
chicken salad!" "One (our hotel) Plate!" (What a creation of a little
of everything that was!) Monsieur Le Bon Chef taught me some tricks of
the trade, but this is no treatise on domestic science.
I will tell you about Monsieur Le Bon Chef, though by no means did I
learn this all my first afternoon. I only picked up a little here and
there, now and then. He came to this country a French immigrant from
near Toulouse six or so years ago, his heart full of dreams as to the
opportunities in America. Likely as not we might now have to add that,
after many searchings, he landed a job peeling potatoes at fifteen
dollars a month. Monsieur Le Bon Chef was no Bon Chef at all when he
landed--knew none of the tricks of "chefness" to speak of. His first
day in America he sought out an employment office. Not a word of
English could he speak. While the employment agent was just about to
shake his head and say, "Nothing to-day," a friend, or at least a
countryman, dashed up. "I have a job for you," said the countryman,
and he led my Bon Chef to New York's most aristocratic hotel. Monsieur
Le Bon Chef could not know there was a cooks' strike on. Down to the
kitchen they led him, and for some weeks he drew ten dollars a day
wages and his room and board right there at the hotel. To fall from
Toulouse into a ten-dollar-a-day job! And when one knew scarce more
than how to boil potatoes!
Of course, when the strike was over, there were no such wages paid as
ten dollars a day. Nothing like that was he earning these six years
later when he could make the beauteous works of art in jelly. I asked
him if he liked his work. He shrugged his shoulders and brushed one
side of his rather bristly blond mustache. "Na--no like so
much--nothing in it but the moaney--make good moaney." He shrugged
his shoulders again and brushed up the other side of his mustache. "No
good work just for tha moaney." You see he really is an artist. He was
my quiet, nice friend, Monsieur Le Bon Chef. Indeed, one night he gave
me a wondrously made empty cigar box with a little lock to it. "Ooh
La-la!" I cried, and made a very deep bow, and said in what I'm sure
was correct French--because Monsieur Le Bon Chef said it was--"Thank
you very much!"
So then, all there was on our side of the kitchen was my little
compartment and the not quite so little compartment of Monsieur Le Bon
Chef, whose confines reached around the corner a bit. Around that
corner and back a little way were two fat Porto-Rican women who washed
glasses and spoke no English. Beyond them, at the right of the stairs
going up to the main kitchen, were clean dishes. They came on
dumb-waiters from some place either above or below.
At the left of the stairs were some five chefs of as many
nationalities--Italian, Spanish, South American, French, Austrian, who
filled hot orders, frying and broiling and roasting. Around the corner
and opposite the Bon Chef and me were first the two cashiers, then my
special friends, the Spanish dessert man and the Greek coffee and tea
man. That is, they were the main occupants of their long compartment,
but at the time of lunch rush at least six men worked there. Counting
the chore persons of various sorts and not counting waiters, we had
some thirty-eight working in or for our cafe--all men but the two fat
Porto-Rican glass washers and me.
Bridget, the dear old soul, came down that first afternoon to see how
I was getting along. I had cleaned up spick and span after the Spanish
woman--and a mess she always managed to leave. The water was out of
the egg-boiling machine and that all polished; the heat turned off in
the toasting machine and that wiped off; lemons sliced; celery
"Julietted"; and I was peeling a tubful of oranges--in the way the
steward had showed me--to be sliced by Spanish Mary for breakfast next
morning.
"I'm sure gettin' along swell," I told Bridget.
"God bless ye," said my dear old guide, and picked her way upstairs
again.
It was plain to see that down our way everybody's work eased up
between 3.30 and 5. Then everyone visited about, exchanged newspapers,
gossiped over counters. We changed stewards at three. Kelly, the
easy-going, jovial (except at times) Irishman, took himself off, and a
narrow-shouldered, small, pernickety German Jew came on for the rest
of my time. When we closed up at nine he went to some other part of
the hotel and stewarded.
My first afternoon Schmitz sauntered about to see what he could find
out. Where did I live, what did I do evenings, what time did I get up
mornings, what did I do Sundays? One question mark was Schmitz. One
thing only he did not ask me, because he knew that. He always could
tell what nationality a person was just by looking at him. So? Yes,
and he knew first thing what nationality I was. So? Yes, I was a
Turk. But the truth of it was that at the hotel I was part Irish and
part French and part Portuguese, but all I could talk was the Irish
because my parents had both died while I was very young. Another day,
my Greek friend, the coffee man, said he was sure there was a little
Greek in me; and an Austrian waiter guessed right away I was a bit
Austrian; and every Spaniard in the kitchen--and the hotel was full of
them--started by talking a mile-a-minute Spanish at me. So a
cosmopolitan, nondescript, melting-pot face is an asset in the labor
world in our fair land--all nationalities feel friendly because they
think you are a countryman. But a Turk--that stretched boundaries a
bit.
For every question Schmitz asked me I asked him one back. His wife and
daughter, sixteen, were in France for three months, visiting the
wife's parents. As Schmitz's pernicketyness became during the next
days more and more impossible to ignore, I solaced my harassed
feelings with the thought of how much it must mean to Mrs. Schmitz to
be away from Mr. Schmitz and his temperament and disposition for three
blessed months. Perhaps the daughter, sixteen, had spoken of that
phase of the trip to Mrs. Schmitz. Mrs. Schmitz, being a dutiful wife
who has stood Mr. Schmitz at least, we surmise, some seventeen years,
replied to such comments of her sixteen-year-old daughter, "Hush,
Freda!"
At five minutes to five Schmitz graciously told me I might go up to my
supper, though the law in the statute books stood five. Everybody
upstairs in the main kitchen, as I made my way to the service
elevator, spoke kindly and asked in the accents of at least ten
different nationalities how I liked my job. Hotel folk, male and
female, are indeed a friendly lot.
The dining room for the help is on the ballroom floor, which is a
short flight of steps above the third. It is the third floor which is
called the service floor, where our lockers are, and the chambermaids'
sleeping quarters, and the recreation room.
There are, it seems, class distinctions among hotel help. The chefs
eat in a dining room of their own. Then, apparently next in line, came
our dining room. I, as pantry girl, ranked a "second officer." We had
round tables seating from eight to ten at a table, table cloths and
cafeteria style of getting one's food. The chefs were waited upon. In
our dining room ate the bell boys, parlor maids, laundry workers,
seamstresses, housekeepers, hotel guards and police, the employment
man, pantry girls--a bit of everything. To reach our dining room we
had to pass through the large room where the chambermaids ate. They
had long bare tables, no cloths, and sat at benches without backs.
As to food, our dining room but reflected the state of mind any and
every hotel dining room reflects, from the most begilded and
bemirrored down. Some thought the food good, some thought it awful,
some thought nothing about it at all, but just sat and ate. One thing
at least was certain--there was enough. For dinner there was always
soup, two kinds of meat, potatoes, vegetables, dessert, ice tea, milk,
or coffee. For supper there was soup again, meat or fish, potatoes, a
salad, and dessert, and the same variety of drinkables to choose from.
Once I was late at lunch and ate with the help's help. The woman who
dished up the vegetables was in a fearful humor that day. People had
been complaining about the food. "They make me sick!" she grunted.
"They jus' oughta try the ---- Hotel. I worked in their help's dinin'
room for four years and we hardly ever seen a piece of meat, and as
for eggs--I'm tellin' ya a girl was lucky if she seen a egg them four
years."
The people in our dining room were like the people in every dining
room: some were sociable and talked to their neighbors, some were not
sociable at all. There was no regular way of seating. Some meals you
found yourself at a table where all was laughter and conversation. The
next meal, among the same number of people, not one word would be
spoken. "Pass the salt" would grow to sound warm and chummy.
Half an hour was the time allowed everyone for meals. With a friendly
crowd at the table that half hour flew. Otherwise, there was no way of
using up half an hour just eating. And then what?
After a couple of days, some one mentioned the recreation room.
Indeed, what's in a name? Chairs were there, two or three settees, a
piano, a victrola, a Christy picture, a map of South America, the
dying soldier's prayer, and three different sad and colored pictures
of Christ. Under one of these was pinned a slip of paper, and in
homemade printing the worthy admonition:
"No cursing no stealing when tempted look on his kindly face."
There were all these things, but no girls. Once in a while a forlorn
bunch of age would sit humped in a chair, now and then a victrola
record sang forth its worn contents, twice the piano was heard. After
some ten days my large fat friend from the help's pantry informed me
that she and I weren't supposed to be there--the recreation room was
only for chambermaids and like as not any day we'd find the door
locked. Sure enough, my last day at the hotel I sneaked around in the
middle of the afternoon, as usual, to see what gossip I could pick up,
and the door was locked. But I made the recreation room pay for itself
as far as I was concerned. Every day I managed to pick up choice
morsels of gossip there that was grist to my mill.
After my first supper I could find nothing to do or no one to talk to,
so back I went to work--feeling a good deal like teacher's pet. About
four o'clock it was my business to tell Schmitz what supplies we were
out of and what and how much we'd need for supper. When I got back
from supper there were always trays of food to be put in the ice
chest, salads to be fixed, blackberries to dish out, celery to wash,
and the like. By the time that was done supper was on in our cafe.
That is, for some it was supper; for others, judging by the looks of
the trays which passed hurriedly by my compartment, stopping only
long enough for sliced lemon for the ice tea, it was surely dinner.
Dinner _de luxe_ now and then! Such delectable dishes! How did anybody
ever know their names enough to order them?
From 6 to 7.30 was the height of the supper rush. What a variable
thing our patrons made of it! Some evenings there would be a regular
run on celery salads, then for four nights not a single order.
Camembert cheese would reign supreme three nights in succession--not
another order for the rest of the week. Sometimes it seemed as if the
whole of creation sat without, panting for sliced tomatoes. The next
night stocked up in advance so as to keep no one waiting--not a human
being looked at a tomato.
At eight o'clock only stragglers remained to be fed, and my job was to
clear out the ice chest of all but two of each dish, send it upstairs
to the main kitchen, and then start scrubbing house. Schmitz let it be
known that one of the failings of her whose place I was now filling,
the one who was asked to leave the Friday night before the Monday
morning I appeared, was that she was not clean enough. At first, a
year and a half ago, she was cleanly and upright--that is, he spoke of
such uprightness as invariably follows cleanliness. But as time wore
on her habits of cleanliness wore off, and there were undoubtedly
corners in the ice box where her waning-in-enthusiasm fingers failed
to reach. But on a night when the New York thermometer ranges up
toward the nineties it is a pure and unadulterated joy to labor
inside an ice box. I scrubbed and rinsed and wiped until Schmitz
almost looked approving. Only it was congenital with Schmitz that he
never really showed approval of anything or anybody. Schmitz was the
kind (poor Mrs. Schmitz with her three months only of freedom) who
always had to change everything just a little. There would echo down
the line an order, "One Swiss cheese, little one" (that referred to
me, not the cheese). Schmitz would stroll over from where he was
trying to keep busy watching everyone at once, enter the very confines
of my compartment, and stand over me while I sliced that Swiss cheese.
It was always either too big, in which case he took the knife from my
hands and sliced off one-sixteenth of an inch on one end; or too
small, in which case Schmitz would endeavor to slice a new piece
altogether. The chances were it would end in being even smaller than
the slice I cut. In that case, Schmitz would say, "Led it go, anyway."
And then, because he would always be very fair, he stood and explained
at length why the piece was too big, if it were too big, or too small,
if too small. "You know, it's dis vay--" My Gawd! not once, but every
night. There was always one slice too many or too few on the
sliced-tomato order. Schmitz would say, "There must be five slices."
The next time I put on five slices Schmitz stuck that nose of his
around the waiter's shoulder.
"Hey, vhat's dat? Only five slices? De guests won't stand for dat, you
know. Dey pay good money here. Put anoder slice on."