How do you like your eggs, sweetie? Don't worry. Career waitresses like Flo know how to take care of you.
You are now poor. We both know this. But a colleague told me a decade ago that when we in the U.S. slid into Second World status, we'd do so like the Italians: We'd still look great, and we'd still eat well.
So even though you are now poor, you will still find the cash to eat in restaurants, just as women in the Great Depression still found the cash to buy a lipstick from the Avon lady who had to get a job because her husband ran off and hopped a hobo train.
Perhaps you won't order the Chef's Tasting Menu (unless you got your Lehman Bros. bonus for a job well-done), but you aren't going to work a full-time job and then come home to your sad-eyed children and make dinner each and every night. Nor are you going to make your said sad-eyed children have dinner on the table waiting for you, because, let's face it, the fact that you are working full-time means you have never taught them more in the kitchen than how to nuke a toaster strudel.
At the risk of sounding like one of those women who complains about the service using italics -- "the food was great, but the service ... !" -- I will here boldly state that when you are spending your hard-saved moneys in a restaurant, some of those restaurants will be staffed by servers who can ruin your whole night.
And others will be staffed with God's rainbow children dispensing the milk of human kindness along with your chipped beef on toast. (Chipped beef on toast is a style of foodstuff the poor eat, and that you would do well to get used to.)
Who are these many kinds of servers? Let us meet them now.
The Actress
If you live in, say, Detroit, your chances of encountering an Actress are very low. But in Los Angeles or New York or Miami (where they are known as Models), the likelihood of having your meal ruined by one of God's specialest creatures nears 1200 percent.
