Let them eat cake has been running on love and enthusiasm for 50 issues. If you find this writing brings you pleasure or new perspective, I’d like to invite you to become a paid subscriber. Your patronage would mean a great deal, and enable me to devote more time to this work – something I’ve been trying to do for years.
I really resonated with your last sentence: "It’s worth asking how these expectations came into being, whether they can realistically be met today, and if they were ever reasonable at all."
I believe our inability and discomfort with rest contributes to this predicament. We are always in a rush. "The customer is always right." Value is derived from performance.
And I think this struggle to rest and be valued on performance is inextricably tied to / an extension of slave & indentured labor and capitalism. The work of growing food, of cooking, of cleaning - these are not performed by those who have the money for leisure (for the most part).
The fact that Americans don't have "house help" is a new phenomenon. Slave and servant quarters were built into universities (some Harvard freshman dorms used to be servant quarters), homes, and estates across the country. It is part of our architecture, our backbone.
It never made much sense to me - that the things most necessary to live, in this case, food, are so cheaply priced. Shouldn't those things with more value be compensated as such?
My maternal great grandfather and grandfather were part of the first wave of Filipino immigrants to the US in the early 1900s. They worked as farm labor. My grandfather went on to work as a kitchen steward / dishwasher until retirement. This hotel was a primarily, if not exclusively, white institution (Westin St. Francis, San Francisco). He was supposed to be a teacher.
My Dad went into the Chinese restaurant business for a bit too; the copious amounts of offerings at very cheap prices made it a struggle to turn a profit. He left the business at a deficit.
I have worked in a cafe briefly, and am meal prepping for a family with many MANY health issues. Sometimes the work has driven me to tears and it's definitely not at the same intensity as a restaurant.
I bring these stories up because I'm curious in exploring how these mentalities over "menial" labor have carried into our expectations of restaurant and food provision, both explicitly and implicitly.
What would it look like if we weren't obsessed with turnaround time, with efficiency, with productivity? What if we accepted that certain things take time, and that these things deserve to be compensated? I'm thinking idealistically, but yeah, it's encouraging to see that you are writing on similar things and being critical of what exists.
TW, this is super interesting, thoughtful and uncommonly well written. So happy to be subscribing, and I look forward to continuing to read. One question: Where are you based and writing from? Presumably somewhere in the U.S.? Might be nice to put that in a note somewhere (your About page?) just as a kind of geographic anchor.
I really resonated with your last sentence: "It’s worth asking how these expectations came into being, whether they can realistically be met today, and if they were ever reasonable at all."
I believe our inability and discomfort with rest contributes to this predicament. We are always in a rush. "The customer is always right." Value is derived from performance.
And I think this struggle to rest and be valued on performance is inextricably tied to / an extension of slave & indentured labor and capitalism. The work of growing food, of cooking, of cleaning - these are not performed by those who have the money for leisure (for the most part).
The fact that Americans don't have "house help" is a new phenomenon. Slave and servant quarters were built into universities (some Harvard freshman dorms used to be servant quarters), homes, and estates across the country. It is part of our architecture, our backbone.
It never made much sense to me - that the things most necessary to live, in this case, food, are so cheaply priced. Shouldn't those things with more value be compensated as such?
My maternal great grandfather and grandfather were part of the first wave of Filipino immigrants to the US in the early 1900s. They worked as farm labor. My grandfather went on to work as a kitchen steward / dishwasher until retirement. This hotel was a primarily, if not exclusively, white institution (Westin St. Francis, San Francisco). He was supposed to be a teacher.
My Dad went into the Chinese restaurant business for a bit too; the copious amounts of offerings at very cheap prices made it a struggle to turn a profit. He left the business at a deficit.
I have worked in a cafe briefly, and am meal prepping for a family with many MANY health issues. Sometimes the work has driven me to tears and it's definitely not at the same intensity as a restaurant.
I bring these stories up because I'm curious in exploring how these mentalities over "menial" labor have carried into our expectations of restaurant and food provision, both explicitly and implicitly.
What would it look like if we weren't obsessed with turnaround time, with efficiency, with productivity? What if we accepted that certain things take time, and that these things deserve to be compensated? I'm thinking idealistically, but yeah, it's encouraging to see that you are writing on similar things and being critical of what exists.
TW, this is super interesting, thoughtful and uncommonly well written. So happy to be subscribing, and I look forward to continuing to read. One question: Where are you based and writing from? Presumably somewhere in the U.S.? Might be nice to put that in a note somewhere (your About page?) just as a kind of geographic anchor.