Daily chronicle of a waiter’s life

OI meet them every day. We order from them. We meet them. Some stare at them. Some people don’t respect them. Everyone knows them, but how many are interested in their lives? We order them, we give them orders, we want them to be at our service, we ask them to pay attention to the customers, but the reverse is almost never verified. They are the waiters in cafes, what we commonly call ‘cafe waiters’.

Their fate is special. Their lives resemble a soap opera. They are young, not so young, students, men, women or the occasional waiter, they work for nonsense. A pittance of salary plus a few bribes, the well-known tip. We met some of these men and women, we talked about life, people, judgments, society, politics, sex and other things. Uplifting.

Have you ever talked to a ‘cafe waiter’ who has an open face, the broad smile of a happy day and the good nature of those who have a good reputation in life? Perhaps on the pile we will meet some, from this human category that does not care about the vagaries of existence and that considers the bad weather of feelings as simple incidents on this long path we call life. But generally a man or a good woman, young or more experienced, carries out the task, returns his drip tray, his soaked cloth smelling of bleach, wipes the table, always sticky even in so-called more luxurious cafes, and we turn our backs. The customer is owed the appropriate smile, because his employer has explained to him that the customer is king. I bet there isn’t a single reader out there who is likely to read these lines and wouldn’t see themselves sitting in a cafe, ordering their drink and waiting for the man in uniform (it’s almost become de rigeur) to bring them back what he wants and fast. But who takes the time to look at this person who serves him? Who knows how this eighteen year old girl manages to spend her day under the lustful gaze of a pair of perverts leering at her backside, casting a blood-soaked eye into the hollow of a breast, while trying to get a date? And if it doesn’t work, there’s no tip. She doesn’t deserve it, she didn’t do the right thing: do her job.

Badreddine fulfills his role as a waiter in a select café on Boulevard Hassan II. It’s not cheerful, but it’s a more pleasant environment, with a rather preppy clientele. I’ve been here for four years. I’m doing pretty well, but I don’t like this job. You know, we can say that the customers come from a wealthier social class, but they all exhibit the same behavior. To them I’m the boy, so I have to bow, smile when I don’t want to, talk, show that I’m happy to be treated like an idiot. But believe me, sit down, I’ll bring you tea and you’ll see what well-dressed gentlemen and ladies are capable of. And in fact write for an hour how we talk to the waiter Mounir, who in turn laughs at every rejection to tell me: “You see what I told you”. Mounir attended high school but was unable to obtain his baccalaureate degree. He went to a vocational training center to get a job in the restaurant or hotel industry, but due to lack of luck, that didn’t work out either. He fell back on waiter work and so far so good. But like the man who falls from the fifteenth floor, with each floor he falls he says to himself: So far so good, but what will he say when he passes the first floor? Mounir then tells us the joke about the difference between the one who falls from the fifteenth and the one who falls from the first? Come on, I’ll give it to you, what’s the difference? Go to the end of my article if you want to know, for now let’s go back to our glasses, our ashtrays full of cigarette butts, the running water, the bitter tea and others…

The case of Kenza

“If I had wanted to, I would have already gotten married here, in this café. Every time I place an order the guy tells me I’m cute and I don’t deserve to work here. It’s not a job for a girl like me. He starts by ordering coffee, then tea, orange juice, three glasses of water and at the end my mobile phone number. When I don’t give it, he looks at me askance and says it’s: “It’s a cheap coffee and it’s served without leaving a tip.”

Saïda is actually cute, a beautiful girl, but she has had enough of this job where both men and women treat her like the last of the last. “It’s even worse when a couple shows up. You have the guy who asks for a drink and the girl looks where he looks. When it’s her turn to order, she makes a fuss about me and finally asks for orange juice. And she’s never happy… She’ll call me ten times to soap me up, give me lessons, and let me know in front of her boyfriend that I’m worse than nothing. Sometimes I tolerated it, but once I was almost thrown out because I told a woman that if I wanted a man, he would definitely not be hers, because he is ugly and between them they made a good couple. In short, Kenza receives more than Dh2,000 per month. What to do with such a meager nest egg? Buy a pair of shoes, a cheap bottle of counterfeit perfume, top up your Jawal card, take three baths in the derb hammam and wait for the next paycheck. How do you live then? “I don’t live with this job. The truth allows me to pretend. Because actually it is my mother who sometimes gives me money for transportation (white taxi), but at least I work and I don’t behave like a whore, that’s something.”

In another case, Ba Driss toured the big bars of the city before settling down, as he says, because he can no longer stand the atmosphere of alcohol, at night with guys ready to battle the fate: “I’ve given enough, now I have a job in this cafe, but I’m tired of it all.” Why? Times have changed, cafes are run by people who know nothing about the business and customers have no respect for people. There are servers that work with me here. They hesitate to do everything: empty the trash, wash the glasses, clean the toilets, do the shopping for the owners, pay for water and electricity… and much more, the waiters are also cigarette sellers, they can sell that also a few joints and occasionally bouncers to chase away intruders, beggars, lunatics and drug addicts who could cause trouble. And all this for 1,800 DH. It’s not a job, it’s slavery.” Is there no point in asking Ba Brahim why he didn’t get a job in a restaurant? ‘A matter of principle. I have been to Mecca and I no longer want to work in a place where alcohol circulates. So it is a choice and we respect it, but still it is not fun for a 68 year old man to be fooled by fools, fresh from not knowing what the ball was inflated with, the same balloon that might have been made by the same ba Brahim at a time when the parents of these uneducated rascals did not even have a birth plan. In short, ba Driss does not have hard teeth. He has had long hours of flying and life has taught him that it is better to close your eyes from time to time, to see better when you want to. “You want the truth: girls work better than boys. I’m here and I’m observing. There are three girls and two boys. Girls are serious, but boys cheat. I don’t care what the client thinks, but what I think about myself when I cheat is very important to me. I can even say that this is the only thing that has value in my eyes: my idea of ​​myself.

Morocco is a fertile ground for a socio-pathological, anthropo-ethnographic, geographical-lexical study of cafes and other places open to rest and relaxation of these daily marathon runners, some of whom work while sitting, the other running in all directions for nothing rent. and others who do without coffee, and drink it in other places of a very different nature. In short, a colorful zoology and very heterogeneous spaces. We have the classic cafe: wooden chairs, worn tables, two waiters, a manager, a coffee machine and minimal service. Rudimentary café, a relic that only exists in working-class neighborhoods. Place of meetings, conflicts, big fights, settling scores and other comforts of life. The waiter is part of the decor, almost dehumanized. He basically lives with the bare minimum.

From one cafe to another…

There is the “middle class” café: cleaner tables and chairs, a touch of decor (always a nice kitsch) different waiters, boys and girls and a woman in front of the toilets to whom you have to pass a coin. Here the waiters take themselves a little more seriously, but they haven’t yet reached the stage where they are an important character in the place. It is a step that has to be earned, it seems. But at least a touch of cleanliness, and unlike the first type of café, we don’t smoke joints, at least not in front of everyone. We don’t play cards and we rarely fight. The waiter wears a tight-fitting white coat with a pocket for his tip.

There is the more luxurious café. Customers pretending I come to the cafe to be served like a chef, otherwise I’ll take it home in my last machine I brought from Colombia on my last trip. In short, we show off and we are seen. Coffee, juice, tea, accessories. The most important thing is the silhouette, the clothed body that lets others know what perfume we are wearing, what brand of shoes we are wearing and, above all, who we are talking to. Also which newspaper we read. Even if we don’t understand Byron’s language, we open a British magazine and become an expert on the exchanges between Southeast Asia and the Bermuda Triangle. In short, a joke, served in a velvet box with a hint of truth here and there, like when we spit on the ground or when we unleash a long string of nasty insults about a missed goal by MBappé or a random outing by Macron for children.

In short, the cafe, the tea room is made of nickel chrome and there the waiters and waitresses must belong to the same social class. When a country bumpkin shows up because he has business in the area, they examine him, scan him and think before they let him sit next to the good people. Bullshit, but it serves as an illusion. And there, strict clothing, speaking of strictness, rigorous approach, rigorous references, a closed club without subscriptions, but almost.
There’s the sex den. Decadent and cheap decor. Flashy, low seats, hookah galore, tight asses, excellent flies.

In short, we show color, we are here to flirt, confuse ideas, blow tons of steam into the cup and take a puff at the end of the evening, where these aromas of the local hookah version have been revised and corrected. And the variations of the genre are numerous. Moreover, between a café and a tea room there is a café or a tea room. A profitable business, otherwise the owners would be selling sardines at auction. And in this anthology, the people who work in these places are convicts for poor wages, disrespect, humiliation, insults, anger, shouting, bad thoughts and other inconveniences of the circumstances.