Developing Empathy

I spend about eight years of my life waiting tables, and there was much I liked about the job.  I grew up before sports was promoted for women, so waitressing seemed like my first athletic success.  Also, when the restaurant got really busy, being in the present moment was the only possibility.  Worries, if only for the shift, disappeared.  When I’m at a restaurant with someone who gives rude orders to the staff, I assume they have never waited tables.  I sometimes think everybody should have a turn as wait-staff.

So I was pleased to read Michelle Wildgen say the same thing and a little surprised at her reasons:

A required year on the front lines would not just be a refresher in simple good manners, but the reminder of the underlying purpose of those manners: Even in a privileged dining room, this is a crowded, uneasy world, and being considerate of each other at the moments our lives unavoidably intersect can smooth the rough edges just a little bit. A former server is more likely to treat wait staff as sentient beings, yes, but I’d like to think we also retain some measure of empathy, too, much as we try to squelch it. A lot of lives came into my orbit when I was a server, drawing me in at moments that were joyous, sorrowful, nerve-wracking and all the more delightful or harrowing for occurring so publicly. You can’t live in your own hermetic world if you’re a server; you can’t avoid learning about the lives of others, not when those others arrive in your life each and every night, bringing with them a bundle of hopes and worries and celebrations and rifts.

Waiting tables is no empathy-producing panacea, but it helps.