Cookeville, Tennessee. It’s the kind of city people pass through on the highway while on the way to someplace else. That was my plan, at least.
The snow had other plans. Flakes big and small danced in the sky like a row of ballerinas slightly out of step. George, my boyfriend, and I were not worried as we began the journey from Nashville to Washington, DC that morning. The day before, we had driven from Oklahoma City to Nashville. We filled up on free breakfast waffles and left the La Quinta hotel around 10:30 a.m., excited to finally get home.
I am from central Massachusetts, where snow piles grew almost as tall as me on any given January day in elementary school. A few inches of snow would not have earned us a 2 hour delay, let alone a snow day. If there was a foot or two of snow, I’d expect a call from the superintendent of Southborough public schools. The call usually came. My mom entered my room and lightly tapped me awake to deliver the exciting news. Snow day! Back to bed.
I failed to realize that in Nowhere, Tennessee, a few inches of snow feel like an apocalypse.
We ignored the urges of the hotel employees to stay another night, that no one is getting anywhere today. George drives a Subaru Crosstrek, so we thought we would be fine. It turns out it was the drivers around us who were not fine. I knitted while singing along to Christmas music, trying to make the best of the winter storm shadowing us. It’s a marshmallow world in the winter.
It had been three hours. We remained in the same spot on the freeway.
“You do realize that we may be stuck here for hours, maybe even overnight,” George told me. My green Hydro Flask had just run out of water and the only snacks we had were Hershey’s kisses.
Finally, at around 2 p.m., the community of cars dispersed and we peeled off into the nearest town.
“Look, there’s a Waffle House and it looks open!” I smiled up at the sign. “I have never been before.”
“Trust me, you don’t want to go there,” George murmured.
“Yes I do!” I wanted to experience authentic America, the America I read about in books and listened to in songs and wrote about in research papers. I heard Jake Owen’s voice in my head, Hit the Waffle House for some real food / but that waitress she’s real rude / She’s got real problems and we do too so we tip her anyway.
At 10 p.m., after we checked into the closest cheap hotel and laid in bed watching Pawn Stars for hours, I finally got my wish.
The Waffle House directly corners the La Quinta Hotel in Cookeville. We huddled for warmth and tried not to slip on the ice that coated the road as we trudged over. There were about twenty people in the restaurant, which seemed busy for so late in the night.
“It’s take out only,” a woman behind the counter with a dyed red ponytail and a black “WH” visor muttered. A rainbow LGBT+ pin brightened her black apron. She looked about 35 years old and I guessed that she had a kid or two waiting for her to come home. She shouted orders to the two other employees, a plump blonde-haired woman with face piercings and a scrawny man with long slicked black hair.
In between two customers, she took a phone call. “I was supposed to leave here an hour and a half ago…….we are slammed because we are the only place open in town……It’s been a nightmare…..I’m only still working here because of the benefits…..”
She looked like she was about to burst into tears, the way I do every few weeks, mid-shift at the coffee shop where I work. One customer says one thing and it sends me running to the bathroom. I wished she had the time and privacy to cry.
“May we please have the grilled chicken sandwich and a waffle with chocolate chips and peanut butter chips on top?” I asked as nicely as possible.
I knew how she felt, but not to the extent. I knew that working in the service industry is a thankless job that promises you a role as the customer punching bag. But I didn’t know what it was like to be in your mid-thirties trying to survive off of a minimum wage of $2.13 an hour plus tips. I was a college student with a part time job, not a lifetime service worker. I left her a 50 percent tip.
I guess that’s America. The whole town shuts its doors for the snow and here we are still expecting service workers to risk their safety to show up to work. And this woman probably had no choice but to show up to work. A missed shift means late bills, less groceries, saying no to your child if they need new sneakers.
George was right. The waffle was nothing special. It wasn’t quite hot enough to melt the chocolate chips and peanut butter chips. I ate it anyway.
~
I live in Washington, DC. It is a place filled with college students and young professionals. Eager students learn how to climb the corporate ladder before they learn how to cook themselves dinner. Young professionals are too caught up in their Capitol Hill jobs to tip their baristas on the way to work (trust me, I’d know). People in Washington, on and off the Hill, often forget that the service industry is a lifetime career for more than three quarters of the country.
As my friends and I graduate college, there is nonstop talk of how to land a “big girl job” that is better paying and more impressive than a student job. As if working in the service industry is not what adults do.
When I was home for Christmas, a family friend told me to lie on my resume to hide the “gap” between my graduation date and starting a “real” job.
“But there is no gap in my resume,” I replied. “I’m working at the coffee shop until I find a job that I want.”
“Yeah, well…that just doesn’t look great on a resume.”
I shrugged. I couldn’t explain to him in ten seconds how much I have learned from working in the service industry for six years, more than I learned at any internship.
The South is slower than the North, not just in the speed people talk stroll down the sidewalk, but in the way they move about their lives. In the North, there is a constant rush to get to the next thing, that next phase of your life. There is no time to enjoy the present, or you will fall behind.
North and South are not inherently opposite. We are all trying to get by and make a living, and no matter how the living gets made, there is honor in that. There is honor in working at Waffle House. Perhaps, more.
