Woolson 1

Community Ethnography

In this paper I discuss a community of waitstaff I have been able to experience first-

hand. In this research paper I discuss the benefits of serving and how it is helpful to

everyday work life after. This class helped me write it in a very persuasive and

attributed way.

The Excellence Learned in Serving

In a small town called New London, located on Little Lake Sunapee in New

Hampshire, there is one of the last seasonal resorts in the U.S. called Twin Lakes Villa.

It is open during the summer only, July to September, and has had the same families of

guests go every year for multiple generations. Each family stays a week on average

and the number of members in each family range from about 4-10. One major aspect of

the experience of the guests stay is the dining. The guests prepay for breakfast, lunch,

and dinner for the whole week, so they are in the dining hall for every meal unless they

decide to go out for a night or two. Each family sits at the same table for the whole

week and is served by the same waiter or group of waiters for the whole week as well.

Another tradition at TLV is that all the waiters are and have always been in the range of

16-22 years old. Serving these families who have been coming for up to 100 years and

expect the same style of service and performance year to year is not an easy task. The

challenge of learning quickly what the guests expect along with what the family that runs

the place expects is a great opportunity to grow and get an experience of what work

could be like after school. The major aspect that is the most beneficial to the young
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aged waiters is the intercommunication had with all the different people whether that be

verbal or through a piece of paper. All in all, working as a waiter at TLV, or any

restaurant, is greatly beneficial to any high school or college student as there is a

plethora of communication, social, and management skills that can be learned through

the interactions had with everyone throughout the dining hall.

To gain a greater insight on the experience of a waiter at TLV and how the

community is a great place to learn for future work I interviewed Alex who has been a

waiter there for 5 years. I asked him a series of 15 questions, and each supports the

idea that his interaction with people has helped him greatly in developing his sociability

and flux of it in work. I first asked him what it is like being a waiter and he talked about

how it is a lot of hard fast paced work, but worth it because of the good money and

mostly because of the experience in serving other people. I then asked him to talk

about any skills he thinks he has learned specifically from being a waiter and he had an

abundance of answers: He learned social skills and how you are allowed and should

talk to different people in relation to you. This would be referring to talking to the other

waiters as opposed to the cooks or guests. He also talked about time management,

memorization, and communication skills. These all deal with when to put orders in from

the slips he receives, and how to put them in or customize them depending on what he

has been told by whoever he is serving. Along with this, the communication is very

different relative to guests versus waiters. He was telling me how he adapts to how he

is wanted to be. For example, some people want a social waiter who is easy to relate

too while others want a very formal fast paced waiter. On the other hand, with the other

waiters he is constantly having fun to keep a smile on his face and stay upbeat while on
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the job. All this interaction with people has developed a valuable trait for Alex: He has

become very good at quickly observing people and can easily decipher in what way he

is expected to act. This works well as a young aged waiter because at TLV (Twin Lakes

Villa) the majority of the waiters pay comes from tips so the staff is heavily incentivized

to work hard and mold to exactly what the guest wants from them. Alex continued to tell

me that it may look easy being a waiter as you just do what someone tells you but it is

clear that if you try to be a great waiter or even just an ok waiter there is much to be

learned.

Along with all the verbal interactions Alex told me about at TLV, I asked him

about the menus, order slips, and tip slips and what skills they have helped him acquire

or enhance. For the menus at TLV he explained that each item just has a fancy 3-word

name with no description. Some examples of these items I saw on the menu are the

Seafood Newburg, Winnies Salad, and a TLV Brownie. Each of these have a word or

adjective that makes the item sound very unique but also ambiguous to the customer.

Being a waiter, one skill that must be obtained are good memorization skills to know

what is on the menu and what each item is. Along with this though, Alex also knows

that; for example, each of these three things is not as unique as they sound. The

seafood Newburg is a pastry shell with scallops and shrimp in it, the Winnies salad is a

salad with nuts and strawberries on it, and the TLV brownie is a brownie with chocolate

chips. Not that the food is not extremely good, it just is more basic than one would think

if described on the simplest level. After asking him about it, Alex then used these

examples to show me how having a menu that gives such little information to the

customer has allowed him to expand his vocabulary and become more creative. When
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explaining the salad and brownie to me for example he talked about how Winnie was

the best friend of the original owner and that she was the first one to come up with the

idea of an arugula based salad with scattered walnuts and a handful of strawberries

with a balsamic vinaigrette dressing drizzled on top. Then with the brownie he

explained how he would describe them as freshly made by Tanner (the baker) with a

cake like outside and fudgy inside loaded with melty chocolate chips. None of what he

says is a lie, it is just a very elaborate way to put it. Each time he would use what

seemed to be an ambiguous menu to enhance what he was serving. This is a very

useful skill in how much it gets him brainstorming about how to describe things. The

order slips were something I also got to see. Since at TLV the guests write down what

they want to eat and hand it to their waiter, each slip is written in a different order and

way with different abbreviations as well. This has greatly helped Alex learn to adapt to

new writings and abbreviations. The combination of the menus and how other people

write things really enhance a waiters adaptability in how they can interpret and reiterate

things to and from people. Once again, a communicative skill that will be very helpful in

the long-run scheme of any kind of work.

Along with the interview, menus, and slips I saw, I also got to see what goes on

in the kitchen and dining hall. In my observations of the interactions of the waiters with

people, it was crazy to see first-hand how accurate everything Alex told me was. Being

a fifth-year waiter at a place where it is the same people coming back year to year, he

seemed to have a little bit of a better grasp on how to handle different guests but all of

the other younger waiters were doing very similar things. There were many families that

the waiters would walk up, rest their hand on the back of the guests chair, and help
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them scroll through the menu while chatting about life. Clearly a very relaxed setting

where the waiter has easily shifted into a very friendly relationship with the customer.

On the other hand, there were many situations where the waiters glided over to the

table with hands behind their back, big smile, chest out, and ready to be commanded on

what to bring. While this is very black and white and there is some in between of how

the waiters acted around different guests, the point is even though they may be doing

this as an incentive to maximize their tip, it is still the skill of adapting in communication

through observation and judgment that they are so good at being waiters. Within the

kitchen the speech and slips passed around all have to do with abbreviations and

saying things as quickly, simply, and easily as possible. Rather than asking for the

Brownie and Salad as Alex described it to the guests before, one of the waiters for

example said I need 3 brownies and 1 salad with a slip that read 3-brwn 1-sld. Then he

would have to time when to come back and pick it up while he goes to check on his

other tables. This communication is all about management and organization which is

also a great skill to have. The waiters are also very good at communicating swiftly with

each other in the dining hall. They are constantly swapping faces, slips, and brief words

to stay organized and aware of everything going on around them. These skills learned

as a young waiter are ones that will stick with them for life.

After talking to Alex about what it is like being a waiter at TLV and seeing the

work go on in real life the question regarding whether skills and knowledge are gained

through the interactions with people as a young waiter can be answered with a firm yes.

Not only does it increase the sociability and communicative skills of a person but they

also learn skills regarding management, adaptability, judgement, and many other things.
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It is easily seen that one can be a waiter and just take orders but it is how they do this

that the skills gained are unlike any other job someone could start off with. Since it may

not be a profession that someone would want to do for their whole life, waiting is great

for high-school and college aged students as it is so unique in how well the interactions

and ways of communication teach skills necessary for work and interactions throughout

life.
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Works Cited

Akpan, Alex. "Discourse Community TLV Waiter Interview." Telephone interview. 12

Oct. 2017.

Twin Lake Villa Check/Order Slip. New London: Twin Lake Villa Resort, 2017. Print.

Twin Lake Villa Menu. New London: Twin Lake Villa Resort, 2007. Print.