I did that arithmetic in my sleep.

I did it while I smiled at tables and carried trays and took my exams.

And the number at the center of all of it, the number that could tip the whole delicate balance one way or the other in a single night, was almost always something close to four hundred dollars.

That was the size of the wave that could capsize us.

I lived my life with one eye always on the water, watching for it.

Chapter 2 — All Kinds of People

When you wait tables long enough, you meet every kind of person there is, and you learn to read them fast, because your livelihood depends on it.

Some customers are absolute sweethearts, the kind who look you in the eye and thank you by name and tip like they remember what it is to work for a living.

Those tables are a gift, and not only for the money; on a hard night, a little genuine warmth from a stranger can carry you through to the end of your shift.

I want to say something in defense of the good customers, the sweethearts, because they do not get enough credit and because their kindness taught me something I built my whole later life around.

The difference between a person who treats a server as a human being and a person who treats them as furniture is not really about money; I served plenty of wealthy people who were lovely and plenty who were monstrous, and the same across every income I encountered.

It is about whether a person is in the habit of seeing the people who serve them.

Some people move through the world genuinely noticing the humanity of everyone in it, the waitress, the busser, the person cleaning the restroom, and some people have trained themselves, or been trained, to see only the people who are useful or important to them and to let everyone else blur into background.

The kind ones, the ones who looked me in the eye and asked how my night was going and meant it, were not necessarily richer or poorer than the cruel ones.