Catherine Rourke
Sedona, AZ

Catherine J. Rourke is an award-winning freelance journalist who writes about workers’ rights, labor issues and workplace reform. For more than two decades, she endured low-wage and workplace indignities, diligently recording them in a daily journal. But it was the Grand Canyon waitress job that made her decide to finally do something about workplace abuse. Believing that one’s vocation, no matter how humble, should also be one’s vacation, she traded her order pad for a reporter’s notebook to write about the invisible working poor in America and their diminishing workplace rights. She now uses her pen to restore dignity, prosperity and solidarity among all workers, celebrating the unheralded contributions of dishwashers, janitors and food servers to humanity while offering “soul-utions” for more harmonious workplaces. Her mission is to banish subminimum wage, resurrect the labor movement for all workers, promote the reform of archaic labor laws, initiate a “prosperous” wage campaign to raise the minimum wage and empower workers by educating them about their rights. By restoring the lost art of muckraking to today’s homogenized, decaffeinated journalism, she also hopes to evoke massive indignation over the disintegration of health care, pensions and other benefits. Her column “Tales from the Trenches” recently won four first-place awards from the National Federation of Press Women and the Arizona Press Club. Visit her award-winning blog “Rebel with a Clause” at www.writeratwork.org.

Abysmal wages at the edge of the abyss

Like the Colorado River slowing tearing away at the ancient rock,
so the steady flow of humanity erodes her waitress body and soul.

This is no ordinary job in no ordinary place.

Perched on a ledge some 6,500 feet over an ancient precipice, Alex serves more than 4.5 million annual tourists the cheeseburger and chimichanga they have traveled thousands of miles to eat. At any given moment, more than a dozen tour buses pull up to the Bright Angel Lodge, mercilessly depositing hundreds of famished people at her restaurant in a never-ending line at the door for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Like the Colorado River slowing tearing away at the ancient rock, so the steady flow of humanity erodes her waitress body and soul. Foodservice at the Grand Canyon is certainly no picnic. Alex and her co-workers serve more than 1,000 meals per shift while their six-table stations are seated in nonstop succession for eight steady hours without a break. For the total 10-hour day, they will earn a gross wage of $21.30. Gross is only a fitting description for their pay.

Workers report for duty like Marines headed for combat, armed with comfortable shoes, caffeine and determination. A harsh manager orders a military-style lineup to inspect their hair, nails and uniforms. Alex feels humiliated as he orders them to lift their pants to prove they’re wearing matching socks. Failure to do so would mean being sent home with a write-up and no pay. He shouts at them in firing-squad commando fashion, threatening instant termination for the slightest crime – like eating a stray French fry, heaven forbid. Is this a prison or is it a job? It’s a complete nightmare.

Next, Alex faces an exasperating, if not Herculean, list of prep duties: “Crumb” the dining room chairs (all 200 of them); check the traps for rats (luckily she never had to remove one); vacuum the dining room carpet (size of a football field); dust the plastic cactuses; scoop out four racks of sherbet (144 cups) with a tiny scoop that requires 3 rounds just to fill one cup; then peel and slice a bucket of cucumbers with a machete-length butcher’s knife (“avoid getting any blood on the cukes, please”).

Then the bathrooms have to be cleaned. The floors of the women’s room are littered with tissues, some blotted with urbane lipstick colors that only a Frenchwoman would sport in a wilderness area. The toilet seats are dotted with every tone of yellow from daffodil to chartreuse, including shades the crayon companies have yet to invent.

Alex wonders if her hands, about to serve food, should even be addressing such bacteria-ridden tasks. Why are foodservers doing the work of porters and pantry chefs for $2.13 an hour anyway? Such a wage is supposed to be designated solely during tip-producing functions.

The men’s room smells like the Bronx Zoo. Alex reluctantly faces the urinals with a scrub brush in her hand. Like a human Seven Seas, urine from Tanzania, AIDS capital of the world, merges with rivers of toxic waste from men who live near Chernobyl and who bathe in the Ganges, where there’s an outbreak of Hepatitis B. For this, she attended Oxford and read The Iliad and The Odyssey in its original Homeric Greek. For this, she was earning a wage of $2.13 an hour. It must be some sort of a cosmic joke.

Most economic experts blame low skill or lack of education for low wages. But how do you explain them when you’ve got the sheepskins and Corporate America still tosses you crumbs?

This is no job for the faint of heart anywhere. But here, s linging hash to a demanding crowd of impatient, hungry, weary travelers, all in a terrible hurry to eat and catch a glimpse of the famous canyon, is fast and furious, if not maddening. Here under one roof is a virtual Tower of Babel, the cacophony reminiscent of a scene from some Hollywood biblical epic . Nobody, absolutely nobody, speaks a single word of English.

At one table, Alex struggles to take a food order via sign language with a family from the Middle East. The women are veiled, so she can’t read their lips. Nearby, the hostess seats a party from Argentina while a family from China – all eight of them – frantically wave for attention. It’s a virtual United Nations dining room where no one leaves a tip. She glances out the window to remind herself she’s not in Hong Kong.

Alex brings out a chicken fajita to a Japanese woman who insists that she ordered the chimichanga . A Frenchman asks, “Quest’ce que c’est ‘ Thousand Island’?” An Italian wants to know why he got beef when he ordered chicken fried steak. Another waitress reminds her that she’s got four Fisherman’s Platters ready for pick-up with the cooks screaming for her to “move ‘em or lose ‘em.” Now the family in booth 19 complains that their soups are cold, and one of the kids just spilled milk all over the table. The kitchen loses a ticket, and food is delivered to the wrong table. Everyone wants a window, and nobody wants to sit near the door.

A waitress’ job is tough enough anywhere in the world. She is expected to perform like a grinning robot with the mechanical arms of a packing plant and the tireless legs of a centipede while juggling a multitude of constantly shifting priorities with frenetic speed. But, in the Grand Canyon, the demand reaches epic proportions.

“There’s an endless to-do list running through my brain at all times,” Alex said. “I have to appear calm. If I lose it, I lose my tip. It’s not based on effort; it’s all about the guest’s perception of your performance – if they know enough to tip in the first place.”

Every second counts, and the loss of a precious five minutes while customers mull over their salad dressing choices can spell disaster. One innocent mistake can ruin everything. Stress runs high in a business where anything can go wrong and often does. And then everybody wants a separate check.

Alex frantically shuffles a stack of 36 separate tickets while coordinating 36 different soups and salads, 36 beverages and 36 entrees. Deluged and overwhelmed, she forgets to add 2 Cokes and a beer to one check. As punishment, she is informed by the manager that she will have to wash dishes for two weeks – at minimum wage and without her tips. She bursts into tears. One simple human error under superhuman duress has cost her dearly. And there’s nothing she can do; the labor laws in right-to-work states allow management to make up the rules according to their mood and whim.

Stress? Maybe it’s why food servers rank high on the list of the Top Ten Stressful Jobs in a recent health magazine article, along with coal miners, air traffic controllers and emergency medical technicians. Coffee breaks, sick days, weekends, holidays and health insurance? These remain as remote to most foodservice workers as the comfort of a leather-back desk chair.

At 10 p.m., blood sugar now plummeting, Alex still braves a smile to welcome the final strays of hungry tourists. She’s been running on her feet hauling heavy trays of dinners for several hours now – without one of her own. Her pedometer reads 36,859 steps.

Yet Alex’s work has just begun. When the last diner has been fed and the doors are shut, servers still face “side work” – closing cleanup duties performed before they can clock out.

Tables must be reset and napkins folded. Silver, still wet from the dishwasher, is wiped and polished. Counters encrusted with hours of caked soup spills and gravy splatters must be scrubbed. Refrigerators are wiped, beverage machines cleaned, pitchers emptied, salt shakers and sugar bowls filled, food wrapped and put way and kitchen floors mopped. By 11 p.m., the restaurant is hushed and littered with debris like a stadium after the game.

Big bucks? Alex checks her apron pocket for today’s tally after eight hours of pure hell: $38, mostly in coins, including a Japanese yen and an Italian lira. And she hasn’t even “tipped out” the bartender, the busboy, the hostess and the cooks, who all make minimum wage and don’t declare their tips.

Everyone is paid so poorly that they all have their hands out for a take of Alex’s tips. If she fails to give a share, the cooks will claim they never got her order, the busboy will ignore her tables and the hostess will never seat anyone in her section. It’s a vicious circle, and management condones the practice to avoid having to pay higher wages.

More often than not, Alex leaves the restaurant empty-handed. Her hourly wage of $2.13 can’t even buy her a breakfast burrito in her own restaurant. Yet she’ll pay taxes on all the meals she served, regardless of whether she got a tip or not. As for the eight-top from France on table 26 who didn’t leave a dime on a $200 check, she’ll pay taxes out of her pocket for serving them their meals.

Alex innocently ended up in massive debt with the IRS because the subminimum wage failed to provide a sufficient base from which her housing costs, FICA, Medicare and tip taxes could be deducted. Since the IRS assumes that servers receive a 15% gratuity, it taxes them on a set percentage of their sales. Therefore, since almost every customer was a foreign tourist who didn’t leave a tip, by law Alex has to pay taxes on tips she never even earned.

Add to this the contradiction of “zero paychecks.” A wage insufficient to cover the amount of standard deductions and tip taxes translates into no paycheck. In fact, many foodservers often “owe” money on pay day as Alex did in the Grand Canyon.

Employee grievances about the lack of tips and decent wages were dismissed by management, with no recourse. Morale hit an all-time low when the National Park Service refused servers’ request to add a 15% gratuity on parties of six or more, a standard restaurant practice. Also denied was a another proposal to stamp “Gratuity Not Included” in six different languages on the bottom of the check. According to the NPS, to do so represented “solicitation, a completely un-American gesture.”

But, according to Alex, what’s really un-American is the subminimum wage, especially for non-serving duties, and being taxed on tips never received – all while working in a national park. “We weren’t just serving food there,” she said. “We were serving as ambassadors for America to the entire world. But both Amfac and NPS administrations failed to ever recognize us for our indefatigable efforts. Instead, there was an unmistakable, pervasive, plantation-master-versus-the-slaves attitude.”

According to Alex, a mutinous atmosphere developed among park employees whose continual requests for mediation were repeatedly denied by an unconscionably disdainful Amfac management and NPS’s elitist, if not heinous, approach.

“Both Amfac and the park service treated us horribly,” Alex claims. “Rangers would come in the restaurant for expensive meals and wouldn’t look us in the eye, let alone talk to us or return a smile. They’d treat us like untouchables and then leave a quarter tip.”

As a result of the heated dispute, Amfac’s managers issued a warning to all Grand Canyon employees that anyone suspected of soliciting tips from a foreign visitor would be immediately terminated and given 24 hours to vacate the park. This created a “reign of terror” among employees who often found themselves answering questions about the odd American custom of tipping from bewildered international tourists.

Alex considers tipping a degrading custom, one which turns customers into employers and income into a game of “Russian Roulette.” She prefers to have a regular wage and a paycheck she can count on.

“People are clinging to that extra buck they used to leave on the table,” she said. It’s shocking when they leave a pile of change – or even nothing at all – for perfect service. The verbal tips just don’t help us make the car payment. Folks don’t realize that we get two bucks an hour.”

In 1991, foodservers received $2.13 an hour, or half of the $4.25 minimum wage. In 1996, Congress passed the Minimum Wage Increase Act, with an amendment excluding wait staff from any future increases in hourly wage under a tip-credit provision. Therefore, their hourly wage has remained frozen at $2.13 for 14 years, exempt from any minimum-wage increases.

“My hourly wage has only risen $1.28 since I first began serving in the early 1970s, from 85 cents to $2.13, while tips continue to decrease” said Alex. “Years ago, we always got 20-percent tips. Now I feel lucky when I get 12 percent. Maybe waiters are thriving in Beverly Hills, but they certainly aren’t in the national parks.”

Why take a waitress job at the Grand Canyon in the first place?

There was the lure of daily cash combined with the promise of a steady volume of customers. The job in the Arizona Republic boasted “subsidized housing and no car necessary.” It seemed like a great opportunity to make money, pay off debts and experience adventure alongside one of the greatest natural wonders of the world.

What the ad neglected to say is that the average patron at the Grand Canyon was clueless about tipping and that America is the only country in the world that fails to pay a standard minimum hourly wage to its foodservers, especially those who don’t get tips.

Amfac, the concessionaire at the time, represents the largest park management company in the nation, with millions in profits and with operations including Yellowstone, Everglades, Death Valley, Zion, Bryce and many others. Still, it failed to inform applicants that tips would be negligible at best. And it failed to offer a respectable wage or reasonable alternatives to its servers in compensation for the lack of normal tips.

So why on earth stay in such a lousy job?

“We found ourselves trapped like migrant workers in survival mode,” Alex explained. “The trickle of tips was just enough to supply ourselves with basic needs and meals, offered at a discount in the employee cafeteria.”

By the time new hires had relocated to the Grand Canyon and undergone the necessary training period, it was too late for most to turn around and leave. Assimilating back into the “real world” required lots of cash – first, last and security for housing, as well as utility deposits and other moving expenses.

“None of us ever made the amount of money we needed to move back home,” Alex said. “We were literally stuck in the Grand Canyon. The only ones who got out were those who got fired. I finally had to borrow money from my family to get out of there, and I left poorer than when I first arrived. It wasn’t a job; it was a complete horror movie.”

The U.S. Dept of Labor reports that America’s foodservice workers rank among the nation’s lowest wage earners, with an average annual income of $15,000 including tips. While they comprise the largest employee sector in the nation and one of the largest in the state, restaurant workers still lack a unified voice in Washington, as well as in Arizona.

As multitasking professionals, restaurant workers deserve a living wage. They also deserve far more credit for their mental expertise and physical prowess than our society extends them. Serving others is actually a privilege – yes, privilege – and it should be performed in a state of grace. Instead, bruised dignity seems to come with the job description, along with burning feet, burnt toast and getting burned financially.

When Alex questioned her rights as a worker in the Grand Canyon, she was told that she should feel “privileged” to be employed in a right-to-work state. What did that mean? It means that every time she punches her card in the time clock, she, like her fellow workers across the state, forfeits her rights.

“Whenever we entered Grand Canyon National Park, we left our dignity and integrity at the gate – along with any hope of earning a respectable livelihood,” she concluded.

EPILOGUE

There’s simply no excuse.

A multimillion dollar corporation like Amfac, which operates a chain of concessions in most of America’s national parks, charges astronomical prices for food and accommodations that all yield equally astronomical profits. Yet it managed a literal slave labor sweatshop, not in Bangladesh, but right here on sacred American soil in the Grand Canyon.

Undoubtedly it can afford to pay its beleaguered foodservers a minimum wage, if not a living wage, especially in light of the fact that its average patron fails to heed customary American tipping practices – the very excuse our government uses to permit such wage atrocity in restaurants across America. If Amfac can’t afford it, then why not encourage open door communications to enlighten employees about its budgetary limitations?

Subminimum wage laws do not force employers to pay foodservers pitiful wages. Rather, they simply state that $2.13 is the minimum amount they have to pay. Therefore, an employer has the right to set whatever wage it deems appropriate beyond that.

On payday in the Grand Canyon, Alex had to pay Amfac money from her pocket to cover her taxes and still ended up in debt with the IRS. On payday in the Grand Canyon, Amfac didn’t have to shell out a dime in payroll costs to its army of foodservers.

Surely a giant profiteer like Amfac – which offers its executives and managers handsome perks and bonuses – could somehow manage to scrape up another lousy buck for workers like Alex. Surely, it could have demonstrated a willingness to develop a win-win policy for both its guests and employees to ensure some proper compensation for its workers who rely on tips.

A little communication between Amfac and its tour operators, between tour operators and foreign visitors, could have prevented the income crisis that made Alex’s workplace a living hell. Indeed, most foreign tourists Alex encountered expressed embarrassment at their ignorance of American customs. Most were only too eager to tip after this realization and willingly left Alex generous rewards for her service. Tour operators could do far more to educate their travelers about the customs of their destinations.

But Amfac simply didn’t care. And neither did the National Park Service. Even though it wouldn’t have cost them a penny out of their own pockets. Yet such sheer greed, disregard and elitism subjects workers like Alex to unnecessarily brutal working conditions and obscene wages.

Plantation-master mentalities trickle down from detached corporate headquarters, where policies are set for the way management will treat employees. As an example, in Amfac’s case, a distant boardroom at Chicago headquarters decided that its waiters in Death Valley National Park would sport long-sleeved woolen uniforms in temperatures that topped 138 in the shade. Was anyone in Chicago thinking? Had any of them ever visited Death Valley on a hot summer day?

The greatest crisis lies in the complete lack of open communication or diplomatic exchange between management and employees, for it poses far more detriment to the corporation’s bottom line. Workers hold more key answers to customer needs and money-saving operational solutions than they are credited for. Alex had several money-saving solutions for her restaurant and ideas for better efficiency. But since worker input is never welcomed, Amfac never took advantage of her ideas. Whenever she approached management, she was shunned because she was just a waitress. Yet she was its direct link to customer feedback and information.

Shabby treatment, verbal abuse, management harassment and other workplace atrocities in the Grand Canyon only led to rampant employee absenteeism, poor productivity, lousy service, theft, extraordinary turnover and other serious problems. Violence was high in employee housing, along with drug and alcohol abuse among workers. All of this could have been prevented by simple meetings, suggestion boxes, comment cards and a little appreciation for employees.

Communication. Recognition. Minimum wage. Are these really so impossible for a corporation to give its foodservers in the 21 st century? Empires built upon insidious foundations eventually disintegrate and crumble. If the powers that be in the Grand Canyon simply can’t find it in their hearts to honor their hard-working “ambassadors,” then perhaps a hotel-restaurant union will find a way to guarantee that what happened to Alex never happens to another worker again.

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