Chapter three, continued...

Of course, there was always – in a rare while – the black couple hat came in a defied all imbedded notions of the “black tip”. The Mexicans, prevalent in the area, and almost always kind, defied this unwritten rule even less often. Matt said one day, summarizing the racism perfectly at Corrotto’s: “You can take the tip out of the Mexican, but you can’t take the Mexican out of the tip.” But he was not considered a bigot. He was not considered a racist. In fact, it was an agreed upon fact by all of the servers and even hostesses that Mexicans simply did not have the resources nor the values to tip well. Oh, they might leave a tip, but never over 10%. But again, none could take the Mexican out of the tip. Even Ernesto, a native of Hermosillo would agree.

            “I am ashamed.” Ernesto would say frequently and hang his head low.

            “You should be.” Matt would say.

            Of course this was all play. The norms inside the building in the neat little shopping center changed dramatically once one stepped passed the mahogany doors. It was a different world, a paradigm filled with racism and sex and fattening food, the smell of expired parmesean and the exchange of money. And the servers would tease and taunt one another, “Oh Viki, you’re such a Jew. God knows we don’t want your Jewish blood anyways, the price of pork might go up”, or, “I’m from New Jersey, of course we are loud,” or even worse, “Ry – Ry, if you want me to run your food again, make sure you put the damned ticket in the right fucking order. There’s a nice tree outside ready for the hangin’.” And Ry-Ry (Ryan) would laugh it off and say, “shut up, you kike.” And this is how the servers would communicate. Then they would go back to their computers and type the next order in to clog the arteries of the next cheap black family.

            But the servers’ job remained in the front of the house for only about 25% of the time – the rest was spent in what is referred to as the BOH (aka the back of the house). And if it wasn’t bad enough that the Ritto dared to utter these bigoted words in the front of the house, when no customer was chiming in, then there was no doubt that he would make them even more bigoted in the back of the house. Customer’s ears could not reach that far. Bt a strange phenomenon occurred in the back of the house, for this is where the servers met their back of the house counter-parts: the prep cooks.