I think it was 1987 – something like that – or ’86, and I thought, ‘When you go equity and you’re gonna get paid, you’ll finally be able to make a living.’ But it was not to be so. I always bartended and waited tables so I ended up not doing theater for about a year because nobody would hire me.
I think that I’m lucky in that, even at levels where I, by and large, wasn’t making enough money to sustain my life, I worked as a male nanny, I waited tables and did what I had to, to keep doing theater and acting.
We don’t need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do’s and don’ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever.
You never know when the tables will turn, so I think we should all just be kind to one another. It’s really as simple as that.
Our family room, where we live, is about togetherness and ease. Nothing in my house is too formal. There are no coasters on tables; the kids can eat Popsicles on the couch if they want to. I let them ride these little cycles we got for them when they were 3 that have rubber wheels and no pedals.
My ambition was to stop waiting tables. That was how I measured success: finally, I was able to stop waiting tables, and I was able to pay the rent, and that was by being a stand-up comic. Not a very good stand-up comic, but good enough to make a living.
I just waited tables three nights a week to cover the bases.
When I dine with CEOs at Michael’s in New York or Spago in L.A., we score the best tables. On my own, I wind up seated near the kitchen doors.
I emptied the trash and wiped down tables. But my job that I remember the most was picking up horse manure for the Electrical Parade.
This is a game that at the end of the day, it’s sports entertainment. We have to perform to keep fans in the seats, and what they pay helps put food on our tables.
It was exactly an assembly line. You could look into infinity down these rows of drawing tables.
We got tables they’re going through constantly, chair shots, all this, very dangerous maneuvers where you can possibly break your neck or something like that.
I really believe waiting tables, and service industry jobs in general, make you a better person.
I’ve considered myself a writer since I was 7 years old, but I’ve done a lot of jobs along the way. I enjoyed waiting tables and tending bar during college, especially when it got busy, so I might like managing a big restaurant. In fact, I might like managing many kinds of businesses or organizations.
I’ve worked countless jobs from waiting tables to packing boxes in a paper factory – a testament that I hustled on and never gave up til I reached my dreams.
So much luck! I’m not putting myself down, I’m not saying I don’t have talent – I must have, to have got this far – but I honestly believe that some of the greatest actors in America are tending bar and waiting tables and driving taxis, and it will never happen for them.
My kitchen is not a place to live in. I made it white so I can tell instantly if it’s not clean-and I like it clean enough to be able to eat off the floors-or the tables, for that matter.
I hate to think of the day when nobody remembers me as an actor and I can’t get good tables in restaurants.
Buckwheat, like Marmite and durian, is a seriously divisive foodstuff, so it needs a seriously capable defence team if it’s ever going to make it on to most people’s dinner tables.
I love really simple colours at home – lots of cream, beige, and grey with rustic wooden tables.
We will expect every pupil by the age of 11 to know their times tables off by heart, to perform long division and complex multiplication and to be able to read a novel. They should be able to write a short story with accurate punctuation, spelling and grammar.
My first waitress job was at Johnny Rockets in New Jersey, and then I waited tables at a sports bar.
My dad and my uncles owned a bar outside of Cincinnati. I worked there growing up, mopping floors, waiting tables.
Street stalls, be they in Korea, Thailand or anywhere else in Asia, in a covered market or simply on a street corner with a few brightly coloured plastic stools and tables, are my favourite places in the world to eat.
At one time Tribune Syndicate emptied out their storeroom. They put tables full of original cartoons down in the lobby and said take one if you want one. The comics were simply a burden to them.
Everything from the little house was in the wagon, except the beds and tables and chairs. They did not need to take these, because Pa could always make new ones.
I’ve always believed that the things middle class families struggle with around their kitchen tables should define my work in Washington.
Once I started working as a professional actor, it was like, ‘Bye-bye waiting tables, bye-bye bartending, bye-bye all the cliched jobs actors do.’ But after a year of not getting work, there’s this really difficult conflict, like, ‘Do I have to go back to being a waiter when people recognize me from a show?’
I was living as a young single mom. I was 19 when I was divorced, and my daughter was a year old, and I waited tables here three to four nights a week for several years while I was trying to support myself and my daughter and the day I got that acceptance at Harvard Law School was an unforgettable day.
My life at home is super simple. My local bar with my mates, cooking for my mother, making tables, planting vegetables: It’s the classic idea of the artistic existence.
I’m not saying being a comedian is brain surgery, but it is definitely – it’s like being a carpenter. You learn how to make tables and chairs. You have to have the right tools, and you have to know how to put the thing together, right?
I literally was saved by a role, from becoming a cab driver. I never did have to wait tables, though, so looking back I guess I had it pretty soft.
I will go to a nice restaurant in Miami, and no one sitting at the tables will notice me or even know who I am. Then everyone in the kitchen comes out and wants to take a picture.
When I was waiting tables, washing dishes, or mowing lawns for money, I never thought of myself as stuck in some station in life. I was on my own path, my own journey, an American journey where I could think for myself, decide for myself, define happiness for myself.
I’ve never done anything so political before. I’ve spent years shouting my mouth off about serious issues over dinner tables but never really had the confidence to express my views in a song.
When I moved to New York, I really wanted to find my bread job as close to my passion as possible. There’s nobility in waiting tables. But I really wanted to find a job in the arts, and so I started teaching.
I was the kid who was drawing on tables or removing the legs of furniture.
I used to do my Nelson Mandela voice to blag restaurant tables in Cape Town. It rarely worked. Now what a great city that is.
The most all penetrating spirit before which will open the possibility of tilting not tables, but planets, is the spirit of free human inquiry. Believe only in that.
I didn’t have any money. I had a sense of terrible loss. But what I also had was a fire in my belly. I wasn’t going to go back to waiting tables. I felt I had to be better at fronting a band.
I’m one of the few lucky actors in the world. I’ve never waited tables. I never pumped gas. I’ve always earned a living. I never had to borrow from my parents. I was the first in our family to own a new car.
As long as I don’t have to go back to the catering hall and wait tables anymore, I’m very happy.
People crave trustworthy information about the world we live in. Some people want it because it is essential to the way they make a living. Some want it because they regard being well-informed as a condition of good citizenship. Some want it because they want something to exchange over dinner tables and water coolers.
