rior by her managers and in the form of drug tests, “If you want to stack Cheerio boxes or vacuum hotel rooms…you have to be willing to squat down and pee in front of some health worker,” (763). For Gornick, the humiliation comes from customers who treat her rudely and like a servant. In one of her most revealing moments in the story, Gornick describes how she was humiliated in front of customers during a busy buffet dinner. However, she comes to the realization that one cannot maintain such a position if one is not able to endure humiliation. In fact, she seems to suggest that to have just about any job one must suffer humiliation, “I stared into the degraded face of the headwaiter and saw that he was as trapped as I, caught up in a working life that required someone’s humiliation at all times,” (Gornick 758).
A few other similarities exist between the two stories. One is the grueling and stressful nature of the work in the service industry, particularly the restaurant business. Gornick describes the swearing, rushed, every-waitress-for-himself-or-herself atmosphere of the kitchen during her restaurant’s big New Year’s Eve buffet. It is such
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