BOOK OF THE WEEK
A WAITER IN PARIS
by Edward Chisholm (Monray £ 16.99, 384pp)
Dumped by his French girlfriend, down to his last few coins, and generally ‘worse off than when I started university’, Edward Chisholm is at least in Paris.
Unfortunately, the beautiful city of boulevards, museums and manicured parks exists only in guide books – and in any case it is quite out of reach for the ‘underpaid and malnourished slaves’ who make up the current local population.
Edward Chisholm describes his role as a waiter in Paris, in his new book. He describes how he was treated by his employees, colleagues and clients
A Waiter In Paris is a scathing rendition of what life really is ‘at the bottom of the food chain’, and Chisholm’s prose delights positively in describing the graffiti, soaked cardboard boxes and rubbish-strewn sidewalks.
Make no mistake, the Paris of Picasso or Hemingway is gone. It is now a frontier area full of ‘paperless’ immigrants (Chisholm is one himself), the addicts and the spiritually distressed. ‘There is a brown mist over the city,’ we are told, for Paris gives off a ‘heady, sulfurous, rotten egg, old shoes, brake dust and urine-tinted infusion’.
Beyond the affluent neighborhoods, with their absent oligarchs, ordinary people live in distant nightmare-like ‘warren of sloping-walled buildings with sunken floors and cage-like rooms reached by tilting stairs’.
All Chisholm can afford is a shared room in a typical slum, with a blood-stained carpet and a sink that doubles as a toilet. The dirty mattress is alive with bedbugs.
Edward Chisholm, (photo) left behind by his French girlfriend, was alone and without money in Paris. The English writer took a job as a waiter and lived off cigars
After walking through the cold streets, anxious to get any kind of job, Chisholm becomes a waiter earning € 1,086.13 a month before taxes. He puts in 14-hour shifts, six days a week.
There are no breaks, nothing to eat except old rolls or diners’ leftovers. Dehydrated and exhausted, he lives on cigarettes.
“Waiting is hard, relentless and mindless,” he concludes, and the only thing he can congratulate himself on is that he “had enough courage to stick it out.”
A restaurant is a theatrical stage of silver cutlery and white napkins, a ‘smell of wood polish mixed with the scent of flowers’.
Of the people, Chisholm encountered nothing but humiliation – rude customers, mean bosses, unreliable colleagues
Beyond the dining room, however, there is a ‘labyrinthine world’ of kitchens with flaming hobs, corridors, changing rooms, cellars, rubbish bins and sculleries, where the men (always men) ‘spend most of the day in water and peel rotting vegetables’.
Rats are ubiquitous, slipping around shelves and nibbling at the olives.
Of the people, Chisholm encountered nothing but humiliation – rude customers, mean bosses, unreliable colleagues. Indeed, his fellow waiters are thieves, drug dealers, ex-soldiers on the run – a grotesque mob, unshaven with darting, ferret-like, bloodshot eyes.
The refugee Tamils who were washing and shooting dishes are ‘skilled in hand-to-hand combat and know how to plan and carry out a guerrilla attack on an armed convoy’. Not a skill that is often needed when mixing a salad. The only way they all get along is to pretend it’s just a temporary job.
“Our real lives are just around the corner,” as boxing champions or actors or magnates, they say.
In this book, everyone is screaming and screaming, on the verge of nervous breakdowns. Chisholm becomes responsible for the ‘parade of plates, glasses and bottles’, learning the gravity-resistant skill of carrying large silver bowls, balanced on the inverted palm
A waiter can be fired on the spot ‘for the smallest reasons’. Chisholm has to bite his tongue when he encounters the kind of people who go to restaurants and ‘suddenly they are little dictators’. Do it, do it, I do not like this, take it away … ‘. It is not uncommon for posh Parisians to request that they be served by someone who is not black.
Almost as unbearable is the driver, who does not bother to disguise a ‘hint of disgust’ at Chisholm’s presence.
The author decides it is his Englishness that is the offense. There is a strong belief in Paris that ‘French vineyards only send the bottles that have been corked to England’, because we will not notice it. It’s a reason for a lot of laughter that we eat sandwiches at the desk by way of lunch. “You have no great wines and no great philosophers.”
In this book, everyone is screaming and screaming, on the verge of nervous breakdowns. Chisholm becomes responsible for the ‘parade of plates, glasses and bottles’, and learns the gravity-resistant skill of carrying large silver bowls, balanced on the inverted palm.
![As a waiter, Chisholm was always afraid of losing [his] work ¿and France itself should be afraid of losing an important part of its culture](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2022/06/30/20/59727721-10970521-image-a-26_1656615993252.jpg)
As a waiter, Chisholm was ‘always afraid of losing’ [his] work ‘- and France itself should be afraid of losing an important part of its culture
The choreography has to be precise, because waiters slip past each other. When food and crockery fall out of sight, with a sound ‘like a cliff collapsing into the sea’, the waiters quickly scoop the duck breasts and haricots off the floor, splashing them on fresh plates, ‘and the table is nothing . wiser’.
After reading A Waiter In Paris, you will not want to eat out there again. Dirty napkins and disgusting towels are used to wipe plates and glasses. Waiters all have dirty fingernails, worn shoes, terrifying body odor. There is no sink in the staff toilet, nor any moment to wash hands. “The cooking will sort out the germs.”
The atmosphere is wild, says Chisholm. “There’s always too much to do, not enough time and never a break.”
What gives the troops energy is the prospect of tips. Parisians, who always complain, are small tips. Brazilians and Japanese are the most generous. Celebrities are the most common because ‘they are used to getting things for free’.
Arab sheiks get small bills because they do not drink alcohol. Americans do not understand the exchange rates and leave big tips wrong.
In the course of this book, we learn that neighborhood bistros and traditional restaurants now use frozen ingredients rather than fresh produce.
Waiters are always on the lookout for lost jewelry or lost banknotes – and they’re fighting for some of the tips. Literally there were punch-ups, with knives drawn.
As a waiter, Chisholm was ‘always afraid of losing’ [his] work ‘- and France itself should be afraid of losing an important part of its culture.
In the course of this book, we learn that neighborhood bistros and traditional restaurants now use frozen ingredients rather than fresh produce. Croissants and bread are bought ready-made and heated. ‘The squeak of microwaves replaces the clatter of pans’, all in the name of profit margins.
This astonishing book describes a cruel, wild existence and is worthy of standing on the shelf alongside George Orwell’s Down And Out In Paris And London (1933) as another classic about human exploitation. With this difference. Orwell was an Old Etonian who played to be needy. Chisholm’s version of the struggle for survival is more completely true.
A Waiter In Paris, without a shred of self-pity, describes what it is like to be young and without career prospects, despite a degree – in Chisholm’s case, from the London School of Oriental and African Studies.
On these pages, we feel the anarchy and hopelessness that many people experience in their 30s, who find that waiting for their lives to begin is like waiting for Godot. Especially if you are a waiter.