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What do waiters, bartenders, strippers, and cab drivers have in common? They all work for tips and are all chiefly compensated with cash. And it's a safe bet that those lovely green bills are burning holes in their pockets (with the possible exception of the strippers, who are frequently without pockets). If you are a slave to gratuities or get paid "under the table," you're probably struggling with the powerful lure of readily-accessible spending money. Tripod columnist Bernadette Noll has dealt with that temptation for years, and she's got plenty of war stories to share...
Published October 20, 1997
"What percentage of your income is disposable?"
Not long ago my brother posed this question to me. I glanced down at the rows of bills which were laid out before me. Just minutes before he called I had been futilely attempting to juggle my debts, which seemed to increase each time I added them up. Seeing the balance from my latest tally I answered, "Well, judging by the big fat zero I see before me, I'd have to say one hundred percent." At the time he asked I was a waitress. As a waitress, I dealt strictly in cash. And, as anyone who deals strictly with cash will be able to tell you, cash in the hand spends faster than a paycheck in the bank.
For me, it started when I was seven years old. This was the year I got my paper route. Slinging papers was my first introduction to the world of cold hard cash on demand. I immediately found it to be a wonderful world indeed. When the ice cream truck would sound in the distance, my friends would run in the direction of their mothers, looking for a handout. I, on the other hand, would reach into my pocket, where sat the money I had just collected from my customers. Even if this was money due the newspaper, I never hesitated. I would have my ice cream and I would eat it too. Later I would worry about paying my account. A pattern developed.
I think that if you polled for-cash-only workers, and this would include cab drivers, waiters, bartenders, valet parkers, and, in a bygone world, papergirls and boys, you would find that the majority are terrible at saving money. Whether consciously or subconsciously, we enter these fields searching for instant gratification. We don't want to wait until Friday to find out how much we're worth. In fact, since few of us even tally our weekly earnings, we don't ever want to find out how much we're worth. We want to live like those that don't ever have to worry about money. We want to take the money and run. We want to, in the words of Bob Dylan, "forget about today until tomorrow."
At the end of our shift, you will find us running to the nearest bar for a few pops — where we will spend and tip as if we are a Rockefeller or a Kennedy (no Busch, please.). Or running to the nearest store to purchase that beautiful lingerie or that kick-ass guitar or that new CD that was so elusive, so out of our financial realm, just the day before. For just a couple of hours or minutes we want to know what it feels like to be rich. To buy something just because we want it. To hold the dollar bill as if it — in no way, shape, or form — has any hold on us at all. We appreciate the finer things in life and, at the end of every shift, we want to treat ourselves to these things. Damn! After all those tough hours on the job, we deserve the finer things.
The next day we go back to work and we have no money. Or rather we go to work because we have no money. We might have a new thing or memories of a night out (be they fond or foggy), but we definitely have no money. That is precisely why we are back at work. If we had money left over from the shift before, there would be no motivation to work. If we had no motivation to work we would have subbed out our shift.
In the world of fast cash that's how it's done. If you don't need money, you don't have to work — because there will always be a co-worker in a cash-desperate situation. And if we're not close enough to scraping up our rent or electric bill or gambling debt, we can work a double shift or, in the case of the ever-popular 24-hour café, a triple. (By the way, this is NOT RECOMMENDED — I've witnessed the dreaded triple only twice in my life and both times it was a dreadful sight — once strong humans were reduced to babbling fools with the fortitude of jellyfish.) And when that's paid, hell, we'd probably need a few days off.
I quit waiting tables a couple of years ago in an effort to work on my cartoons and writing. Freelance works much the same way as did my paper route and waitressing. I don't get paid in cash but, unlike a "regular" job, I receive money only for work completed. The more I work the more I make — and, of course, this means the opposite is true as well. If I'm not in need of money I can schedule a few days break, away from my computer or drawing table.
I'm in my early thirties now and so feel the need to save a bit more money than I did when I was in my twenties — but still the need for instant gratification plays a big part in my day-to-day dealings. When a check arrives, ESPECIALLY after a dry spell, I feel entitled to treating myself to some novelty or knick-knack that was beyond my grasp just prior to the mailman's arrival.
"What percentage of your income is disposable?" Not long ago I posed this same question to a group of friends, all of them freelancers, who had gathered at a nearby café. A big collective laugh went up from the group as though it were a rhetorical question. Judging by the fact that we were all sitting there bemoaning how broke we were, I think it safe to say the percentage hovered somewhere around 99 percent. And, as anyone who deals strictly in freelance will be able to tell you, a check in the hand every several weeks spends a whole lot faster than a weekly paycheck in the bank.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I hear the distant sound of the ice cream truck.
RETURN TO CAREER PROFILES MAIN PAGE
For more on the working life and financial times of a freelance writer, read Harry Goldstein's The Writing Life and Spike Gillespie's Freelance and Fancy Free.
Bernadette Noll is a freelance writer based in Austin, Texas. On being a
full-time writer, she says, "My life is forever colored by ten years in
the restaurant business. It's always in the back of my mind that there
is only one letter difference between writer and waiter."
© 1997 Tripod, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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