14-Year-Old Sarah Learns to Inhale Like Holly Golightly
Two Little Girls Chapter 9
In her fourteenth year of life, 1980, Sarah saw a sign in the Cornmarket Street Wimpy Bar for a weekend waitress. Women were still called waitresses back then rather than servers. She went into the restaurant and the manager interviewed her there and then. He asked her age, and she said she was fifteen.
She got the job. The pay was eighty-three and a half pence per hour or $1.60.
Sarah ditched the newspaper deliveries. She’d taken on the Oxford Journal on Thursday evenings and continued with the Oxford Times. Working in the Wimpy in the neon orange, nylon dress uniform, and a baseball cap was a step up!
Every Saturday, she arrived at eight forty-five and waited for the manager to open up. Sarah made her debut in the kitchen as a pot washer.
During the busy times, the steam from the dishwashing machine would hang in the heat of the small room. The proper waitresses dumped all the dirty dishes and dashed straight out again. After a few weekends, clean crockery exited the kitchen before it ran out front of house.
A month later, the teenager graduated to tables. The manager assigned tables one and twenty in the top section to her. She took orders; then took them to the grill for the…
