Andrea Sachs Writes Sacré Bleu - Case No. 31107938694 Of Dining Grievances; Ladies Who Lunch, Unite!
by Andrea Sachs*; This article appeared originally in Nu?Detroit
Move over, Netflix. Don’t get me wrong — there’s plenty of perfectly good stuff to stream out there. But if you come to my place, you’ll find MSNBC blaring on my TV. After 30 years as a reporter, old habits die hard. And why would anyone choose the flimsy fictions of Hollywood over the real-life drama of Washington and its cast of characters, including duplicitous Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema the cypher and drecky Steve Bannon?
Which is why the story of Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen was in heavy rotation chez Sachs last month. There she was, in front of Congress, unspooling hour after hour the bad deeds of Mark Zuckerberg, who Grandma Esther would have spotted a mile away as a gonif (a disreputable or dishonest person).
Frances Haugen, right.
Wikipedia
In 2002, while I was working at Time magazine, three women jointly selected as the Persons of the Year were dubbed The Whistleblowers. (Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten their names already — Coleen Rowley of the FBI, Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom and Sherron Watkins of Enron. Ah, fame is fleeting.) Like Haugen, these women had spilled the beans. At the time, the choice struck me as kinda gimmicky, but looking back a couple of decades in the rear-view mirror, it now seems prescient.
Which is why, on October 7 at 6:50 pm, I found myself musing about the virtues of female whistleblowing. (Being able to keep track of dates and times is critical for would-be whistleblowers.) I was waiting for my good friend and fellow journo Evy to arrive for dinner. I never suspected that our meal would mark the nanosecond when I, too, would attain whistleblower status.
The evening began as a rendezvous with indigestion. The plan was for me to meet Evy at Maison de Faux Cuisine (name changed to protect the busboys) on West 73rd Street, in the heart of the Upper West Side. I got there ten minutes early, in hopes of snaring a good outside table, since the pandemic has driven hordes of local diners en plein air.
A dark-haired waiter brusquely took me to the least desirable table in Manhattan. I don’t mean to sound like a kvetch, but the corner of the table had a big chunk missing, and the view was of two wooden sawhorses no one had bothered to drag away after some recent construction. The setting had all of the charm of the Paris city dump.
The waiter who had seated me in this junkheap looked more like a scowling ruffian than an employee in a fine establishment. I’ll admit it — I was scared of him. I summoned up an embarrassingly timid voice and squeaked, “I don’t think my friend Evy will want to sit at this table.” He dismissively mumbled something about the fact that it was the only table available. I spotted several empty tables with stylish bar stools at unchipped tables. What about those? I motioned. “You wouldn’t want to sit there, would you?” he replied. You’re damn right I would.
At that moment, the situation was thrown into sharp relief. While I am no nonagenarian, I’m not a coed either. (OPHS, Class of 1970 — do the math.) Evy in absentia and I were getting the treatment that two women alone often get in restaurants once they no longer get carded. Lousier tables, lousier service. Which is plenty ironic, because I am actually quite a good tipper. My experience in high school waiting tables at Blazo’s, a decidedly non-franco eatery in Oak Park, had left me with a permanent sense of sisterhood with servers.
Pages: 1 · 2
More Articles
- Selective Exposure and Partisan Echo Chambers in Television News Consumption: Innovative Use of Data Yields Unprecedented Insights
- Magazines and the American Experience: Highlights from the Collection of Steven Lomazow, M.D
- Attorney General Barr Testifies on Justice Department Mission and Programs: Watch From the Beginning
- Policy of Trump Administration: Office of the Attorney General, April 6th, 2018 Memo for Federal Prosecutors Along Southwest Border; MSNBC Videos
- CultureWatch Review: Drift