Counter Culture : Waitress Not Lured by Show Biz in 20 Years at Famed Eatery

STUDIO CITY — Georgia Rowland isn’t waiting for her agent to call or a casting director to discover her. Her day job happens to be her only job.

Georgia works the morning shift at Du-par’s, a breakfast hangout for the famous and the would-be famous. Over the years, waitresses have come and gone, a few deriding Du-par’s as a Tinseltown detour, a place to put in some time before making the big time. But Georgia--it’s what everybody calls her--has put in 20 years now and, she said, may put in 20 more.

“They’ll kick my body under the counter,” she said one recent morning.

It may be the only way to stop her from moving.

From her arrival at 5:30 a.m. until the end of her shift, Georgia is seldom still. She can’t afford to be. There are orders to take and tables to clean. She has cooks to coddle and customers to charm.

“To stand still just makes the day drag,” she said. “I’m on the time clock, so I might as well be doing something.”

She knows the right moment to ask for orders and the right moment to give people extra time. She knows when the food will be ready and when customers might need a refill on their coffee. She’s memorized what her regulars get, but she’s careful not to assume anything.

“I’ll always ask them,” she said. “You never know when they’ll change their mind.”

Excuse her, however, if she forgets the prices sometimes. “It escapes you. Someone asked for the price of coffee, and I gave it . . . except it was the price from 15 years ago.”

Georgia’s been on the time clock since childhood. When she was 12, her mom was too ill to work, so she started working tables at a small cafe in downtown Detroit. The pay wasn’t too good--50 cents an hour--and the hours weren’t much better. She worked eight-hour shifts, often staying until midnight on weeknights, then waking up early for school.

“We were poor, and it put groceries in the fridge,” she said of those years.

That same idea brought her to Du-par’s. After 17 years as a waitress for International House of Pancakes restaurants across the country, Georgia quit. She needed a job, and fast. She came to Du-par’s, applied and started on a busy Saturday morning.

“It was sink or swim,” she said.

*

Georgia, whose real name is Georgianna, comes across soft, but she’s no softie. She doesn’t take it personally when a customer is rude, which happens on occasion. She’ll pretend that the exchange didn’t happen, bring a cup of coffee and give the person a chance to start over.

“I’d make a great ambassador,” she said. But if her diplomatic efforts don’t work, that’s it. “There is only so far you can go to make someone feel comfortable. You have to draw the line.”

She won’t give her age, but says in more than 40 years as a waitress, only once did she almost lose her temper with a customer.

“I wanted to throw a pie at a guy,” she said. “He was giving me all kinds of trouble.”

She was 16. Now, if someone gives her trouble, she said, she clams up, does her job and moves on to the next customer. “It’s not worth it to get too upset,” she said.

She also learned that there is nothing wrong with being a waitress. If others put her profession down, “that’s their problem. This is a respectable way to make a living,” she said.

Georgia is also never afraid to say what she thinks. Her main topic these days is--what else?--the O. J. Simpson trial. “Every day we talk about O. J. on my station,” she said. “It seems like the people who gravitate to me agree with me.”

Those people include some of Georgia’s gang, a group of regulars who stop by a few times a week and will only sit at her station. They like her, and she knows what they want. For many, breakfast with Georgia is the only way to start the day.

“I hate the mornings, and she makes them better,” said Bruce Faternick, a Sherman Oaks businessman. Georgia calls Faternick “Beetlejuice” because of his resemblance to the film’s Michael Keaton character.

He doesn’t mind. “She gets me in and out of here in a hurry,” he said.

Don’t get her wrong, though. Her job isn’t all fun and games and, at times, it can get pretty irritating. There are the customers who say they’re ready to order, then spend the next several minutes trying to make a decision. Or the ones who are too busy talking to realize that she’s waiting to take their order. And, finally, there are the patrons who leave small tips after bestowing big compliments.

*

Georgia admits that she’s not in a cheerful mood when she arrives at 5:30 a.m. to get the place ready to open for business at 6. But then, she asks, who would be? She has to make the coffee, clean the pitchers, display the fruit and put out the cream.

Georgia works Tuesdays through Saturdays and is usually responsible for six to eight tables.

After all these years, she has the routine down. Even when big stars like Tom Selleck or Joe Pesci stop by, she doesn’t get terribly excited. She’s seen it all.

Georgia smiles, and picks up scrambled eggs and toast. She was never after stardom.

“This is the only role I know how to play,” she said.