I was lucky when I worked at The Boston Globe because for most of my time there I had an editor who was incredibly supportive. Nils had my back, especially on the rare occasions when other editors tried to pressure me into reporting stories a certain way or criticized my work. I treasured his support because I had already worked under some less than supportive editors. When I was a young reporter for The Miami Herald and anxious to get ahead, a call came down from the city desk: they needed a writer who had experience waiting tables to follow up on a juicy tip: one of the top restaurants in town was accused of skimming tips that rightfully belonged to the wait staff. As it happened, I did have waitressing experience (at a Perkins Pancake House one summer while I was in college). So eager to prove myself, I raised my hand. I was instructed to apply for the waitressing job at this high-end restaurant “undercover” and that’s what I did, listing my serving experience but omitting my current place of employment from the application. Lo and behold, I was hired.
I remember wearing my long Laura Ashley dress on my first day on the job, which neatly hid the comfortable clogs I had on my feet. The restaurant, which was decorated top to bottom with kitschy Danish chinaware, had a high turnover rate among its staff and I soon discovered why. The owner had a habit of throwing tantrums, the kitchen floor flooded daily because of poor drainage, and every time I went by with a large tray, Tim, one of the waiters, a tall guy with the face of a fox, tried to grab whatever part of my anatomy he could get a hold of. On my second night, I was assigned to the crepe table, where I became very sick from carbon monoxide poisoning. I remember leaving early and spending the next 12 hours throwing up. As it turned out, there was no vent to filter out the noxious fumes coming from the hot plate burners on which the crepes were cooked, a violation of federal OSHA regulations. Before I took sick, I also discovered that the tip about the gratuities was true: instead of letting the wait staff pocket all the tips, management tacked 15 percent directly on the bill and took part of the gratuities for payroll.
After I wrote up my story and filed it, the paper’s Living Editor got cold feet. She and other editors were concerned that the newspaper might get sued because of the undercover nature of my story. Why, I wondered, didn’t they think of that before putting me through all of this? In retrospect, I realized I probably could have confirmed the part about skimming gratuities by interviewing some former and current staff of the restaurant, but it was the editors’ smart idea to have me go undercover. In the end, my piece never saw the light of print, but several of the paper’s veteran reporters read it in our Atex computer system and had a good chuckle.
That wasn’t the only time the editors at The Miami Herald seemed more concerned with protecting their own hides than backing up their own reporters. I talk about another episode when The Herald’s downtown editors threw me under the bus in my memoir, Brassy Broad: How one journalist helped pave the way to #MeToo.
In a final ironic twist, Tim, the fox-faced waiter from the restaurant, looked up my home number from the job application and called to ask me out. I fended him off, saying I already had a boyfriend. Which, in case you’re wondering, was the truth.
