Posted on 11/23/2008 5:13:34 PM PST by Coleus
"How do you feel, good?" Eva Diakakis says to a longtime customer, Murray Rifkowitz, who is in for his daily breakfast at the Bendix Diner. To his son, Sheldon: "You want more coffee, Shelly? More coffee?" Diakakis grabs the pot of decaf, delivers their egg whites, potatoes and wheat toast. She makes it all look easy, when in fact under her quiet manner is a trove of knowledge honed from spending the past 27 years waitressing at the Hasbrouck Heights diner. She knows that Murray Rifkowitz has health issues and requires salt-free food, and she even makes sure he occasionally has salt-free soups. She knows to expect the trucker from Ohio a few times a week after he makes his deliveries to Carlstadt, and that he prefers a grilled ham and Swiss on rye, an iced tea, and soup (usually it's chicken, but recently he's been trying out clam chowder and lentil). She knows when the complaint-prone regular comes in whom she calls "the most miserable man" — and she knows him so well that she cheerfully calls him that to his face.
Above all, Diakakis, 59, knows how to adapt. "As soon as I see the customer, I know what kind of human being they are. And what I do is, if I see young people, I am young. If I see old people, I am old. If I see respectable people, I am respectable." She even knows how to deal with customers who "say waitresses are no good" and make rude comments in front of her. The native of Greece just pretends she doesn't understand what they're saying and goes about her work. Because contrary to what these people might say, Diakakis and other longtime local waiters and waitresses say they take great pride in bringing a familiar touch to their diner or restaurant. "It's a pleasure to see nice people come in, and you can enjoy them and take care of them and make them happy," said Peter Selca, a waiter for 36 years at one of the region's oldest restaurants, Berta's Chateau in Wanaque. Selca has regulars who come in once or twice a week, and loves recalling off the top of his head whether they like their drinks straight up or on the rocks.
Many of them say they love meeting new people each day and can't imagine doing anything else. "I never wanted to make it my career, but I tried office work and I can't sit still for so long," said Anna Watson, who has been waitressing for 25 years – 15 of them at the Tick Tock Diner in Clifton. Even working in fine-dining restaurants bored Watson; she prefers the busy pace of diners. How has she lasted so long? "You learn how to keep your mouth shut," she said. Watson's colleague, Diane Tommasi, a 21-year Tick Tock veteran, says a few other things are key: "You have to have a lot of patience. And you have to want to do it. You can't look at it like a job." At the Bendix, Diakakis manages to keep up a gentle smile and good humor despite a grueling schedule. She rises at 4 or 5 a.m. and tends to her garden or cleans her house in Stony Point, Rockland County, N.Y., before arriving at the Bendix around 7 a.m.
At the small, retro diner, with its worn blue tile and faded vinyl seats, she works a 12-hour shift, until 7 p.m., seven days a week. "She's always here. I never came in and didn't see her," said regular customer Lou Obssuth. And therefore, "it's like being home when you come here." Diakakis leaves the diner around 7 p.m. and drives back to Rockland County to bring a Greek dinner to her mother, who's in a nursing home. She gets home around 9 or 10, does several loads of laundry, and bathes and feeds her 4-year-old grandson, who lives with her. They end the night relaxing together – lately, she's been reading a cookbook of healthy recipes used by Greek monks that she'd like to incorporate at the Bendix. Diakakis has been a waitress for 42 years, starting in the Bronx after she emigrated from Greece. She learned all the fundamentals from her late husband, Tony, a diner manager who bought the Bendix in 1981. She became its owner after his death in 2000, and she still takes the lessons he taught her so seriously that she chokes up talking about them:
The customer is always right, even when they're wrong. Don't give them a hard time if they criticize a dish that is perfectly fine, because they may be sick and can't taste properly. Just offer them something else. And, most important, the best measure of the cleanliness of a restaurant is the bathroom. Diakakis follows this one so religiously that she cleans the ladies' room at the Bendix herself. Behind the counter, around the coffeemaker, she stashes a few little things for herself: Several kinds of hand cream. A tall bottle of iced tea, made from herbs from her garden. A Greek Bible, which she reads daily, especially when things get tough. She raves about her rubber-soled Privos (she's also partial to Easy Spirit shoes), and says she's so used to standing up all day that she can't sit without wanting to go to sleep. That stamina has come in handy – there have been times when she's been stuck at the diner for as many as 44 straight hours. "If you love something with all your heart, you do it," she said. "Don't ask me how I do it, but I do it. If you fall into the ocean, and you have no choice, you're going to swim." She is proud of how she has spent her life. "I don't care what kind of job I do, as long as it's honest."
Even the miserable man can count on her......God bless this women, she makes peoples days a bit brighter.....
Folks of Greek descent have some wonderful diners. They treat their customers like family and the food is usually great.
In “Blue Highways” by William Least Heat Moon, he posits the rating of a diner can be inferred from the number of calendars on the wall.
I wonder how many calenders she has on the walls?
I’ve been here too long, i know two of the people named in this article.
On top of that, I’ve seen in the last few years a distinct drop in the number of Greek immigrants, several of the Greek and Greco-American owned diners in North Jersey have closed as the baby boomer owners retire and they had no one to sell the diner to in the Greek community and also having a hard time finding help. Though the second problem will correct itself in the coming recession.
you can never trust those aliens.
As a former New Jersey resident now in Florida, I miss Diners.
Next town north or me!
My family was in Rockland before the rocks!
Cool. But a long trip from Rockland to Clifton!
Having said that,I must admit that I miss NJ diners and that I spent a lot of time at the Bendix diner and many others like the Silver Dollar and the Moonachie diner.Real good gut-busting food at any hour of the day or night.
mr. chambers, mr. chambers, don’t get on that ship!!!
it’s a cookbook!!!
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