Donald Trump Thinks Waiters Know More Than Scientists

At long last, the opinions of waiters finally matter! For years, we couldn’t even convince people to listen to us when we told them that the sizzling plate of fajitas was hot and we’d watch customer after customer reach out and scald their hands, but now we have the ear of the President of the United States!

Last night, President Donald Trump did an ABC News town hall meeting with George Stephanopoulos, subjecting himself to ninety minutes of questions from undecided voters. When one audience member questioned Trump about why he doesn’t support a national mandate for wearing masks to help slow the spread of Covid and also why he doesn’t wear one himself more often, Trump reached deep into his brain and found two pieces of lint, a wrapper from a Werther’s Original and a sloppy word salad. He complained about how Joe Biden and the Democrats have failed to institute a national mandate for mask wearing, seemingly forgetting that Joe Biden isn’t actually the president. And then he dug deeper into his cranium cavity to say, “By the way, a lot of people don’t want to wear masks. There are a lot of people (who) think that masks are not good.”

“Who are those people?” asked Stephanopoulos.

“I’ll tell you who those people are,” he replied.

And who might these people be who think masks are not good? Maybe Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and one of the lead members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force? Or possibly it’s the Center for Disease Control. Perhaps it’s Dr. Deborah Birx, the Coronavirus Response Coordinator for the White House Coronavirus Task Force. But no, none of those are the people who he said didn’t think masks were a good thing.

“Waiters,” he said. “They come over and they serve you and they have a mask. I saw it the other day where they were serving me and they’re playing with the mask. I’m not blaming them, I’m just saying what happens. They’re playing with the masks and so the mask is over and they’re touching it and then they touch the plate-that can’t be good.”

After Pres. Trump claims "a lot of people think the masks are not good," @GStephanopoulos asks: "Who are those people?"

"Waiters," Trump responds, saying he's seen servers constantly touching their face masks.

More from the special @abc2020 town hall: https://t.co/novyV8AWRR pic.twitter.com/25KVhP1zrk

— ABC News (@ABC) September 16, 2020

As a waiter who wears a mask while at work, I have something to say:

Yes, we wear masks and no, we don’t like them, but you know what? Nobody likes wearing them, not just waiters. We wear them at the restaurant because we are required to do so in order to have a job to go to. People in this country were so eager to have life back to the way it was before Covid, they practically begged restaurants and bars to reopen in some form and so we did, but customers still aren’t happy.

We wear masks the whole time we’re at our shift even though we only require our customers to wear them when they first enter the restaurant. After that, they can take them off and live their best life gleefully ignoring the fact that their server is collecting a gallon of sweat on their upper lip. We wear masks that give us acne and then we’re grateful to have the mask on because it conceals the acne that the mask gave us in the first place. Maybe we do occasionally touch the masks or play with them, but that’s because we’re wearing them for hours on end and they do need to be readjusted every now and then. Besides, if a waiter possibly touching a plate after maybe touching a mask is so much of a concern, maybe dining out right now shouldn’t be an option for some people. Even before Covid, we servers washed our hands more than the average person and a lot of us are required to earn a food handler’s license to serve, so we’re pretty good with the cleanliness.

Mr. President, don’t try to imply that waiters and waitresses have so much authority in this country that we have anything to do with people wearing masks or not. A lot of us only make $2.13 an hour and are struggling to earn tips in our reduced capacity restaurants or with outdoor dining only, so we know where we are in the totem pole of importance. Besides, that, if servers are so adamant about not wearing masks, why are all the viral videos about anti-maskers in restaurants only coming from customers? This IHOP customer didn’t want to wear a mask. These women who didn’t want to wear a mask were customers and not servers. And here’s yet another CUSTOMER who doesn’t want to wear a mask.

Like it or not, Mr. President, masks are here to stay. While Dr. Fauci initially advised against wearing them, that was six months ago. It was also an advisory because the CDC wanted as many masks as possible to be available for health care professionals and first responders. Our country has been dealing with Covid for over half a year now. Guidelines and recommendations change as scientists learn more about the disease. Wearing a mask is important, whether you like it or not and wearing one doesn’t trample anyone’s right to freedom. We servers will keep wearing masks because we trust doctors and science and we think masks are good. We also want to keep our jobs. The next time you want to tell the country what waiters and waitresses are really thinking tell them this: tip your servers.