As she stood before a table, taking orders, sometimes repeating them back while writing them out, sometimes not, making small talk, my mother would “more or less make a picture in my mind” of the person giving her the order, what that person ordered, and where around a table (or at a counter) he or she was located. Though, surely, there was variation in the way my mother did this, her picture could include dress and physical appearance: items of dothing—a red blouse, a splashy tie—and physical features like a
birthmark or an unusually shaped nose. Broad social markers such as gender, race, age, body type, and weight also aided in memorization. (“Of course, a child’s plate, you can always tell” where that will go, my mother laughingly notes.) My mother’s beliefs and biases about these markers could play into the construction of the picture.
The layout of the tables (or the stools at the counter) and people’s location at them enabled my mother to store and recall information about orders in a number of ways. A customer’s specific position (by the window or closest to her) mattered, especially if it were somehow unusual—let’s say that a woman pulls a fifth chair to the edge of a four-top. Relative location also figures in, aided by other characteristics of the person or the order. My mother and I are sitting at the kitchen table, which she uses to illustrate: “The one sitting at the [fifth] chair, she ordered this, this is what she ordered, and the next person over [my mother points to the next chair clockwise], that’s another lady, and that’s what she wants.” Notice that my mother seems to perform some basic cognitive operations on the spatial information, something noted in the studies of waiters and waitresses. She mentions deviation, sequence, similarity, and contrast. Again, my mother points to an imaginary customer at our table: “I remember, he ordered the hamburger [she moves her gaze to the next chair], but she didn’t want a hamburger, she wanted something else.” So specific location as well as overall configuration matters.