Captains compete for the briefest menu spiel possible. The key is to eliminate unnecessary choices; most people just want to be told what to do. At 5:35 I’m back at the table for the order. I memorize every guest’s selection; writing things down would suggest a “transactional” relationship, something I want to avoid. Each guest should feel special. A minute later I dictate the orders to the server, who transcribes and then places them while I stay on the floor.

In an ideal service, the captain never leaves the floor. After that, it’s all about table maintenance until I drop the check with some complimentary cognac in three or five hours, depending on whether they go four-course or tasting. I’ll do this 13 more times tonight.

Marx might have called this kind of work “estranged labor,” but the phrase isn’t quite right. My experience working in fine dining was marked by hard, repetitive and often meaningless work. But it wasn’t completely “estranging,” not at first. To the contrary, I found that hard, repetitive work, however “estranged” in some abstract or theoretical sense, could be incredibly affirming. Executing the same tasks with machine-like precision over and over and over again, like one of Adam Smith’s nail-cutters, offered a special kind of enjoyment. There was no reflection, no question about what my job required of me, and I could indulge, for hours, in the straightforward immediacy of action.

Next to a doorway leading into the dining room, a sign in the kitchen summed up the job in the form of a commandment: “Make it nice.” Make it nice means you hold yourself accountable to every detail. It means everything in the restaurant must appear perfect — the position of the candle votives, the part in your hair. Everything matters.

Most of us internalized this mantra quickly. One of my first assignments as a food-runner was to polish glassware. I worked in a small alcove, connected to the dishwasher. Glass racks came out, I wiped away any watermarks or smudges, and then, just as I finished one rack, another appeared. This went on for hours, like some kind of Sisyphean fable revised for the hospitality industry. By hour two my fingers hurt and my back ached. But I couldn’t stop. The racks kept coming. Slowing down never occurred to me. There wasn’t time. I needed to make it nice. I wanted to make it nice.

I moved up the ranks quicker than most. Each promotion required a new but reassuringly mechanical set of skills. When setting food on a table, I learned to obey the maxim “raise right, lower left.” My movements had to be perfectly synchronized with the other food-runners, our arms dropping together like weighted levers. To replace a tablecloth, I would smooth it out with an antique iron, reset the table with glassware, silver and charger plates, making sure the labels on each were squared-off and facing the guest, all in under three minutes. Another server suggested that I hum the theme to “The Bourne Identity” under my breath to stay motivated. I did, and he was right. It worked.

Duck came out on a special cart called a guéridon. Captains did the carving tableside. Slicing off the left breast was easy, but to get the right side required a little finesse. You couldn’t turn the bird around, which felt natural to do, because the cavity could never face the guest. Chef decided this would be “unappealing.” So you had to switch hands, carving ambidextrously. Regardless of your abilities wielding a knife with either hand, both breasts needed to be on the plate in less than a minute, before the kitchen sent out the sides. If you took longer you’d be caught finishing the job while some runner hovered awkwardly next to you with a tray full of saucepans and tweezers.