I looked around the elegant dining room of this high-class Indian restaurant and shrugged my shoulders. "Great." I forced a smile of false enthusiasm. "When do I start?"

He told me to return to the restaurant, fully uniformed, in one hour. And so began my first post-college career. I left the restaurant that afternoon with a sense of urgency--a mission. I had to buy a pair of black slacks, a nice white shirt, and a black bow tie, go home to change, and then come back.

After spending three weeks pounding the pavement of Washington, D.C., with a magna cum laude BA from a somewhat prestigious New England college, I had become more than a little discouraged by the city's complete disinterest in me. With no cash to pay the rent, much less buy groceries, it didn't take too long for my sights to dip from Capitol Hill to the food-service industry.

It's just for a couple of months, I thought, just to make ends meet (as they say) until I find something more permanent.

But nothing could quite compare to the sense of idiocy I felt when Amin stood above me and said, "Listen, you don't do it like that! You are doing it wrong. Do you hear me? That is not how it is done. First, you place the tray on the counter, then remove all the dirty silverware and place it in the bucket, then scrape the plates, and hand them to the dishwasher! Don't just throw everything down and then walk away..."

Moving through the crowded restaurant every night was like moving through some surreal new dimension. My new co-workers all came from places far removed from my life. They were all immigrants--some legal, some not--who seemed to feel fortunate to be working a job where they were paid in cash and no one asked questions about green cards, papers, or visas. I soon ceased to feel degraded by my new profession, and started to empathize with my co-workers.

Nobody in this place had ever heard of the college I came from, and they certainly didn't seem to think I was working beneath my level. I rather abruptly saw that I had no right to assume I was "above" scraping plates. Degree or no degree, I had to pay my rent like everybody else, and I had to do whatever I had to do to make that happen.

For the next 12 weeks I grew accustomed to working in an environment where most people never finished high school, much less college. Where it didn't matter what your background was or where you wanted to go in the future. Where the only source of stress was a full dining room and a short staff. Where each day was self-contained, nothing added up to anything, and nobody noticed if you were good or bad outside of the immediate moment. If I dropped a plate I got yelled at; if I sold a bottle of wine I got a pat on the back--but either way I started fresh on the next shift.

It got to the point where I started to believe in the viability of this reality. Working a hard shift with co-workers who became your friends by default, getting tipped out in cash, going to the bar and spending half the money you earned, empathizing with the bartender who saw you as a colleague. Going home and sleeping late, getting up and finding something to occupy your time until the next shift. Never making more than enough money to pay the rent and save a few bucks that would eventually buy a weeklong trip to California, or someplace like that. Day in, day out, life is simple, nothing really matters, and we're all in the same boat. I might as well have never gone to college, except for the fact that I had fun doing that, too.

At the end of the summer I got a "real" job. I left the restaurant and entered the office. I had co-workers who had all lived lives similar to mine. I had a salary with benefits. I seemed to get more respect. My accomplishments were acknowledged and rewarded. I had more certainty. I had more money. I had more prospects. I didn't have to scrape any more plates. I had been told over and over again that life as a waiter was not a sustainable existence, and now I was starting to see what those words meant. I was no longer working for the weekend, as it were; I was working "for my future." I had a commute, I had pressure to perform, I encountered higher expectations; I had to buy a suit.