The Waiters’ Cup Code

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

In the late 1800s, an entrepreneur named Fred Harvey started a chain of Harvey House restaurants. These were at railroad stops across the American West. And the waitresses who worked there had a special outfit of long black dresses that were no more than eight inches above the floor, starched white apron, black stockings and shoes, and a white bow in their hair. And Judy Garland played one of these waitresses in the 1946 movie, The Harvey Girls. Now, each Harvey girl received six weeks of training. And one of the things that they learned during that training was the cup code.

And it went like this. Once the patrons were seated, the Harvey girl would ask if they preferred coffee, hot tea, milk, or iced tea. And then after that, she’d go around the table and slightly move each diner’s coffee cup. And then she’d leave and another waitress would immediately arrive. And without even asking, she went around and poured each diner’s preferred drink. And that’s because the second server was able to read the code left by the first one. And this was the code.

If the coffee cup was right side up in its saucer, then the person got coffee. If it was upside down, they got hot tea. If it was upside down but tilted against the saucer, then they got iced tea. And if the cup was placed upside down away from the saucer, then that person was given milk. And, you know, Grant, that helped ensure efficiency because if you have a train stopping there and it’s disgorging dozens of passengers who have to finish their meal in time to get back on, you want to make sure that you get those people in and out very, very quickly without making them feel rushed.

That’s so amazing. I love that idea. These secret codes that just belong to the interior of a business that just make things go more smoothly. And we have in regular life, outside of being a Harvey girl, we have codes like that, right? If I turn my wine glass over, that means don’t serve me. Or your coffee, you can turn that over and say don’t serve me. But also there’s the color coding that comes with caff and decaf coffee on the server’s end, the orange being coded as decaf. Just all these little bits of signals that we can send to relay more information.

Yeah, I’m wondering if there are other codes like that in businesses and workplaces that maybe our listeners could tell us about. Oh, yeah. We’d love to hear about those secret signals that you pass to coworkers to say a thing without saying a thing. 877-929-9673 or tell us an email words@waywordradio.org.