According to Rutgers University labor studies professor Dorothy Sue Cobble in Dishing It Out: Waitresses and Their Unions in the Twentieth Century, "[i]n the theater of eating out, the waitress plays multiple parts, each reflecting a female role. To fulfill the emotional and fantasy needs of the male customer, she quickly learns all the all-too-common scripts: scolding wife, doting mother, sexy mistress, or sweet, admiring daughter.... Other customers, typically female, demand obsequious and excessive service—to compensate, perhaps, for the status denied them in other encounters. For once, they are not the servers but the ones being served." Customers enter restaurants with the hope of satisfying more than just their appetites, says Cobble. "More than food is being consumed at the restaurant site. And those who serve it are responding to hungers of many kinds. Eating stirs sexual and emotional associations of the most primitive order." Cobble says she formed her views while working as a waitress. She refused to play the role of the obsequious maiden and says she was fired for failing to smile at customers.

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