Bleak House, bleak food?

It seems that Dickens in David Copperfield and Bleak House explores two sides of the waiting staff. In David Copperfield we have the bumbling waiter who steals David's food because presumably he is unable to afford his own. In Bleak House we have the female waitress who is hosting men of a higher class than that of David.
In the picture the waitress is wearing a long flowing gown that I would definitely not be able to work in a long dress, considering my restaurant has lots of stairs!!

An extract from Bleak House:


Accordingly they betake themselves to a neighbouring dining-house, of the class known among its frequenters by the denomination slap- bang, where the waitress, a bouncing young female of forty, is supposed to have made some impression on the susceptible Smallweed, of whom it may be remarked that he is a weird changeling to whom years are nothing. . . .


Into the dining-house, unaffected by the seductive show in the window of artificially whitened cauliflowers and poultry, verdant baskets of peas, coolly blooming cucumbers, and joints ready for the spit, Mr. Smallweed leads the way. They know him there and defer to him. He has his favourite box, he bespeaks all the papers, he is down upon bald patriarchs, who keep them more than ten minutes afterwards. It is of no use trying him with anything less than a full-sized "bread" or proposing to him any joint in cut unless it is in the very best cut. In the matter of gravy he is adamant.


Conscious of his elfin power and submitting to his dread experience, Mr. Guppy consults him in the choice of that day's banquet, turning an appealing look towards him as the waitress repeats the catalogue of viands and saying "What do YOU take, Chick?" Chick, out of the profundity of his artfulness, preferring "veal and ham and French beans — and don't you forget the stuffing, Polly" (with an unearthly cock of his venerable eye), Mr. Guppy and Mr. Jobling give the like order. Three pint pots of half-and-half are superadded. Quickly the waitress returns bearing what is apparently a model of the Tower of Babel but what is really a pile of plates and flat tin dish-covers. Mr. Smallweed, approving of what is set before him, conveys intelligent benignity into his ancient eye and winks upon her. Then, amid a constant coming in, and going out, and running about, and a clatter of crockery, and a rumbling up and down of the machine which brings the nice cuts from the kitchen, and a shrill crying for more nice cuts down the speaking-pipe, and a shrill reckoning of the cost of nice cuts that have been disposed of, and a general flush and steam of hot joints, cut and uncut, and a considerably heated atmosphere in which the soiled knives and tablecloths seem to break out spontaneously into eruptions of grease and blotches of beer, the legal triumvirate appease their appetites.

What I love here is the reference to a pile of plates and flat tin dish-covers as being similar to the Tower of Babel, where the variation in human language began. Being a waitress does sometimes feel like a meddling of languages. Especially with regards to the menu, it amazes me how many people do not read the menu when they go out for dinner. I ask them a question about the food they have just ordered. For example how they would like their steak cooked and they look at me like I am speaking a different language. I do feel anger towards people who do not read the menu, it seems to me pointless of going out for dinner.