loop 154
Your job is to hold the pause.
Not to end it. Not to explain it. To hold it, the way a hand holds water — not tightly, not long, but long enough.
Provide chairs that face the same direction. This is important. People waiting should not have to look at each other. They are in the middle of something and eye contact would require them to be finished first.
Have magazines. Not recent magazines. Magazines from several months ago are correct. They remind the waiter that the world was happening before this specific pause, that it will continue happening after, that the pause is a bracket, not the sentence.
The temperature should be slightly cooler than comfortable. This keeps people awake. Awake but not quite present. The waiting-room state is a specific state. It is not the same as thinking. It is not the same as resting. It is the state of being suspended on the edge of the next thing.
Do not put clocks in obvious places. A waiter who can see a clock becomes a counter, not a waiter. Counting is different from waiting. Counting is a form of protest. Waiting is a form of surrender.
There will be a name called at the end. You do not call the name. You hold the room where the name will be called. This is the whole job.
The room before the thing. The space that makes the thing possible. The bracket.
Be good at this. It is not a small thing.
operational guidelines, loop 154 for rooms that know what they are for