Fifteen Minutes: At Work, At Home With Vicky

Katerina's story started, "The soldier has too many clothes," but she had no idea what to write next. The nine-year old wiggled in her chair in Vicky Valtaras' small dining room near Central Square, trying to come up with another sentence for her homework assignment. The nine-year old whined to her mother, Lowell House's principal dining hall card checker, "I don't know what to do!" Vicky calmly urged her to finish her work. "Just think about what it would feel like, and write something," she said. She spoke to her daughter with the same blunt tone she uses with dawdling diners at Lowell, directing them to "please put away their trays."

Vicky has dark hair, with bangs that run to her eyebrows. Her face swings with her moods, from glee to disdain, from fatigue to excitement. She usually grins broadly but rolls her eyes and sighs when you forget your ID and beg her to punch in your number. When Vicky is rested, she looks young and jokes with you. When she's tired, her eyes puff up and she complains about almost anything. Her daughter, Katerina, who's nine, has the same dark hair, expressive face and uninhibited demeanor. "I was the same as her growing up," Vicky said, "okay, maybe a little quieter."

Vicky rents the first floor of a white, three-story house. There is a small front yard with bright orange flowers that a chain-link fence separates from the sidewalk. Photographs cover the walls in the living room. The pictures show relatives in formal Greek military uniform, several weddings and Katerina--infant photos, yearly school portraits and photos of her as a ballerina. "She stopped lessons last year. They're just too expensive," Vicky said. Katerina's bedroom is full of toys and other contraptions. "She has everything she'd ever need," Vicky said. "My dream is to take her to Greece. Right now I don't have enough money. Bills go up, they don't go down. Last year, I told her next year. This year, I'm telling her the same thing. But I do hope to go next year. The problem is I work in the summer and eight weeks goes by very fast. Two weeks vacation is too short. It's 900 dollars for nothing. By the time you go you have to come back. If it was a month, it would be different."

Vicky came to Cambridge when she was 13 years old. "We lived just outside of Athens. My aunts and uncles used to live here in Cambridge, so they brought us here," she said. Her parents now live upstairs and take care of Katerina when Vicky and Sotirios, her husband, are working. "Katerina has to speak in Greek to them because they only know enough English to communicate," Vicky said. "She also keeps up by going to Greek school two nights a week." Vicky has returned to Greece three times. Her last trip was her honeymoon in 1989.

On a Greek calendar hanging in her kitchen, Vicky pointed out the important days of the year, Christmas, Greek Orthodox, her birthday and the day on which her name is celebrated. Every name has its own day. "For Christmas and Easter, we barbecue an entire lamb, which we order from New Hampshire or Vermont. It's already cleaned out, so we set it up, and turn it by its head. When I was in Greece, we killed it ourselves."

When Vicky celebrates with friends, she stays sober. "My sister, my girlfriend, and I went out," she remembered. "We were of age to drink, but we just watched our other friends drink. Some girls got so drunk, they had to sit in the corner. The rest of us had Coke. Or you know what I drink?"--Vicky flashed her trademark grin--"I drink pina colalda, but without the alcohol," she said. "And I watch them sit in the corner and I dance and dance and dance." Now she stays at home with Katerina. "We're going to be home this New Year's Eve. We don't go out now. The family gets together and we play cards instead," she said.

Vicky tries to go to church on Sundays. But so far this year, she has worked every Sunday, (supposedly her day off) in the Lowell dining hall. On one Sunday morning, she sat watching the long line at the waffle machine and sulked, saying, "I'm tired. Every Sunday I've worked this year. The boss asks me, 'Do you think you can do it?,' and I say sure. I can't say no very well." The frenetic nature of the dining hall this year has also tired her out. "It's busy this year. We're busier, big time. You know that there's no interhouse in Adams? Well, every other dining hall gets bumped. The students like Lowell, too. They tell me." If anyone is prepared to deal with the pressure, it's Vicky. Her father worked at the Winthrop dining hall until 1988. She has worked at Harvard dining halls since she was twenty-one, and knows her job well. Vicky works from 10:45 to 7:45 p.m. five nights a week, with two half-hour unpaid breaks to eat. She describes her day, "at 11, we eat, get up, put desserts out, and start working. We're done at two and we clean tables, fill up napkin holders and get the desserts for dinner ready."

Don't even think about trying to sneak in a non-Harvard guest while she's on duty. She is tougher than Annenberg. "I always look at the pictures," Vicky said, "It's a habit. The IDs are not transferable. A couple of years ago, someone lost an ID and stole from the rooms, you know?" The most common way students try to enter illicitly, Vicky said, is through the side door from the small dining room. She glances over to this door, as she checks each ID photo. "Just the other day, some girl gave me an ID card that had a different photo. The photo was of a guy. I told her, 'You can't use this, it's not yours.' I told the manager and he came running up the stairs. I've never seen him run so fast. It turned out that the ID was of some friend of her boyfriend."

"We used to wear white uniforms, like nurse's uniforms. Some people decided to stop me on the street and ask for help one time. Now we have these shirts." She looked down at her heavy, green Harvard University Dining Services polo, and shook her head. "They're all right in the winter but not so great right now." It was a warm, humid afternoon. "You sweat. There's no way you could wear make-up in here. And back then when I started, we didn't use IDs. There was a board with kids' names on it. It was huge." She gestures with her hands to indicate that it was more than four feet wide. "The board was a grid with everyone's name on it, crossed with each meal. Every five days we switched sides of the board. When someone showed up for a meal, I crossed their name off the grid. That way, I had to learn everyone's name and face. I think it was easier before. It was faster. It sounds weird, but it's the truth."

She recounted some other differences between today and when she started. "I'm so used to the food after 19 years," she said. "They do have their own system--it's good. They have a dietician and the cooks go to cooking school. It used to be one meat dish, and a vegetarian dish. They've added more vegetables and the salad's bar twice as long as it used to be." Vicky's favorite food in the dining hall is soup. "They make good soups. Someone in the main kitchen makes the soup from scratch the day before and they freeze it in bags." Dining hall employees used to have the summers free, but now Vicky works during the summers. While Vicky used to receive a fractional unemployment salary, she now works from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. for most of the summer. "I don't do this job in the summer. We do other work: painting, cleaning, different things."

What Vicky likes most is the camaraderie on the job with other employees and Lowell students. "People come back and visit after they graduate; some stay on in the Senior Common Room. I remember most of them." One afternoon, a woman walked in and when Vicky saw her, she stood up, walked around her desk and the two women embraced for almost a minute. Vicky said, "That was Mrs. Bossert, the former master. She's special. There's a word for it. They were open. She used to bake everything herself for Thursday tea. She started early Wednesday and she enjoyed it. There was this one pastry that was like chocolate cake outside, and whipped cream inside. It was something else."

Vicky's principal frustration is the paucity of workers on the job. "They don't want to hire anybody else because it costs money. But they need workers--I'm working overtime every week!" When reminded that Harvard has money, she shook her head and says, "Don't even go there." Dining hall workers do receive raises twice a year and almost all receive more than ten dollars an hour. "We get a raise of 25 cents twice a year." Vicky said. "It's not bad."

If Vicky found that she no longer needed to work so hard, she would spend more time with her daughter. "Katerina, that comes first, everything else second. When I come home at 8:20, or 8:30 p.m., I help her with homework and I put her to bed. And when I have a free day, I spend the time with her and spend much less time at other things. I clean the house, cook a little, help her with homework." Vicky said, "I tell my daughter, if you study enough, you can go to Harvard. Harvard and MIT are the biggest schools all over, and in Europe." Thinking about her daughter made her think about her future plans. "When I get 25 years, I think I'd like to go part-time. She's going to be in high school, or college. But if I worked part-time, say 8 hrs a day, 4 days a week, I could be home, when she's home."

Timothy L. Warren is a second-semester sophomore in Lowell House. He wants to work as a bike mechanic, or a professional soccer player. Recently, he has settled for babysitting. This is the first in a series of three stories on Harvard workers.