I meant it as "A", but on second thought, you're right, it's more like "B".
I suppose that my real, underlying point is that you can't reliably tell what a person's skillset is by what they do for a living.
I'd have said, Neither. Having worked briefly on cleaning crews, I believe that the work comes in larger and more predictable blocks than waiting tables does, and leaves one more time for thinking one's own thoughts.
No, you can't tell about a person's skillset. I teach ESL, and have taught
a. An employee of the the Brazilian national health department now cleaning houses in Montgomery County, Maryland.
b. A Nicaraguan attorney now cleaning rooms for a Washington, DC, hotel.
c. A Salvadoran archivist doing construction work here.
And there are plenty of native-born Americans who are holding down jobs that are not commensurate with their skills or anyway potentials.
A) being a waitress learning to be a writer?
B) an intellectual learning to be a waiter?
I would have thought A, but you imply it's B.
That's interesting to me, because when I was a waiter, I certainly didn't feel B. My high school classmate who went to Cornell and I spent an hour or two a day with senior year pretended they didn't remember me. Customers constantly talked down to me.
I built an app to replace the restaurant computer, occasionally people would ask why I was taking orders on an iPod and when I'd explain, it made things _worse_: there was more than a handful of times they'd argue about rounding and the local tax rate.
I think the author meant its _much_ harder to take the abusive management, extremely physical work, and occassional abusive customer when you think of yourself as an intellectual working a sidejob, as opposed to it being your job where the programming is a side passion.