WORKING -- Rich Herber

Story by Alex Coolman; photo by Brian Pobuda

HE IS ...

Ready and waiting.

MAN IN MOTION

Even in the slow period after the lunch rush, Rich Herber keeps busy.

Herber, a waiter at Norm’s Restaurant in Costa Mesa, takes care of what

he calls “side work” -- making sure catsup bottles are on every table,

brewing fresh coffee, cleaning up around his area -- when the flood of

midday diners eases up in the early afternoon.

There are still a few customers at the seven tables Herber covers at this

time of day, and he pays attention to what people want.

He brings a pastrami sandwich and chicken strips to a pair at one of the

green-and-yellow vinyl booths. He pours more iced tea for a man who

silently shows him an empty glass. His manner is brisk, efficient,

good-humored.

“You come in, you take orders, you tell a bunch of jokes and then you

leave,” Herber says.

It sounds like a simple job, and Herber is quick to admit that the work

is nothing glamorous. But it’s a job Herber has been doing for 15 years

for a powerful reason: he enjoys it.

ESCAPE FROM THE CYCLOPS

Originally, the 37-year-old Orange resident had planned to become an

accountant.

Accounting was what he studied in college, and accounting was what he did

for six years after he graduated.

But the office routine -- negotiating the bland maze of cubicles and

staring at the “Cyclops” eye of the computer monitor -- didn’t agree with

Herber.

“I was bored out my mind,” he said. “I made any excuse I could just to

get out.”

Trying to think of a job he would enjoy more, he came back to the work he

had originally pursued in high school to earn extra money. He got a

part-time position at the Norm’s in Costa Mesa because he had known the

people who worked at the Norm’s in Santa Ana.

“I came back here as a second job, and enjoyed it so much I asked for

full-time hours,” Herber said.

He’s been there ever since.

THE PHILOSOPHER IN THE APRON

“Can I have some more tea?” an elderly woman asks as Herber walks by her

table.

“Sure, honey.”

Herber is friendly with his customers, many of whom are locals who come

in several times a week. They treat him to a little affectionate abuse,

and he dishes it out in return.

“I enjoy most of my customers. I really do,” he says. “They’re wonderful

people.”

He also runs across the occasional jerk, of course. No waiter works for

long without encountering a coffee shop curmudgeon.

But bad vibes don’t get to Herber much.

“A lot of people do burn out,” he says. “I just take it all

tongue-in-cheek. You don’t take it personally, and you enjoy it while it

lasts.

“I mean, I could break my leg tomorrow and it would all stop.”

‘I LIKE IT’

Herber talks about his simple job as if it were some kind of gravy train.

In a way, it is. It hasn’t made him rich or landed him on the cover of

any magazines, but it’s kept him going and given him some satisfying

years.

“I like it,” he says.

Then he heads over to a booth where two women are waiting for lunch. He’s

got some difficult news to break.

“I’m all out of meatloaf,” he tells them. “You want to go roast beef or

chicken?”