NARRATOR
Annelise Rüegg, the daughter of a working-class family, grows up in modest circumstances. At the age of fourteen she is now winding bobbins in a large spinning mill in Uster, near Zurich.
ANNELISE
If I knew I’d have to work in this factory for the rest of my life, I think I’d rather die today!
NARRATOR
On Sundays, Annelise works as a waitress. She’s allowed to save whatever she earns there. At sixteen, she can finally afford a train ticket.
ANNELISE
Farewell then, Uster! Dear mother, dear sisters, goodbye!
NARRATOR
She travels to Lausanne and finds work as a waitress providing room service at the guesthouse known as the Villa Grancy.
ANNELISE (writing)
Dear Mother, if only you could come and visit me just one time – you’ve never seen anything like it! There are such posh people here and they don’t work at all. If only I could send you some of the lovely food that’s left on the plates here every day.
NARRATOR
She enjoys her work so, from then on, each season sees Annelise move on. She learns Italian in Lugano, English in Liverpool. She is able to send money home regularly. Her mother can hardly believe that, earning five francs a day, Annelise makes more than her father did as a mechanic. In Uster, the gossip is inevitable.
WOMAN
Do you think she earns those five-franc coins by honest means? There are plenty of wealthy, single gentlemen at resorts like this. She’s young and pretty – that’s all that’s needed.
NARRATOR
Annelise constantly has to contend with the poor reputation of her profession. The working conditions also take their toll on her. She never knows in advance what to expect: at the Hotel Belvedere in Scuol, she sleeps with five others in a cramped tower; at the Eismeer restaurant in the Bernese Oberland, her bed is a frozen mattress right next to the Italian men working on the Jungfrau railway; in Venice, her accommodation is a damp room below sea level.
ANNELISE
If you never got hungry, it would be quite nice to serve tables at the “Metropole di Venezia”.
LUISE
Here you go: chicken, apple cake and almonds! All this ended up in my little bag while I was clearing tables.
ANNELISE
But, Luise, what if they catch you?!
LUISE
Well then, let’s say: Addio! Next thing we’ll be off to the Riviera; you’ll see, there they’ll be fighting over lovely young serving girls like us.
ANNELISE & LUISE (singing)
No fixed abode, no place to call home;
It is simply my fate to wander and roam.
Laughing.
NARRATOR
With each passing season, Annelise finds it increasingly difficult to accept the vast gap between the living standards of the guests – whom she often meets again in various places in both the summer and winter seasons – and those of the staff.
ANNELISE (thoughtfully)
If only one of you dancing beauties knew how tired you feel after sixteen hours of work. If only one of you had to go to work at six o’clock tomorrow morning.
Waltz music fades away.
NARRATOR
She increasingly stands up to the hotel managers’ rude attitudes and speaks out on behalf of others.
ANNELISE
I cannot bear to watch my serving girls getting nothing more than a cup of coffee, stale bread and old scraps of meat crawling with maggots!
NARRATOR
But her complaints fall on deaf ears. On the contrary: because she remains steadfast in her fight for better conditions, she frequently finds herself having to pack her bags.
MANAGER
Only an ignorant Swiss woman would say something like that; out you go, you cheeky so-and-so!
NARRATOR
She begins to get involved in politics and campaigns among the staff for the Social Democrats.
ANNELISE
We are all responsible for working towards a better social order. Everyone should do their bit.
NARRATOR
In 1913 she records her experiences in a little volume entitled “Experiences of a Waitress”, published one year later by a Swiss workers’ association.
Her life will involve constantly moving around for many years to come.