If you’ve ever been to Al’s Good Food Cafe in Bernal Heights, then chances are you’ve met “Mama.”

Jean Joseph has been serving coffee and eggs there for nearly four decades – the last three alongside her sister, Joanne – and the two are as effervescent today as when they first began waitressing in 1947.

“She just turned 79,” Jean says of her sister, pointing toward a cluster of balloons in the corner. “Those were for her birthday party.”

And Jean?

“I’ll be 81 in April,” she says with a smile. “Customers are what keep me and her young.”

Still working, still greeting, still handing out Andes mints after all these years – Jean Joseph can’t imagine doing anything but waitressing.

She’s one of the dozen Bay Area women profiled in “Counter Culture: The American Coffee Shop Waitress,” a book that examines the dying breed of career waitresses.

Continue reading . . .

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