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ORAL HISTORY

Naomi Amador

Naomi Amador was born in Pampa, Texas, and moved about with her family before settling in Waco, Texas, when she was a seventeen-year-old high school senior. She immediately  began working as a server at El Chico to save money for a car and an apartment after graduation. She has been serving and bartending ever since, with brief stints in retail and as a  packaging and warehouse worker at Balcones Distilling. As a very young woman server, she was exposed to sexual harassment and bar fights at numerous establishments.

Amador is passionate about hospitality and working for smaller businesses that foster a sense of  family within their organizations, but she says those types of establishments are rare. She has raised two children more or less single-handedly while working multiple jobs to keep her family afloat. Without the benefit of employee health insurance, even when both she and her newborn son were hospitalized, Amador has had to occasionally rely on government assistance for  healthcare, for which she still experiences feelings of shame. Nevertheless, she is committed to the industry that shaped her, and she currently makes well above subminimum wage managing  front-of-house operations at Southern Roots Brewery, where she also receives health insurance.