Café Lu Waitresses, Santa Ana, California, United States

Waitresses are half-naked, wearing dark lace teddies, brightly colored lingerie with bottoms two sizes too small or flesh-colored swimsuits as they wait on customers at Café Lu in Santa Ana. Even the heater can’t keep out blasts of cold every time someone enters. But there’s no time to be freezing—the Vietnamese coffeehouse is buzzing.
The Café Lu girls seem to be doing what you’d expect half-naked, beautiful women to be doing on the clock: little to nothing. They play cards with customers, gossip about fashion (as well as themselves and their patrons) and check their phones, all while occasionally taking drags off e-cigarettes. But these ladies are also working their asses off, stirring cups of cà phê sua da (Vietnamese iced coffee) and topping off tall glasses of frosty jasmine tea in between hands of 13, a popular Vietnamese card game in which four players take turns trying to get rid of their cards as fast as they can.
“It can be a little cold sometimes,” Diamy says, sitting down momentarily to banter and top off a glass of tea. “But it’s good work. I get paid twice what I normally would, and to do what? Make coffee? Pour tea?”