It's a Living - Season 1

At an exclusive restaurant called Above The Top, which is located at the roof of a luxurious hotel in downtown Los Angeles, California, a group of five women work there as waitresses: Lois Adams, a married mother of two children(a boy and a girl), Jan Hoffmeyer, a divorced mother of one child(a daughter named Ellen) who goes to college during the day, Dorothy "Dot" Higgins, an aspiring actress who waitresses at the restaurant to supplement her income while pursuing her acting career, Vicky Allen, a farm girl from Idaho who is new to Los Angeles and is learning the ways of a major city, and finally Cassie Cranston, the attractive, sassy member of the quintet who is the wisecracker of the bunch.  In this, the very first episode of the series, Vicky is dating a pilot who invites her to spend the weekend at Palm Springs, but this causes a problem for her because she is a virgin. 

Lois and Jan decide to spend the evening together at Lois' house while her husband and children are away, but the gathering instantly becomes a slumber party when Dot and Vicky invite themselves over (Cassie shows up later after a bad date).  The slumber party, however, turns into a nightmare when a burglar shows up to rob the house.

The girls of Above The Top convince Cassie to let Vicky move in with her while Vicky's situation with her new apartment gets solved, but when Vicky finds out that the current tenants of her new apartment have yet to move out, Vicky's stay at Cassie's place stretches to a week, causing friction between the two coworkers over Vicky's tidiness and cooking.  

Vicky's father Emmett Allen arrives in Los Angeles for a visit, causing great joy for Vicky, in spite of Emmett not liking his daughter's current chosen profession and the revealing uniform she wears at the restaurant at the time of the father/daughter reunion, but when Vicky shows up at her father's camper to give him a going away present, she finds Nancy and her father in a semi-clad state, causing both father and daughter not to speak to each other. 

An old high school flame of Lois' shows up at Above The Top, which causes problems for Lois because 1.) Lois and her husband Bill are having a fight and are not speaking to each other at the moment and 2.) the old boyfriend wants to rekindle their romance.  When he wants to have a drink with her after work, she reluctantly accepts the offer and goes to his hotel room in order to tell him that the old romance is long over and that she's married with children.  Meanwhile, Dot and Vicky, overhearing Lois' predicament, follow her to the hotel room in question in order to prevent her from having an affair with her former beau. 

In order to supplement her income so that she can afford ballet lessons for her daughter Ellen, Jan takes a second job as an engraver of invitations, but holding down this job while waitressing at Above The Top and going to college by day causes Jan to fall behind on her work making invitations and her job at Above The Top to suffer, causing Nancy to fire Jan after a heated argument between both ladies one night during dinner service.  Meanwhile, Dot loses Nancy's brooch that she borrows from her in order to cover a stain on the lapel of a 1940s-style dress suit that Dot bought at a thrift shop so she can attend a party held by an important theatrical producer. 

After dumping her latest suitor who threatens to jump from a tall building for rejecting his love, Cassie starts dating a rich Venezuelan playboy named Ricardo.  In order to impress him, Cassie has Chef Mario prepare a romantic dinner for two at Cassie's apartment (the girls arrive early at Cassie's place to help set up the dining table and the meal, which happens to be "Chicken Mario").  Days later, Ricardo takes Cassie to work at Above The Top where she introduces him to the girls.  After he leaves, Cassie tells her coworkers that despite having a great time with him, she's going to dump him, which stuns the girls completely.  At the waitress lounge behind the kitchen, she explains to Lois, Jan, Vicky, and Dot that she has a personal rule never to date any man she happens to fall in love with, yet, she has been thinking a lot about Ricardo lately, especially when they are apart.  Seeing how deeply in love she has become, Lois and Jan tell her to pursue the relationship anyway and that what she and Ricardo have is quite special.  Cassie agrees to follow Lois and Jan's advice and things go well for her until Ricardo arrives at Above The Top one night during dinner service to tell Cassie that their romance is over because he is going back to Venezuela, which breaks Cassie's heart.

The Los Angeles fire department informs the staff of Above The Top that a fire has broken out several floors below the hotel where the restaurant is situated at and that they are to keep the customers there until the fire is put out, but the situation gets chaotic when a hysterical woman wearing a blue bathrobe races into Above The Top and yells that the building is on fire and that the emergency exits are covered in smoke, causing panic amongst the customers.  The waitresses take charge of the situation and keep the customers calm until Nancy informs them that the fire department is sending helicopters to the building to rescue the patrons of Above The Top at four customers at a time.  Hours later, with the restaurant closed and the customers safely rescued, Nancy, the girls, Chef Mario, and Sonny sit out the fire until the fire captain shows up and informs them that fire has been completely put out and that everyone can the leave premises. 

After turning in a term paper for her Economics class at college which she hopes will improve her grade, Jan decides to date her professor, since it's already the end of the semester, but this causes concern for Lois and the girls when they fear that something wrong will happen.  After the first date, Jan decides to not to date the professor anymore, since she found him to be boring.  She reluctantly accepts a second date with him against the advice of both Lois and Cassie (Lois tells Jan that she must be truthful about breaking up with him, while Cassie insists that Jan should "lie to him").  When that date goes wrong and the professor places some pressure on Jan to make their already rocky relationship more intimate, Jan goes to the college dean for help (with Lois in tow for moral support), but the dean can't do anything about Jan's predicament since, as she puts it, her "hands are tied."  Frustrated at the situation that she's in, Jan decides to handle the problem herself and confronts the professor by telling him that if he doesn't stop trying to get her to sleep with him or flunk her from class if she doesn't, she will go to the authorities and charge him with sexual harassment.  Days later, Jan receives the news that her term paper got a passing grade.

After attending a Hollywood party in which both ladies had a good time, Dot and Vicky discover that they are dating the same man that they met at the party.  When Vicky starts dating the man in question whom Dot went out with previously, Dot gets jealous at Vicky, which creates some heated friction between the two coworkers which almost ends their friendship.  Meanwhile, both Cassie and Jan are forced to lose weight by Nancy when both waitresses are found to have gained a few pounds over the weight requirement for work at Above The Top.  

Lois is flushed with pride after receiving a letter from her daughter's school, telling her that she has been invited to speak at Amy's class on Career Day, but the next morning during breakfast at home, Lois finds out the real reason for the invitation: Amy told a fib in her class essay in which she stated that Lois was a vice president of a local bank!  Upset about the news, Lois thinks that Amy is ashamed of her because she works as a waitress, which Amy admits to.  However, when Career Day arrives, Lois gives a wonderful speech at Amy's class, with Jan, Cassie, Vicky and Dot in tow for moral support, which causes Amy to realize how wrong she was for telling that fib so that she wouldn't be embarrassed at having a mother who serves food to people for a living.

Tension arises at work between Lois and Jan, as a pornographic magazine is found in Ellen's (Jan's daughter) overnight bag after she stayed over at Lois' house the night before.  Meanwhile, a lady at a table next to Sonny finds him attractive and begins a relationship with him, but Sonny gets jealous when his new girlfriend shows up one night at Above The Top with another man, despite the fact that Sonny and the girl agreed to have an open relationship.  

Following a management evaluation of the staff at Above The Top after dinner serve one night, Nancy informs the girls and Sonny that she is being let go by management for undisclosed reasons, which shocks everyone of the staff.  She also tells the waitresses and Sonny that Lois is to be the new hostess at Above The Top from now on.  The next evening, Lois is having a hard time as hostess, as reservations get mixed up and frustrated customers leave the restaurant after waiting more than an hour.  The next day, Lois informs the girls that she found out that Nancy got fired because of her age and that she wants Jan, Dot, Vicky and Cassie to join her as a united front to see Nancy and tell her that she must fight Mr. Steadman, the head of management, to get her hostess job back at Above The Top.  After leaving the restaurant, the girls arrive at a greasy diner called Marz, where they find Nancy working there as a waitress.  Lois and the girls try to convince Nancy to come back to Above The Top and get her old job back, but to no avail.  Later that evening, during dinner serve, Nancy arrives at Above The Top, disheveled and dirty in her waitress uniform, where she confronts Steadman (who just had a talk with Lois over the hostessing situation) and tells him that if he doesn't get her job back, she will sue management for age discrimination.  Seeing that he has no other alternative, Steadman immediately rehires Nancy as hostess of the restaurant.