After 43 years of hiring only men to wait tables, Cafe Pamplona hired two female servers two weeks ago, saying the restaurant was too short-staffed to continue the tradition.

The Spanish-style coffeehouse had employed female cooks in the past, but it maintained a ban on female waiters until a tight labor market forced a change.

"I needed servers," said manager James Timberlake. "It was a break with tradition, but there was no choice. There weren't enough people applying, and I needed to fill shifts."

Customers have commented on the change, said Jennie Follen, one of the newly-hired servers, who did not find out about the cafe's previous hiring policy until she started work last week as a server.

"Some people were like, 'Oh, it's a revolution!' I was like, 'I'm just trying to serve you coffee,'" Follen said. "There are some wacky eccentrics, but no one is sexist--no smacking on the behind."

In the past, the cafe had turned away women applicants to preserve its tradition.

Amanda L. Burnham '01 tried to apply last spring and was refused.

"The guy at the counter was like, 'I really hate to say this to you--this is sort of a policy we keep [quiet], but our owner doesn't like to hire women,'" Burnham said. "He seemed very sorry. Apparently, the owner was trying to preserve an authentic atmosphere."

The store's manager, however, said he was not sure how the tradition arose. Cafe owner Josephina Y. Perez grew up in Pamplona, Spain, but "it certainly isn't Pamplona tradition," Timberlake says. "I remember Josephina saying that there have always been female servers there."

And patrons at the cafe yesterday said they believed the change had not damaged the cafe's ambience.

"It's a welcome change," said one sixth-year graduate student in history who frequents the cafe who did not wish to be identified. "It doesn't make for a different atmosphere. It's the same old place."

Despite the discriminatory nature of the restaurant's earlier policy, Elizabeth Bartholet '62, Wasserstein Public Interest Professor at Harvard Law School, said the restaurant might have had legal grounds to defend the practice.

The cafe could have claimed "a defense for sex discrimination...on the basis of authenticity," said Bartholet. "The result would depend on the court. That claim has been made before, but it's a pretty narrow defense."

Bartholet also said Cafe Pamplona might have too few employees to be covered by federal and state anti-discrimination law.

And the cafe may have been able to hire only male waiters for years because the restaurant was too small for its hiring policies to have attracted much notice, Bartholet said.