What different attitudes do the two waiters express about the old man?

Even
though the two waiters understand that the old man is lonely and has recently attempted suicide,
the younger waiter remains unsympathetic. He himself, he says, would not want to be that old; an
old man "is a nasty thing," he says, even though the older waiter points out how clean
the old man is. The younger waiter is impatient because the old man is the last customer and is
keeping him from going home to his wife.

The older waiter, on the other hand,
is more understanding of the old man's loneliness. As he says to the younger waiter,

I am of those who like to stay late at the caf© . . . With all
those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night.

Unlike the younger waiter, who has "youth, confidence, and a
job," the older waiter understands the nothingness the old man faces the sense of
uselessness or used-upness that perhaps led him to attempt suicide and that causes him to stay
late at the caf© . The older waiter understands the appeal of a "clean and pleasant"
place with good light and no music.

It's not clear what the root cause of the
old man's troubles might be, but the specifics of his situation are unimportant. What matters is
that the older waiter is sensitive to the same sort of emotional void the old man feels. At the
end of the story, for lack of a better term, the older waiter labels that void as
"insomnia."