What is the nature of conflict in "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place"?

The nature of the conflict in Hemingway's "A Clean,
Well-Lighted Place" is essentially existential.  With minimal authorial intervention, it
is left to the reader to determine what struggles exist in the old man and the older
waiter.  The tension of the conflict resides in the dialogue of the two waiters, "two
different kinds."  The younger waiter lets the old man's brandy glass pour over until it
"slopped over and ran down the stem."  He is not ordered, and accuses the old waiter of
"talking nonsense."  Like the old man who attempted suicide, since his life had nothing
left, the old waiter also seeks a clean, well-lighted place, a place of order and light
against the "nada," the nothingness of life.

In an essay
[cited below] entitled, "Character, Irony, and Resolution in 'A Clean, Well-Lighted
Place,'" Warren Bennett observes the dichotomy between confidence as exhibited by the
younger waiter and despair found in the older waiter; he notes, also, the irony that
works throughout the story.  Bennett perceives the conflict between this younger
confidence and the older despair.

This profound difference
between the two waiters is "embedded" in the casual conversation about the old man who
has attempted suicide because he has lacked anything to live for.  This despair the old
waiter understands as he, too, seeks a lighted place against the darkness of "nada," and
his despair and the anguish of being alone.  His is the existential struggle to find
some meaning in the nothingness and absurdity of life.