The Ups and Downs of the Restaurant Business

You will never fit into the restaurant business if you are an Average Joe. You have to be a little nuts. Most employees either drink a lot, blow lines after hours, or both. This is completely normal and accepted when working at night. You have to have a lot of patience. When people go out to a nice restaurant, manners are thrown out the window and you are their slave. Regardless of where they may work, and the fact that you probably make more money than them anyway, you are of a class lower than them and must smile while they look down on you and ask for ridiculous favors as they watch you run around like an idiot. Didn't you know that they are the only important table you have? Please!

Recently I left a restaurant which I had been employed at for 3 years. That is a ridiculously long time to keep a restaurant job. Most people change jobs with each season, following the money and the customers. This restaurant, was a special restaurant, like no other I have worked at. We were given complete freedom as employees to give out things for free, pour strong drinks, and bend over backwards as much as possible for our customers. I was not the best ass kisser but I was nice to my tables. The people I worked with were hilarious and the owner was a complete embarrassment, but fun to make fun of. Everything changed when a new kitchen staff was employed along with another set of employees for our new floor upstairs, which was built for banquets.

The new chef, a skinny little coke head who got the shakes if his blood alcohol content was not over 300, was a legend in his own mind. He was intimidated by the people who were there before him and quickly plotted a way to slowly push us out. Instead of trying to be our friends and actually learning a few things, he blamed everything on everyone else, including the fact that it took him hours to put out the food. This is not a new story for a restaurant, in fact, this is the same sad story that applies everywhere. When you go to a fine dining restaurant, the Mexicans are usually the ones cooking and preparing your food while the few white people in the kitchen are either smoking pot in the freezer or blowing lines in the office, all the while drinking all damn day.

Now if you are a smart scammer in a restaurant, you will know that in order to make the most money and steal other peoples shifts, you have to either sleep with, or stay up late and do drugs with; a manager, a chef, or an owner. This is a commonly known fact and was the case for the new banquet servers. Slowly they took over the a la carte dining and pushed out the regulars. A la carte means that everything is sold separately ( for example, you do not get a salad and soup with dinner) so a la carte refers to the dining room.

My old restaurant job was an extremely fun place to work at until the negativity of a new, insecure staff took over and changed the whole vibe. I was demoted but not fired so hopefully, when the new people blow out of there, which everyone does, I can pick up a few shifts again and work with the amazing people I met and became such good friends with.