Restaurant Life Lessons

Inspired by my discussion about The Bear, all the life lessons I learned starting as a dishwasher (lowest on the totem pole, getting paid $2.10 per hour to have people throw plates, silverware, and food at you) then on to the floor (busboy, then waiter (great pay in mid 80's $20/hr plus min wage)). I learned so much there, I still have a soft spot for my memories there and reminisce with one of my buddies from there every now and then.

Perhaps most valuable less I learned though, whereas some of the (all male) wait staff were working there as their profession, I knew I was only a college guy and this was not going to be my adult life.

I always thought, even during law school, that if I couldn't get a job in my field, I could always make a living as a waiter. I hope they still enjoy a decent standard of living.

who else has worked in a restaurant? Good or bad memories?

 

I worked at a Burger King starting the summer of my junior year of high school til about halfway through my senior year.

If you got time to lean, you got time to clean.

 

I washed dishes, delivered, cooked, and eventually managed in restaurants of all kinds. In a lot of ways, it was the best time of my life.

Then I had to go and ruin it by deciding I wanted to be a journalist.

Dumbest decision I ever made.

 

Closest I've got is a summer (in college) stint as a Domino's driver. This was back in the days of they only offered pizza and soda, and all of the pizzas were buy-one, get-one-free.

When you get a delivery into the hood (even in white-boy Iowa) at 1:45 a.m., and you deliver it there, to a house that had boards on many of the windows and no lights on, to wake up some shit-kicker stoner who starts yelling, "I didn't order no fucking pizza! You fucking woke me up!", it's time to run like you've never run before back to the car. You were being set up to get robbed and your ass beat down.

Then when they call back to ask where their pizza is at 2 a.m., the only acceptable response is to hang up.

 

No I did not plagerize from Mr. Bourdain ..........but damn my thoughts were exactly aligned with what he's thinking.

I wish I had young attorneys who had been servers.

Wait, he passed 6 years ago???

 

The restaurant I ended up managing was bankrolled by Gino Marchetti. Not his chain of burger joints, but run by the same guy who helped found that chain.

They were retired by that time, and this place was nothing more than a vanity project for his wife. Gino himself would come by sometimes and help us out in the kitchen. He was very cool, and had a ton of awesome stories.

The restaurant only lasted three years. I had since moved to another job, but they called me one night and asked me to come in to help out with a “detailed cleaning.” When I got there, they were packing shit up to close up shop for good.

Gino and his partner were there, and basically told us to help ourselves to anything we wanted. We cleaned out the walk-in, each walking away with a month’s worth of food. I took the industrial coffee maker and enough coffee to get me through to the apocalypse.

For all its faults, it was almost like a newsroom in terms of camaraderie. I still miss that place and all the shit we pulled there.

 

Not at a restaurant, but two years behind the concession stand at my small hometown's theatre. Then a semester clearing dishes off of dinner trays, washing pots and pans at St. Christopher's School for overprivileged white West End kids. It was a job passed down over the years in my fraternity, you got free dinner.

Micro Jr. is an attorney, he worked for five years in a Chinese restaurant while in high school and college. He's clerking but ready to move on to the next step. Too bad you don't live in Denver.

 

My first job, when I was 16, was at Flakey Jake’s. Really good burgers. If anyone is familiar, it had a bakery, a milkshake/ice cream stand and some other little stations. You ordered at the counter and were called up when your order was ready.

I was assigned to be the cashier in the bakery to start. There was an actual baker with the hat and all. On my first night, he filled a pitcher half-full of Coke and topped it off with a bottle of Jack Daniels.

I also worked in the milkshake/ice cream areas. But a torn thumb ligament from high school football ended my ice cream scooping career.

I also got yelled at when me and my buddy were being obnoxious calling out the orders on the mic.

I did eat my weight in the cookies and cole slaw from the walk-in fridge.

It wasn’t a bad job for a kid. But my restaurant lesson was that I didn’t want to work in a restaurant.

It went out of business years later. I think they stopped cooking the burgers to order, which hurt their traffic.

Next, I worked at Blockbuster. Now newspapers. I’m a business killer.

 

A fine sentiment. Unfortunately, not Anthony Bourdain but a fan's tribute in the wake of his death.
https://www.memphisflyer.com/food-service-a-confidential-tie-that-binds
Some Reservations

 

My main high school and summers-of-college job was at a grocery store, but during my junior and senior years at University of Iowa, I worked at the Taco John's in downtown Iowa City.

Lots of interesting characters as co-workers, and some fun times working the closing shift with basically no manager around. One of us closers had to clean bathrooms, the other had to deal with the huge pile of dishes. I always preferred the dishes.

Highlights included trading food with the nearby Chinese restaurant, getting people to leave at closing time by offering them free Potato Oles (that we were going to throw out anyway), and serving Bucky Badger on a Saturday evening after a Wisconsin-Iowa football game.

I still could go for a couple Taco Bravos and a Potato Ole ...