Restaurant Life Lessons

[qtlaw]

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?

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

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.

 

[MisterCreosote]

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.

 

[BurnsWhenIPee]

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 ****-kicker stoner who starts yelling, "I didn't order no ****ing pizza! You ****ing 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.

 

[playthrough]

Worked at McDonalds in high school, oddly at the same one where I had birthday parties as a kid. My childhood best friend's Dad was the owner. I remember my first paycheck, that seemed like all the money in the world. I really respected the store managers and felt like that was a perfectly respectable career (and still felt that way at my second newspaper, ha). Also, I swear the food was better back then. I ate a LOT of chicken mcnuggets.

Over my first couple college summers (I grew up in suburban Atlanta) I worked as a server at a neighborhood sports bar owned by former Falcons tackle Mike Kenn. That largely sucked, tough to make decent money, got stiffed a couple times by big parties in the banquet room and you don't forget those. Seemingly every night some retired NFL player or local celebrity would come in, when I could still get starstruck. "Hey, that's Franco Harris!"

 

[dixiehack]

 

[qtlaw]

View attachment 17849

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???

 

[MisterCreosote]

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 **** 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 **** we pulled there.

 

[micropolitan guy]

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???

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.

 

[Deskgrunt50]

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.

 

[TrooperBari]

View attachment 17849

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

 

[I Should Coco]

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 ...

 

[qtlaw]

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 ...

In HS one of the best things was trading ice cream (I worked at the place) for records (my buddy) and movie tickets (another friend).

 

[playthrough]

I'm glad my daughter worked a hostess/server at a local country club for a couple summers, and now that she's removed from it, she agrees. Very much a behavioral study. The club is a low-level private joint but some members think it's Augusta National and dump on the help, others are shamelessly cheap. Some were wonderful and incredibly generous. My daughter got to know a lot of members well and then could tell when some guys brought in women who were not their wives, those were my favorite stories. Plenty of Caddyshack vibes all over the place with a lot of the same characters.

 

[Spartan Squad]

Worked at Jack In The Box my junior year of high school. Great time. Met some cool people who taught me all the Spanish vulgarities (until my students taught me some new ones). I actually learned more Spanish there than I did my previous three years of classes.

I remember learning how to deal with crazy people and those who get mad over the stupidest of crap.

Also church people are the absolute worst when they dine out. The place was rarely messier than it was after the church crowd left.

 

[Driftwood]

I wouldn't have made it in fast food in high school. I was a grocery store man all the way.
I have worked several summers at a tap room owned by a buddy just because it was something to do, and I enjoyed it.
We did typical bar food. I worked in the kitchen and did everything except operate the grill: manned the friers, made salads, filled orders, assembled the orders, sometimes ran them out to tables, cut vegetables, etc. I didn't have to wash dishes or bus tables.
The best part of it was he paid me cash each night under the table, and when we got done, I made myself whatever I wanted to eat and got two beers.

 

[Driftwood]

Come to think of it, it was a pretty sweet gig. I didn't even ask for it. Wife and I were eating, and the owner comes around and asked if I want to work some nights, told me the terms, and I said sure.
I worked 5-9 and got $50 cash at closing. The food I ate each night was worth probably $15, and two beers was another $15 for a total of $80 each night doing something I had fun at when otherwise I would have just been sitting around.

 

[MisterCreosote]

I delivered pizza in a small but densely populated pocket of Philadelphia for a few years. Which means I could leave the restaurant with five deliveries and be back in 20 minutes. So I could rack up a ton of deliveries (and tips) in any one shift. And I worked most weekdays by myself and with one other guy on weekends.

I formed some great self-preservation techniques by driving/walking around with hundreds of dollars in cash late at night. On the busier nights, I’d walk out of there with $400-$500 cash for that one shift.

I’d also make whatever I wanted for dinner. For as many calories as I burned running around delivering food, I’m sure I negated almost all of it by eating a cheesesteak and onion rings at midnight every night.

The lasting memory I have of that place is how ****ing filthy it was by today’s standards. We all smoked right there in the kitchen, including the grill cook, who would put his cigarettes out in the grease trap while cooking. The pizza cook would pull pies out of the oven with a cigarette dangling out of his mouth at all times. The owner’s wife would be smoking while checking customers out at the register. I came in early one day (“early” meaning noon-ish), and found one of the cooks sleeping on the prep table, resting his head on the meat slicer.

 

[BurnsWhenIPee]

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

Grew up around Taco Johns, and my sister worked there all through high school, so I didn't appreciate that until I was moved away.

Then a couple of years ago, one opened about an hour away from us. Gotta admit to taking a detour every few months and doing some serious damage there.

And it's just as glorious as it ever was.

 

[I Should Coco]

There is one T-Johns that survives in Eastern Washington — about a mile north of Gonzaga in Spokane — and over the years when I lived in the region, I went out of my way several times to eat there.