#50 | restaurant ramblings
I cried some happy tears after working this weekend. I'm learning about the food industry and I feel physically engaged with the city, recognizing the regulars and being surrounded by different types of people. My corporate job often feels like a bubble, just sitting at a computer next to other college-educated people who make the same amount of money as me and have 401Ks and employer-provided health insurance. It's a bit sheltering. The restaurant is making me contend with the realities of capitalism. In my mind, yes, I have always known that people across the city are underpaid and overworked, but doing the actual labor alongside other people has been different; I have multiple coworkers who haven't had a day off since October. Of course I do feel my privilege because I'm not doing this as my primary source of income, but it's different from before when I was both depressed about capitalism AND sheltered from it, if that makes sense. I'm engaging with and talking with people and it fills me with hope and inspiration. Plus, I'm learning a lot of things that I know I'll carry with me for a long time.
I worked on Sunday when the snowstorm began and things were slow. At any given moment, there were only two or three parties in the restaurant, so I had a lot of downtime to get to know my coworkers better. Not many people are passionate about restaurant work. It's rigorous and not very worth it. For example, barbacks have to carry loads of heavy dishes up and down the stairs, getting people's backwash all over them and straining their backs.
Other things I learned last week:
When a party of 3-4 people walk into a restaurant and there isn't a table large enough to accommodate them, they often ask to simply squeeze tables together. It's not always possible for multiple reasons: some tables can be damaged after being moved around too much, sometimes we have a lot of reservations of a certain table size so we have to have more tables for 2, etc.
Sometimes orders take longer than expected because there’s a rush of other orders right before it. Random chance.
If you quote people a waitlist time that's too long, they might not come back. If you quote them too short, they get impatient. But it's always better to go too long.
People's sense of time becomes warped when they go out to eat. They think twenty minutes have passed and it's only been ten.
The entire food service economy is broken. Restaurant profit margins are slim, even after underpaying everyone, from chefs to delivery drivers and even managers themselves, AND charging higher and higher prices to consumers.
I understand why restaurants switched to QR code menus. Paper menus break and/or require steady maintenance, and they get updated once in a while anyway. I still think they're an important part of the dining experience because I don't want to be on my phone.
On slow days, there are still some random tasks to do, like making silverware rollups or filling sauce containers for takeout or learning where things are and how to make beverages. "You have to take the easy shifts as they come," one of my new coworkers also said.