Restaurants Are a Way of Life

Well, they are if, as Dante implies, life is meant to be the path of redemptive suffering, anyway.

Restaurants, and this will come as no surprise if you've read the introduction, will be a significant source of material for this blog. Sometimes I may write about specific restaurants, other times I will write about the business in general. Often I will write about the experiences, both good and bad, that I've had working in this business. I've held almost every position possible in the food and beverage world, so my perspective on this vale of tears is deeply influenced by the business.

Populated by people from all walks of life, the restaurant business is, at the very least, entertaining. I count among my best friends in life those I met working in the biz, and I met my fiancee while working for a supplier. Suffice it to say, it has, in many ways, been very good to me. It has also hideously warped my mind and I blame it for every vice in my life. Man, I love the restaurant business.

Working in this game will likely result in agnosticism, or possibly cause militant atheism. Either is a reasonable reaction, and has certainly forced me to wrestle with my beliefs and understanding of The Almighty. Pretty much any front line customer service in this post-modern entitled society will at least make you question the judgment of a supernatural being who would become a mortal in order to let the Roman's torture and execute him so that sins could be forgiven. Such a price seems not worth paying for many customers I've dealt with, so it's a good thing Christ died for their sins and not me.

There has been more than one occasion where I have dealt with an irate customer where I've scratched my head and said, “Lord, if you are all knowing, then you knew what a couchlicker this person would be, and you still went to the cross? That strains credulity, and makes me wonder how smart you are.” Of course, one could experience in such interactions great hope in the Lord's superabounding grace. After all, if he died for them, maybe he won't resent having died for me quite so much on the Day of Judgment.

Most people, actually are usually polite, and some are downright pleasant to wait on. I try to focus on that as much as possible, though it is at times, admittedly, nearly impossible. One trick I've learned to deal with this-and I invite all of you to use this in your own lives-is to employ a system I will call the suit of concerns. Basically, this requires a deck of cards. I pull all the cards out except for the fives, fours, threes, twos, and aces. I draw a card every morning, and whatever number I pull is the number of concerns I'm permitted for the day. As you can imagine at this point, concerns is not the term I use, but there is no need to be overly profane in this blog. After all, I'm not on shift right now.

This system has served me well, and I often tell servers and cooks that I find myself managing from time to time to employ this system as well. Have them draw a card, and when they come to me to complain about something, I just ask if they are prepared to spend one of there concerns on the particular issue in question. Usually they aren't, and on the occasions they are, I just send them outside to smoke a cigarette. Or whatever they are going to smoke.

My laptop is about to die, and I could ramble on for quite sometime about the biz, so I'm bringing this post to a close. I didn't intend for this post to go this route, but, like every damn shift, this went not how I expected. This is as good an introduction to my thoughts regarding restaurants as any, though. Next time, I'll tell the story of amateur expectations of service and why working a shift in a restaurant is a sysiphion task. Until then, may your soup be warm, your beer be cold, and your bar tab affordable.