Sometimes, the stuff people put on Facebook is so interesting.
So I stole this to re-post it here.
The following information will be appreciated by at least two people that I know... Jenn & Neil!
LIFE LESSONS YOU GET FROM WORKING IN A RESTAURANT:
1. If you don’t have a thick skin and complete abandonment of
political correctness, don’t go near the kitchen. You will immediately
learn there that what you consider to be off-limits is just the baseline
of someone else’s sense of humor.
2. Bad tippers are the worst kinds of people, and are often terrible in many other ways than just being cheap.
3. Correction, the worst people are those who don’t tip or tip very
badly, and accompany their financial insult with a snarky note left on
the receipt.
4. The pain of a bad seating chart is a real one, and not a single
customer will care or understand that you got slammed while someone else
is totally dead.
5. The difference between the people who have never worked in food
service, and the people who have, is always clearly visible. And a lot
of time it has to do with the basic degree of respect they give to the
people who are serving them.
6. Make back-of-house’s life easy, they will make yours easy. Working
is always about scratching someone’s back so they’ll scratch yours, and
you’d better not break that chain.
7. The only people you’re going to be able to hang out with — and
often date — are by default going to be other people in the industry. So
you better like the people you work with it, because no one else is
going to be coming out with you at 1 AM.
8. There is absolutely zero shame in eating the plate that gets sent
back barely-touched because someone either misunderstood what they were
ordering or is incredibly fussy about their perfectly-good food. People
who will judge you over
shit like that are people who don’t know the
joys of a pristine plate of onion rings coming back to you when you are
starving.
9. The most important friend you will make is the one who will cover
for you while you eat, crouched next to some appliance in the kitchen.
True friendship is about taking the fall so someone can eat.
10. There are a lot of people who are going to look down on you for
working a restaurant, and treat you with massive disrespect, and you
just have to get over it and remind yourself to never be like that in
your own life.
11. If you are good to your server, your experience will be about a
thousand times better, and you might even get free stuff if you’re
lucky.
12. There is nothing better than a chef who is currently trying out
new stuff and has tons of excess food for everyone to try. The best
friend anyone can have is a good chef.
13. Line cooks are some of the hardest-working, most humble and
honest people in the working world. And many of them happen to be
felons. And when you see them get off a 14-hour shift and still manage
to make jokes with you at the end of it, you realize that every judgment
we make about the guy with neck tattoos is completely off base.
14. If you’re a female waitress/hostess/bartender, some of the more
drunk male customers will take it upon themselves to also designate you
“professional receiver of gross comments and inappropriate touches.”
15. A good manager is the one who will shut
shit like that down,
because they would rather lose the money from that customer than have
someone who mistreats their staff.
16. Even the best establishment can be run into the ground by a petty, spiteful manager.
17. There is no worse an experience on this planet than working a busy brunch shift when you are brutally hungover.
18. If you don’t make friends with the bartender from the get-go,
your life is going to be difficult. And you quickly learn that this also
applies to the places you don’t work at — treat your bartender well,
reap the rewards.
19. The calm before the storm (also known as the rush) is one of the
most precious, fleeting moments in life. And as soon as you see that
first customer looking at the specials board just a little too long, you
know that it’s already over.
20. Never be the person who comes in just as the kitchen’s closing
and orders something really complicated. Just don’t be that person.
21. In the best restaurants, you’ll become like a little family, and
live through several very important moments together (especially because
you don’t get days off for normal, human things such as holidays or
birthdays).
22. There will be one item on the menu that you fall in love with so
much that you actually start having dreams about it, and go through
withdrawal when you don’t have it for a long enough stretch of time. You
can actually get that way over, say, a cream of crab soup. It’s like
heroin.
23. Going back to a place you used to work and seeing all the old
group — and getting to eat and drink all your favorites again — is one
of the best feelings you can have.
Credit for this item goes to
Brooklyn, NY writer Chelsea Fagan.
Posts
