“If anything is good for pounding humility into you permanently, it’s the restaurant business.” -Anthony Bourdain
My colleague and I looked at the restaurant’s slogan on the bar coaster: “Your table is ready.” Our eyes met and we laughed in disgust. It was lame and like most things at the place it was mediocre… and that’s being generous.
***
It was my first job in the industry and had I been smarter it would’ve been the last. I don’t look down on the industry and I always (okay mostly) tried working hard and making customers happy. But I wasn’t temperamentally suited for bartending and was rarely passionate about it. I only started bartending because I was sick of bagging groceries and wanted more money to get through university.
Every person has flaws and there were three things that kept me in the industry for 17 years: Beer, boobs, and tips. It’s not politically correct or enlightening but there it is.
It was 2006 and the world was very different. Social media and smart phones had yet to consume our lives and you could make a decent, consistent living bartending. Things that plague us today like polarization, global instability, and mental health issues were still in their infancy. Then again, I’m just a well read, world-wearied bartender.
***
The restaurant, which became an Earls after it closed, was a typical restaurant chain. It had a lounge, dining room, and meals like burgers, steak, and salads. We wore ugly light blue uniforms, served a lower middle to middle class clientele, and it was usually busy. For decor there was silly gimmicks from old movie posters to animal props, like Uncle Moe’s Family Feedbag on The Simpsons.
My colleagues were good but the managers sucked.
I remember a bartender telling me he went to Malta or Jerusalem because God told him to. That was odd but he was nice. Another bartender was a typical fuck boy. When I told him I went to Germany he one upped me by saying while he’d never been there he’d been inside many German girls. I doubt he mentioned that fact to the waitresses. Either way, while I can’t remember most of the staff I don’t recall bad encounters or personal grudges.
But there was a hot girl, who was also in my class. Looking back she was the high point of my time there… which was brief. She took international studies, which instantly boosted her attractiveness by 300%. The opposite happened years later when another girl told me her hero was Kim Kardashian… but that’s another story.
I can’t remember the waitress’s name but I’ve never discussed the 1956 Suez Crisis (I’m a history nerd) with a cute girl in the industry before, and I never did again. Because the next time I was so turned on by smarts was when a hot, goth looking woman from the ISW talked about Russian military doctrine in the Ukraine War (I’m DEAD SERIOUS). Anyway, my colleague soon quit, or I was separated from service, and we never spoke again. She remains one of the few “what if” girls I met during my career.
I think there were only two managers. One was in her early 30s, competent, and mostly friendly. The other was in her mid 40s, moderately obnoxious, and with hindsight glaringly incompetent. Guess which one the GM was… the second one of course! This would prove to be a consistent theme for my stint in the industry.
The GM once grabbed my arm aggressively because my hands were in my pockets. I was 22 and with hindsight needed much seasoning. But while it didn’t bothered me much at the time it was unprofessional, inappropriate, and if a man did it to a woman there would be outrage.
Much worse was the pathetic lack of training, which can always be fairly blamed on the GM. One thing I remember, during my early years in the industry at least, is most places gave decent training and taught the steps of service. I’ll discuss such neglected relics of the past another time. Because 20 years later the level of customer service and professionalism in the industry has imploded, especially since Covid-19.
***
Coming back to the restaurant, they tried teaching some common sense methods but it wasn’t enough. When servers alternate between staring blankly between menus and POS (point of sales systems, or pieces of shit for industry people) for minutes on end to put in orders, that’s bad training. When bartenders take 10 minutes to make drinks that should take 90 seconds, that’s bad training. When food comes out too cold, under cooked, or consistently late, that’s bad training.
When your GM usually stays in the office and sees their staff struggling but doesn’t step in, that’s terrible leadership. The longer it takes to ring in meals the less food is sold. The longer it takes for drinks to go out the less people drink. The more unreliable your food is the worse your reputation will become. Because reputation, as well as atmosphere, is EVERYTHING in the bar industry.
All of that’s common sense and I knew it from the start of my career, but for some GM these wise gems never penetrate their thick skulls.
Ironically, I was fired for one of these systemic flaws, that had nothing to do with me. Or so I was told as transparency is a rare commodity in the industry. Because unless there’s a union, or you document everything, managers will always find a way to fire someone they don’t like.
I’ll admit I wasn’t the best waiter in my first restaurant job and it took some years to become a great one. But I was let go because two customers complained their drinks took too long to be delivered. Our place had a policy where two complaints in a day for someone on probation (the first 90 days) could get them fired. When they mentioned the date I knew the bartenders had taken WAY TOO long (because it happened everyday) to prepare most drinks, so how could I have delivered them quickly? Unfortunately, my appeals to logic and common sense failed to convince management, as they often wouldn’t, and I was too young or didn’t care enough to fight my termination.
But the biggest insult was they made me do the worst item on the cleaning list at the end of my shift before they fired me. That’s just cruel. It was one of those tedious, busy work tasks where you wipe down the walls in the EXPO area, even if they’re obviously clean! That was a dick move, because while the managers were women I won’t use the C word in my memoirs… not this early at least.
***
However, years later both locations of the chain restaurant in my city closed down from a lack of profits. Soon afterwards its presence was liquified across Western Canada. I felt some joy realizing its lame brand was wiped off the map in a geographical area the size of Argentina or Kazakhstan.
In the meantime I decided to give serving another shot. After all, besides the terrible management and subpar training the experience was mostly positive. It was funner than bagging groceries, I’d met interesting people, and thanks to tips I made far money that I had before. After all, I still needed a job to help with university and assumed the industry would get easier with time.
But I was wrong, as it would turn out to get far, far worse.