Wednesday, December 23, 2009

A mercenary lifestyle...

The restaurant business has always been rather mercurial to those in it. The lure of better money, more opportunity, even the myth of a little respect, will always be the draw.

Cooks and servers; bartenders, dishwashers...we come...we go...new ventures, new openings...it is what it is.

More like modern day gypsies and pirates...on the lookout for better hours and more cash, easily beddable waitresses, with maybe a bit of swag thrown in.

We know we can stand shoulder to shoulder and crank it out during a rush, that we can put up with the Ego's (for a while) because ultimately, whether or not we care to admit it...for some of us, it's still about the food.

We are a proud lot, sometimes too much so...so we pack our knives and throw on a different apron and hope for a little better...maybe this place, I can land and stick...then one day the "snap" occurs...and the cook listings on Craigslist become bookmarked, resumes updated and here we go again.

Some of us have solid significant others...while the rest of us...hell, nobody can put up with us for long...search for a love as fleeting as the search for better working conditions.

The stress of the holidays certainly don't help. More work, more unreasonable demands, and the obligation to be "happy" because it's Christmas becomes too much to bloody well take.

I just got called in to work...here we go...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

wow, "easily beddable waitresses", who are you kidding? and what about waiters, cooks, and the like? why discriminate?

Geoffrey Hill said...

I stand corrected...while I have not run down that particular rabbit trail in years, I do watch the never ending drama from afar...