My Love Affair with Restaurants

I was fourteen, and my dad's close friend opened the Hilltopper, a local sports bar and restaurant. My older sisters had worked at the Hilltopper Cafe on the town square, so of course, I wanted to follow in their footsteps. I always wanted to follow in their footsteps, but just like when I started playing tennis so I could hit with Julie and Gail, my foray in the restaurant industry would be last much longer than theirs.

I don't remember much about my first day - I think it was a Sunday brunch shift. I remember a lot, though. The twenty-five hour weeks while going to school and tennis practices. Sweet talking the cooks for scraps and mistakes from the kitchen. The owner's wife's perfume. The slow nights when servers wished they could tip me more and the nights when I made a whopping $15/hour. Wing nights frequented by the high school sports teams - those were my favorite nights. So many cute boys. The quiet after the storm of a whirlwind weekend.

I remember my first experience confronting authority. The quarterback of the football team joined me as a host, and during one of our casual conversations, it came to my attention that he was making $6.75, whereas I, who had worked there a year and a half, was making $6.25. My indignant teenage stomach churned as I walked into my boss's office and requested a raise based on the merits of my performance. What did I want? Seven dollars an hour. What did I get? $6.75.

I remember Matthew. He was your quintessential server, loved by every patron. He wore crazy socks and talked with flamboyant flair, and he occasionally made the comment that made you do a double take: nude sun bathing, elicit details on foreplay between him and his girlfriend that would compromise the integrity of this blog if quoted. When you went to a Christian middle school and the most scandalous thing you did was write notes on the back of the bus, these lines stick with you. There are others, too: when everyone told their most public sex story, talked about the hardest drugs they had done: most stuck with weed, but a couple dabbled with the hard stuff on occasion. The many times I sat with them on their smoke breaks as they cussed out an idiot customer. My virgin ears lost their innocence.

Right about now, my mother deeply regrets allowing me to work in a restaurant. I don't, though. Because they were my friends, my outlet from my high school bubble. When a woman called me incompetent and I had my first and last breakdown in the back of the building, they hugged me and told me where she could stick it. And they were real.

That's what I love about restaurants - no pretenses, no facade. And if you didn't like it, they couldn't care less.

I was 18 and a freshmen in college. At the end of my second semester, I became bored with the monotony of school so I applied to the Cheesecake Factory. I worked in the bakery for the next year, pulling the typical back to back 30 hour weekend double, sustaining myself on espresso shots and cheesecake - my record was five slices in a shift, and if you know the nutrition facts - which I did - it's easy to understand how I got to a point where my button popped off my pants.

Working in the bakery was much more difficult than serving on a busy night, because while you have a finite number of tables as a server, behind the counter, you have an endless number of tickets to fill. Janelle was my lady. She was the most seasoned baker, a feisty woman who no one would dare confront. And Darnell. He was beautiful, quiet, and probably thought we were crazy. We half-jokingly encouraged him to take one for the team when our manager wasn't in a relationship. She was always in a much better mood with a man in her life.

I became a server after a year, and the Cheesecake Factory remained my escape from the collegiate bubble, a relatively homogeneous world where everyone is enjoying their safe space. When I passed through those doors in my all white and tie - what a terrible uniform - there were all kinds. There was the server with the attitude, never quite happy with how many young people or foreigners were sat in the section. The one who was always in the weeds, no matter how slow the restaurant. The jaded bartender who could tell you story after story of his exploits and the exploits of those across the bar. The sleezeball who inevitably hit on every new hostess.

There was the charmer, who could convince a table to buy a turd flavored cocktail. The one who talks about leaving - moving west and starting over. I always hoped they follow that dream, and sometimes they did. There was the immigrant cook and the one who may or may not have done a line of cocaine before coming into work. And those who saw their work as a fine craft. There were the lifers. Then there was me.

I was 22 and had decided that my 9 to 5 simply wasn't fulfilling. I submitted applications over the weekend, got a job at Commonwealth, went into my six month review and quit. They understood - some people couldn't handle the competitive atmosphere of the company, one told me. What are you going to do? they asked. I said I was going to take my college degree and work at a restaurant. My first night I followed Adrienne, an eccentric woman who knew who she was and embraced every inch of it. I spent the next three months working full time through the summer hours, building relationships with the most honest - sometimes shamelessly so - people I had met since moving to Charlottesville. After being in an atmosphere with young professionals trying to prove themselves, it was beyond refreshing. I continued to work part time for the next four years, because I needed that escape from my professional bubble.

Because when you serve people, you have to leave everything at the door. Guests don't care about your massive amounts of school work, your annoying boss or terrible day, the idiot who didn't call. They came to be entertained, to have an experience, and it's your job to forget yourself and give it to them.

When I wasn't with the customers, I was able to spend time with these amazing people from all different walks of life. They were immigrants, students, professionals, retirees. Some saw their work as an art, some as a means to end, and some were just trying to pay monthly bills or get to the next beer.

It's a rare breed, the restaurant crowd. We're flawed, like everyone else, but there lies an unequivocal authenticity among us.

I may not ever work at a restaurant again, although I've said that before and been wrong. Regardless, what I learned from my passionate foray - working in a fast paced environment, dealing with difficult personalities and embracing my own, reading people, and learning from people who are very different than you - I will carry that with me forever.