I’ve been a server for going on 15 years now and I spent 12 of those years feeling pretty bad about it. Well, that’s not completely true, when I first started, at 24 years old in New York City with one guest star credit to my name **ehem…cough cough, I had 3 lines in 30 Rock…very famous…clears throat, blows nose** I thought waitressing was going to be this cute gig I’d reflect fondly upon while accepting my Oscar five MAYBE ten years down the road. Ohhhhh, how darling a delusion. Apart from a few stints away from the industry as a flower shop manager and an assistant a few times, I’ve always come back to waiting tables. By the time I decided to move away from LA, I vowed to never work in a restaurant again. I was done. Done with long hours on my feet. Assholes who don’t tip. Assholes who are pushy. Assholes who are assholes. I was hanging up my clogs for GOOD. But I also just so happened to move home three weeks before the first lockdown. I actually experienced some relief when the world shut down because it meant I wouldn’t have to start at the cafe near my parents' house where I’d been hired. They said they’d re-evaluate my position in two weeks when they reopened. Lol. Fast forward a year and a half into the summer of 2021 and I’d been nannying for some of my best friends, helping raise the most perfect person and spending time with my parents and our pod, five adults (my parents, me, my two friends) and their baby. It was a quiet time for me, I’m grateful for it, I was really lucky to have basically stopped my life a few weeks before we were all forced to stop our lives but that’s a story for another time. That summer, the vaccine became available to everyone and suddenly, the pandemic was over… or so we thought. I traveled to New York City to visit all my friends I hadn’t seen in ages and to celebrate being alive and free. It was on this trip that my friend Emilie, a sister from a restaurant I spent five years working at in LA, suggested I start waiting tables again. “How are you gonna meet anyone if you don’t? How will you get to know Atlanta?” Reluctantly, I knew she was right. Not only is serving my trade, a skill I can bring with me to any city and find work, it’s also how I’ve met my closest friends and formed community. In this case, even though I grew up near Atlanta, I had absolutely no concept of it. The food scene, the people, the landscape. I’d been telling everyone for years that I was “from Atlanta” so it surprised me to discover when I finally moved into town that I very much was not. I was having a “first year in a new city” experience. That year where you don’t understand where you are ever. You drive down streets that will eventually be so familiar you will marvel that you ever felt lost or found them confusing. Anyway, when I returned home from that New York trip, I had dinner with friends who were very familiar with and connected with the Atlanta food scene and a few weeks later, I was hired at a restaurant in Decatur. It has been, besides moving home, the best decision I’ve ever made. I’ve met friends, my boyfriend, found a cute place to live, feel part of a community and have accepted that waiting tables has brought me so much more than just income to live. There are absolute downsides to it that have come into sharper focus as I get older: instability in pay, lack of benefits, having to deal with people who’ve never worked in a restaurant and function like stuck-up aliens who’ve just landed on planet Earth, straining your back and worrying you won’t be able to pay rent if you take a few days off. But, in my case and with honest reflection I haven’t allowed myself to have until the past year or so, I can say that I really do have a deep affinity and appreciation for my job as a server. I’m really good at it and it feels good to be really good at something, doesn’t it? In closing, I truly believe that everyone should work at a restaurant at some point in their lives because it makes you a better person and I feel pretty great knowing I am a better person. Cheers.
Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who has subscribed to my Substack. I have had a beyond lovely week getting back in touch with friends. I’ve received such incredible, encouraging messages, I could just burst. If you think of it, I’d be so grateful if you’d share my Substack with your friends so I can continue to grow and see how far I can take this. I’m truly having the time of my life.
Have a gentle, wonderful, joy filled weekend. Talk to you soon.