My Manager, Summarized
I went to school for hospitality and food service management, and when I entered, a good friend of mine, who was also the head of the hospitality management department at the time, told me this: "I know who you are, and what you do, and you know the facts of this 'profession': long hours each day, the degradation of your social life, the fact that a significant portion become alcoholics by they time they reach 40 years of age; why in the hell do you want to enter this profession?"
I'm pretty sure he said it as a way to connect and such, but it almost sounded like a warning to me, though I'm not quite sure why such a warning was warranted.
I've been, in all accounts, the model employee of my restaurant, both as a manager-on-duty whenever I needed to take the mantle--and even when I didn't--and as a server or a kitchen worker. I followed chain of command, I conversed and made sure to treat my subordinates as friends and as team members to make a restaurant great. When mistakes are made and when s**t hits the fan, I put myself where I need to be to pull the entire team through. Customers comment on my customer service, and always love the small little attentions to detail I put in their orders like cutting their burgers for them in the kitchen, splitting drinks, accommodating for allergies or other desires. Much of what I know was self-taught, with tons of mistakes, and many questions, and many re-readings of operation manuals and recipe books. In addition, my employees respect me not just as a manager on duty, but also as a person who actually understands people.
I guess, part of me is a little scared of that warning; I've already seen what restaurant management as a career does for the people who are unprepared or unwilling to cope with the consequences of a job that pays relatively little for the kind of work and effort you put in: assistant managers who work and, unable to hang out with their usual entourage of friends because of time, and unable to make any new ones outside of work because of time, and unable to befriend others in work because of the chain of command, resort to going home and escaping by movies and television and alcohol; the constant, grating, and occasionally humiliating treatment from customers to staff who truly just want to work and want to make people happy; the stress of the kind of emotional labor necessary to always have a smile, to have high energy, and to go above and beyond even when one is feeling physically and emotionally unwell; and the balance of showing that you care, without caring so much that one single negative feedback sends your entire mood down, or at least finding a way to keep your persona even when you are down.
What scares me the most right now is I can't answer the question, 'Is it worth it?' I'm certainly capable and willing to go the extra mile in order to do my best each day to have a restaurant that always feels welcoming and pleasant for customers, even if it's a chain owned by a corporation. But is that future and its consequences worth it, and for how long?
