Notes on Inherent Dignity from the Service Industry
julierodgers.substack.com
The last restaurant I worked at was a new oyster bar run by the group that owned several of Chicago’s most popular establishments. There’s a special kind of pressure that comes with opening a restaurant and that pressure usually translates to high demands and low pay. For instance, management required us to use miniature Moleskin notebooks, and I naively assumed that an off-brand miniature notebook that looked like a Moleskin was sufficient. That was cleared up when a manager asked to see my notebook on a routine inspection. He flipped through the pages of my off-brand Moleskin, slammed it down on the bar, and then berated me in front of the whole service team. I can deal with that kind of treatment if I’m making a living wage, but I often walked away from shifts with less than $70, which was less than minimum wage in Chicago. When you add that to the emotional stress I carried from losing my job after being ejected from evangelicalism months earlier, you can imagine the struggle I faced to keep a positive attitude on a given Friday night while scraping half-eaten coleslaw and horseradish off guest’s plates in the dish pit.
Notes on Inherent Dignity from the Service Industry
Notes on Inherent Dignity from the Service…
Notes on Inherent Dignity from the Service Industry
The last restaurant I worked at was a new oyster bar run by the group that owned several of Chicago’s most popular establishments. There’s a special kind of pressure that comes with opening a restaurant and that pressure usually translates to high demands and low pay. For instance, management required us to use miniature Moleskin notebooks, and I naively assumed that an off-brand miniature notebook that looked like a Moleskin was sufficient. That was cleared up when a manager asked to see my notebook on a routine inspection. He flipped through the pages of my off-brand Moleskin, slammed it down on the bar, and then berated me in front of the whole service team. I can deal with that kind of treatment if I’m making a living wage, but I often walked away from shifts with less than $70, which was less than minimum wage in Chicago. When you add that to the emotional stress I carried from losing my job after being ejected from evangelicalism months earlier, you can imagine the struggle I faced to keep a positive attitude on a given Friday night while scraping half-eaten coleslaw and horseradish off guest’s plates in the dish pit.