Restaurant staff tends to follow one another from place to place. Crews and teams are made and migrate together. Like minded folk who agree that in this sea of self absorbed ownership and drug addled management that its a good policy to stick with the few trust-worthy individuals who have potential and can help make money. Getting cooks to jump ship on gigs for greener grasses is an easy task. Promise another fifty cents an hour and wilder product to work with and you can have yourself a solid line guy. You also just bought a kid who now thinks he's good enough to have been headhunted and therefore mildly demanding, too. Servers are a different matter entirely. They depend on customer opinion more directly and a good server will develop a following of sorts. To go to another restaurant is to forfeit the following for the immediate future. Does the following enjoy the new restaurant you are thinking of going to? Most importantly, how much does the current staff pull in? If I had a dollar for every time a potential server asked me that question I would have a bunch of dollars. An incoming cook is generally unconcerned with the status of the kitchen prior to his tenure. He understands that his addition will change the chemistry altogether and hopefully for the better. A server has the same potential to increase their revenue by adopting this mentality, however if the numbers and the sales aren't there then there's no opportunity to be had. If the average is twenty percent and a good server can hope to achieve twenty seven percent, that must still be removed from zero dollars and then you still walk with zip.
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| Epic scene for restaurant employees, even for the non-pothead. |
"What?" says the owner.
"I got a new job. I have to go punch in for service." He was out, like that. Friday night, four-thirty.
Another lady after dropping an armload of glasses simply looks at the manager who witnessed the event and says, "Yeah. I know. I'd fire me too," and punch out and leave. People quit, leave, and are fired for all sorts of ridiculous reasons. That trend is lessening slowly as the industry at large slowly moves towards professionalism as well as the litigious nature of our society today and the grey area that is rightful termination. There is no recourse, though, for the employer who is fucked over by the fickle restaurant employee who never gives two weeks notice. This is coming from someone who has given but never once has served the full two weeks. Sometimes its because of me, but more times than not I am replaced and shorted on those two weeks. What is a restaurant to do? My favorite example of this is when twenty minutes prior to New Years service I turn to my garde mangier cook and say, word-for-word, "Where's the dishwasher? Have you seen that kid in the last ten minutes?" He hadn't. Neither had anyone else. He went outside to dump recycling. Disappeared. Flat disappeared on the busiest night of the year.
Of course he came back for his last check.
Sometimes people freak out. Once, a guy who was pissed at being overlooked for a raise given to a younger, less tenured employee decided to launch an apple off the dishwasher's head, the dishwasher who happened to be his new supervisor's kid brother. That was an impressive mid-service brawl. I saw a guy get choke-slammed onto the three bay sink over late pans to the pit one too many times. Restaurant staff - especially kitchen folk - are a hot tempered breed who live off of adrenaline and caffeine. When one decides to go out, sometimes it is with a bang.
Personally, this topic brings me back to my younger, dumber days. The scene: a diner, an open kitchen with counter service. Flattop cookery at its finest. It's five on a Sunday and I have been grinding away since six in the morning. I have a full rail and a pile of dupes behind me. Looking at them I realize not one, not a single one, none of those goddamned dupes had a single lunch or dinner item on them. No fries. No BLTs. No reubens. Not even a soup.
Eggs. Homeboys. Toast. Pancakes. All around.
After three years of this type of foolishness I had had enough.
At which point I yell to the dining room, "Don't any of you fucks turn past the second page of the menu?!" Upon realization of what I had done and the silent dining room staring at me - all you could hear was a dropped spoon somewhere and the sizzle of the flattop - I slowly take off my apron, mumble an apology to my coworker - who was also my boss and a partner of this fine establishment - and I exit stage left. Years later, she retells this story with the same exact tone of equal parts braggadocio and self deprecation that I use in the retelling. To be on either side of these insane situations is an experience one remembers with fondness.
Years later, of course.
Generally, a cook can make more money by changing jobs than raises or internal promotions. Servers can make more by migrating from new restaurant to new restaurant, riding the wave of business that comes to new spots. It is an unfortunate reality of the biz. I have been employed - not counting fill-in, one-off or outside catering gigs - by over thirty restaurants in a checkered almost twenty years. Some of those were multiple jobs held simultaneously - a breakfast shift here, a dinner shift there and maybe an overnight twice a week. I would say that for a large majority of those it was a less than six month affair. Sometimes I knew going in that it would be a limited engagement, sometimes telling the bosses that but most times just not showing up again. Sometimes they hired me under false pretenses and I was just covering for a guy until he came back from the Dominican to resume his position. Whatever the case, I learned from it and moved on and in time I was educated in the community of restaurants at large not to be completely forthcoming with my information nor expect any honesty in return.
The industry is a beast and creates beasts who migrate and rage.
We move in packs and create success or failure as we move. Hopefully the failure weeds out the sickly and creates a local scene that is healthy and hungry. You can see this in the ebb and flow of any city's restaurants successes. Has it been the same restaurant for the last twenty years that has dominated your scene? Is it whatever new trend that opens is who gets the business? Is there a healthy mix of ideas and styles or is it mostly a row of corporate venues along one major commercial strip in your suburbs? These are all markers for us lifers to read your city's scene and judge.
Eventually, if the talent, knowledge and passion are there, most people find a home. A restaurant where you can be surrounded by a series of similarly minded folk creates a home for us vagabonds, if we are lucky and skilled. When it happens, everything changes and a home is made. I am extraordinarily lucky to have found my niche, to have created a family of throwaways, quitters and strays. A place we can each feel comfortable to do what we do well and not worry about the petty shit most restaurants in my rear view were owned by.It is my hope to inspire more people to search this out within their kitchens and share with the LCFL community their tales of restaurant migration and subsequent colonization that inevitably leads to financial, culinary and personal success within their own communities.
James Pawl Kane
Chef & Kitchen Family Member
