service

You left me lists, everything in lists, well your little lists aren’t very helpful I fear

/ fightmasterwrites / Leave a comment

I’d like to speak to the manager!!!

Since my first manager job, I’ve always had pen and paper in my pocket.  There are a million things you think of as you move around the restaurant that you need to remember for later.  

In the past, my staff has always gotten nervous as I write something down, when they are standing next to me.  They always assumed it was about them.

As often as not, it might be nothing more than don’t forget to get gas on your way home.  Or remind Adam to pick up more soda at the grocery store. 

Usually it’s a word or two, quick in the moment.  

Chairs.  

Candles.

Music.  

Temp.

Pre-bus.

Sometimes, when I look at the paper that has been jammed in my pocket all night, I have no idea what I meant.  

Today, I went through all of my scraps of papers from the past week  or so and added the new notes to my legal pad full of notes.  

I then transferred all of my note from the legal pad s, to the note’s app on my laptop, dividing them into categories so I’d know who to ask to get an answer from later.  

As I was doing this, I realized that my note app had headings that I didn’t recognize.  

When I was finished, I looked at what was already there.  And I found notes, from my phone from 2013.  

These are from my GM job in 2013, two days after the restaurant opened.  

Chairs

Trashcan

Three courses 

Up charge for dinner salad. 

Dessert.  Napkins. Menus. 

Windows

Cold hot.  

Buttons in micros. 

Tv channels. 

Milk

Candles

Kj chard

More dinner special papers.  

Sides.    Prices.

Staff

Linens floor.

Liquor boxes 

Cords dressed

Towel in belt. 

Tables in place

Change guest count. 

Wait station. 

Prawns. 

Lights at night. 

Drive away. 

Some of them I remember.    

Other’s I have no idea.  

It’s fun to think that 11 years later, these notes, jotted on a piece of paper, helped get me to where I am today.  

I do think it’s funny that the last note says drive away.  

Hmmmm. 

Let’s start at the very beginning.

/ fightmasterwrites / Leave a comment

Fun fact: This is the fourth blog that I’ve started. The first lasted almost six years. At the end I had a little over 250 regular readers and it was about my move from San Diego to NYC after finishing grad school. It followed my trials and tribulations of trying to jump start a theater career, landing in a restaurant serving job that took up too much of my time, and eventually meeting and falling in love with my partner Adam.

I loved the process and ritual of writing, and was sad when I moved to Maine, started a new journey and found that I didn’t have the time or the interest anymore to write nightly.

Social media was a big part of why I stopped writing, because suddenly I found myself reading and posting on Facebook and no longer sitting down at my computer to write a blog post. Facebook was fast and furious Writing took time.

And this continued to be true until about three months ago when I started my most recent position at a restaurant in a tourist town and I began to document my experiences as a General Manager and all the stress and extremes that came with the job. These posts were on Facebook and were really traditional blog posts.

So here I am.

These are my stories.

Over the next few weeks I’ll repost my posts from the past few weeks as well as adding to my stories as regularly as I can.

Please enjoy and know that these are my experiences, my reality, and my opinions. There are LOTS of other people out there doing what I do better. I hope they find as much joy in it as I do.