Like Tony, I spent some early years swinging on the bottom rungs of the restaurant business. I was a first-rate busboy, a hard-working dishwasher, but I topped out at waiter. I thought I was above it, but looking back, I was really just mediocre. A good server combines a steel-trap memory with a showman’s always-on personality, and does so while keeping zen in a high-stress whirlpool of strange requests, unending complaints, and general chaos. All of this at the behest of angry men with sharp knives.
Most days I got there — I slapped on a smile and made it work — but other days the untreated anxiety and unnurtured introversion took over. On those days it was all I could do to show up on time, shielded by my starched white apron and tie. This I did unfailingly, which is why I was never found out, why no one discovered what a moody, hung-up, and whiny boy I could be. Side-work, tip-outs, sign-offs: I always got my job done, properly and efficiently. This business might be a warren of green-lit overindulgence, but for me irresponsibility was one sin too many.
Like Tony, I loved the people who ended up in these odd-houred, always-hiring jobs. As he says, “the dreamers, the crackpots, the refugees.” My outlook on LGBT rights, on immigration would be drastically different if it were not for the curious, wonderful people who befriended me during those years. Also, as a writer, you may never tap a richer vein. Sometimes I tinker with the thought of picking up a shift. It’s a back-stage pass to your town, to the local scene and the gossip that makes all things go.
Unlike Tony, I couldn’t find the romance in it, at least not enough to keep going. Again, that was probably my fault for not having the eyes to see, but it was a different era in the food and beverage business. At the time “foodies” had yet to take over the beach towns and midwest cities where I plied my trade. Few saw cooking as the high-art it would come to be just a few years later. The fancy places still catered to swaggering salesmen and nervous beaus looking to impress, not hipsters and the new smart-palette set.
But I loved watching Tony, loved reading Tony. (Can I call him Tony?) Sometimes I hoped my grey days would be a version of his: always on the move, always curious, still on the prowl, my next steps assured with wrinkled certainty.
If you don’t know Tony — and you should know Tony — here’s a good place to start:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1999/04/19/dont-eat-before-reading-this
I spent some time as a server as well. Keep writing! It’s entertaining to read!