How I got sucked into the black hole known as the Food & Beverage Industry:
From the intro page, most of you know that I make my living waiting tables...and I don't much like it (to put it mildly)...but I make a pretty decent amount of money doing it ($36k-$40k/year). I have been selling and serving food in some capacity since my first job at a snack stand when I was 15 baking soft pretzels on City Island. Basically, I've been doing this for a decade, and I'm pretty damn good at it. I am what they call "efficient"- I multitask really well, have an excellent memory, problem solve to make my life easier/faster, and have cultivated the perfect faux cheerleader attitude for tables (not you, i don't have it in me to be fake for friends- it just feels wrong- maybe someone else should be your server). To top it off, I do in fact have an IQ, so I understand what's expected of me. No matter how much I might dislike my job, I take pride in doing it well which is why I tend to move up the ranks really fast in this industry (from n00b to dependable).
Truths about me:
-I am opinionated. That's an understatement. I am always looking for ways to make something faster, more streamlined, more practical- and while I will always do what I'm told/play by the rules, I don't have a problem telling you why I think those rules are flawed.
-I cannot stand being condescended to. I am 25 years old, not 5 years old-speak to me like I am a human being deserving of some measure of respect.
-Unless something is funny or I have a reason to shmooze you (be fake with you), my resting facial expression reads as abysmally sad. By which I mean, my expression makes you wonder what has so greatly upset me- death, depression, family troubles? I was once told by a patron (that I was not waiting on) that I looked "Doom & Gloom Miserable", and complete strangers frequently encourage me to "Smile!" I smile at my tables, I laugh when jokes are funny, but "sad" is just how my face is. Both my eyes and my mouth have a naturally downward curve. Smiling all the time hurts my face and causes wrinkles- when you give me happy thoughts, I will smile for you.
The Background:
I work in a sportsbar owned by a very large corporation in a very popular tourist destination. This place is unionized. By unionized, I mean that there is a hierarchy in place here with concepts of seniority and the number of positions in the restaurant is limited (for me to become full time, someone had to quit/get fired). Seniority (or lack of it) dictates how many shifts you get and when you get them, and what tables you get to take. It also allows the stealing and rearranging of shifts so your schedule is never the same. The expression used frequently is "Seniority's a bitch unless you have it" People with seniority have been there for 5, 10, 20, 30 years- decades- and they aren't going anywhere anytime soon. I am classified as a full time server- ranking last in seniority among full time servers.
From the time that I started at this job over a year ago, the other servers were not very friendly- the business as a whole had a personal bias against my last job because they lost a lot of staff when that business opened, and the female servers seemed threatened that I actually knew how to carry a tray and use a computer on my first day. The girls were rude to me from day one, often huddling in little groups to make fun of me while I listened around a corner. While they treat me as an equal now, it's not an experience I think I will ever forget. One of the cooks frequently spoke harshly to me- expletives included- which I'm told he does to every new girl until they go to HR- I waited 3 months. We're good now.
In F&B in general, there are high points in the year (summer and christmas) and low points in the year (winter) which allow for more or less shifts than usual.
The "Issues":
Issue #1: No shifts- We discussed seniority and low points. What this means is that I haven't been consistently scheduled for a full 5-day week of server shifts since september. Oh sure, I scrounge and pick up shifts- often in the middle of my week and frequently working double shifts (15 hour days) after being asked to stay. I even occassionally work shift outside my position (lately food running). Somehow, I usually manage to get 5 shifts on my plate, but it sucks that I have to go about the way that I do.
Issue #2: Other Positions- I am frequently thrown into other positions that aren't my job title, whether I want them or not. At $11/hr, sometimes I will do the easy ones (food running, hostessing), but I have made it clear that I am not a busser and I don't work in banquets and every week I have to get rid of these shifts even though I never asked for them and they aren't my job title.
Issue #3: Failure to Communicate-For the enormous corporate entity that it is, this building communicates really poorly with no one on the same page. On any given day 3 different people will tell you to do the same task 3 different ways and then yell at you for doing it the way another person told you to do it. I find it frustrating and infuriating and grow increasingly angry with the situation every day.
Issue #4: Politics- There is one person (superior) in particular that has made it their mission to make my life difficult. We got along fine for 4 months, and then my sister accepted and then rejected a position in the same building, and he started treating me differently and nitpicking. First it was my smile, then it was my halloween costume (pirate, all skin covered), then it was things he "didn't understand" that came across as blatant attempts to make me look incompetent when I was doing my job incorrectly- calling several managers over to ask why an item was on his bill that was supposed to be on his bill, watching me do my chores in a hurry when i was rushed in the morning because no one was there to help me with the chores, and then picking one to ask the manager questions about how it was supposed to be done and by whom- that sort of thing. Then it progressed to making policy changes in the middle of a shift, not making sure everyone was informed and understood, and then screaming 5 minutes later when we were still doing things the way we always had. Today, my job was foodrunning- a job that requires organizing tickets in the kitchen, traying up orders when they're ready, and delivering them. He decided that because I wear a pager, I don't need to be in the kitchen unless I'm paged and I was no longer allowed to be in the kitchen if there wasn't an order ready to be trayed in the window. The other food runner continued to go in an out of the kitchen at will, but I was not allowed. It's a double standard and it makes me really angry. The strangest part of all this is that the people that i really clash with are not the servers, not my supervisors or managers or (all but one of) the cooks- it's upper management.
Thinking About Change
There are 2 things that I realized today to be utterly true: I am not happy there. I have never been happy there.
I have been there for a year and a half and I have not made friends, I haven't bonded, I do not feel like a part of their family. I've had personal differences with individuals at other jobs before, but I have always felt welcome at the restaurant, found friendships and family in my coworkers, almost always instantly. I do not have that at this restaurant and after a year and a half, I don't believe that I ever will. From my first day at this restaurant, I felt overwhelmingly unanimously unwelcome by the people there. I am not happy there. I have never happy there. It is time to go somewhere else.
