SO just a heads up this will be 2 parts. Neither part is really long but together they seemed way too long for a single blog. I kind of divided it up between Gp and Edmonton. The first part I was a minor and maybe not fully in the "Industry" life. So I guess part 2 is more like Vanderpump and part 1 is a boy looking in.
Restaurant life yo! From 15 to 23 I worked in restaurants, mostly a single major chain here in Canada. I did a few jobs, host / bus boy, salad maker, dishwasher, cook and delivery driver. To be fair this was 19 years ago. I was done in the industry but to this day when people have asked if I liked it or if I would go back (For the same $$$ I make now) I have always said yes. Honest truth, I don't know how people who aren't young adults make a life in the "industry". Having a mortgage, truck payment, house bills, insurance and just wanting to buy nice shit and travel the world I couldn't do it on a cook wage. When people say though if you could make the same money would you... I gotta say hell ya. It was a great time, I have great memories but I wonder if it is from the job or just that young adult time in my life. This all comes from from my wife being hooked on Vanderpump Rules, which started set around a bar / restaurant. This series is more about the drama and the "lifestyle" working in the service industry. Also thinking of Waiting. If you haven't watched it, you should it is very real and very funny. Whoever wrote it clearly worked in the "industry" (Quick google search ya he wrote the screen play while working in a restaurant) Waiting is more about the actual jobs in the service industry.
So my history begins September 1996. So I guess keep in mind this was 27 years ago, the world was way different, I am just gonna say it.... way less woke people still had a sense of humor and not everything everyone did offended someone. I didn't even get an interview. The GM at my first job was a family friend and the manager was a long time drinking buddy of my uncle. I was just told show up after school. I got 15 minute training session to be a bus boy. Clearing tables, fill pop, smiling none of that really takes training. So one of the first things the GM does is tell every female in the building even though I am 15 I have a cock like a horse. This is lie.... I am a nerdy looking dude now. 140 - 145 lbs. Five and a half feet tall. Chicken legs, glasses. Back then I was 50lbs lighter, round Harry Potter glasses. More chickeny legs and arms, acne and the 90s mushroom cut. Probably dyed blonde at that point. However the fact is they believed him at first. These women from 15 - 25 were into me, for a couple days until it became clear I was a virgin that probably couldn't even use a normal cock properly without it being a horse cock... The flat out truth, in my experience and shows like Vanderpump glamorize it but ya, a lot of these people hop from bed to bed. Had I been suave or smarter who knows the trouble I could have gotten up to. Uniforms at chain places were so bad back then. I mean now you go to a Joeys, Browns or something the waitresses and waiters are well dress not corny looking. That's just a random side note, thinking of how we looked. Anyways I started cleaning tables, refilling pop doing whatever bitch boys do. Sorry to any bus boys, but I am allowed to say that right cause I did it??? That's the rule for making statements isn't it? Anyways that was when I knew I wanted to be the best. At any job I have had it has become a thing for me, I need to feel I am doing a damn good job. At that point I wanted to have the most tables cleaned, make sure everyone had pop and my section was the cleanest. Didn't take long, put a bit of effort in at 15 and you look better than people there just to get a cheque. When I got salad duty, I wanted my salads to look perfect, the kind that would be in a menu picture. If I am honest I was out of place. Like I said I was a nerdy kid and in general they hired the good looking, usually popular kids. I was in because I knew all the bosses. Side story though, first day of high school I am walking the hall and one of the cooks, a guy who I had know for years slaps my books outta my hands, laughs and walks away. Later on that day the same thing happens but it was some random dude who did it. Well the first guy who did it saw and slammed the random into the wall. Makes it very clear to everyone, no one gets to pick on me. Well except him, we were sort of friends. We had known each other for years and having him say that made high school much easier. Even after he got expelled for kicking the shit out of someone no one ever bullied me. Being a bus boy went on for a year, it got to be all the wait staff wanted me working their sections then the hostess was turning 18. She would be a waitress and I could have her job! It meant a raise and a bit more responsibility and respect. The fact was, a host was in a 15 year old mind the same as a bar door man. I remember getting to sit a guy on a date one time. We were stupid busy and the only table was by a door that was opening and closing all the time. Bitter Grande Prairie winter winds coming in, that was the table he got. Not even to be a dick just it was all that was there. He even said you did this to ruin my date. I didn't, but if it was an added bonus that was cool.... Anyways the big day comes I go in to work thinking they are telling me about my promotion but no they introduced me to the new hostess they hired. I was crushed BUT they had plans for me. The fact was on the weekends when it was dead and I was working, the cooks had all asked me to come back and try out cooking. I liked it. So they sat me down and said they always had 17 year old hosts, so they could learn the wait staff job better and move into that. I was still a few years away from that, they couldn't give me another raise or the other bus staff would get jealous so I would move into the kitchen. That would be another dollar and in a couple years if I wanted I could go be a waiter. I jumped in.
Cooking is the most intense job I have ever had. The truth is other than an emergency job where lives and such may be on the line I can't think of one that has more pressure. Now I work my balls off and try and get deals worth a million bucks and that is hard. I put a lot of work into it and it can be stressful BUT it still has nothing on that 2 - 3 hour rush in a busy kitchen. Now to be clear the first kitchen I worked was a chain. It was the busiest one in Canada until the early 2000s. That's right small lil GP had the busiest one in Canada for a long time. Anyways those 3 hours 5 - 8PM were insane!! We would have 5 or 6 guys running like ants to get orders out. Everything takes different times. If a table orders a steak, a plate of nachos and a pasta dishes. Well nachos is 3 minutes, the steak might be 7 - 10 and the pasta is literally 2 minutes. This all has to be timed to come out at once so it is all warm when it hit the table. That doesn't sound bad but now make that 50 plus tables. Now one plate of nachos doesn't want olives, the one beside it wants extra olives. The 5 steaks on the grille 2 rare 1 medium, 1 blue, 1 Chicago. Then it crashes.... A couple guys can go home and the remaining clean the kitchen and restock. Ride out the rest of the night, filling a few orders then close it down. I will tell you something, you learn speed and team work IF you are a good cook. The guy running the whole show, well he has to know leadership. Music is a big thing, I have never been in a kitchen that did not have a stereo playing music. Honestly depending on who was running the kitchen it has been some good shit to some pretty awful shit. Eminem worked in a kitchen, he supposedly rapped out orders. I have never seen that but lots of insults, that has gone on in every kitchen. I would be willing to bet some of his better burns in his early career came from a kitchen. The fact is even if these cooks don't like each other and wouldn't get along outside a kitchen for those few hours everyone works together. So ya I learned to work my bag off. I got steady raises and the fact was back when minimum wage was $4 and most my friends were working fast food or retail making $5 - $7 I was at $9.50. A big chunk of my personality comes from the kitchen. It was were I was first introduced to the music styles I still listen to, to this day. I was shown comics don't have to just be cartoony, they can be dark and gritty. It was a good time. Loyalty and friendship.... Well I started to hang out with these guys more than kids from my high school. Which kind of worked out nice, I mean I had someone who was happy to buy my booze or had places to hang out. A great example I know I have written about, my high school girlfriend showed up crying one night. She had walked to my work across a small field in the night. A man jumped her with a knife, she ran to my work. Within minutes we were all in the field looking for him. Ever seen an industrial pasta spoon? Or an actual kitchen pizza knife. They are pretty much a club and a machete. It is probably a good thing a bunch of angry young men didn't find him. Remember the Goodfella introduction scene? Lets do that here, we had Evil. The kitchen manager and in earlier blog of mine if you look back and Vicious, also in earlier blogs. 25 years later and we still work together. Big Mur the other kitchen boss and to that point one of the bigger guys I met. Later on in a bar one night a guy spilled my drink, drunken Big Mur begged me to ask him to make the guy piss himself. While I am 100% sure he could have done it, I asked him not to. Digits cause he was missing fingers and Gspot who did like a 100 sit ups a day and did the old houdini trick, taking punches to the stomach. There was the Penguin because he looked more like penguin than Danny DeVito. J-Ray and the Great One. Great One picked his own name clearly. Last was the German. AT first he was a quiet farm boy. Legit he started one summer when I was away camping with my grandparents. No one really talked to him, Digits said the kid was strange so I told him I fucked his mother. He actually grinned and started talking to me. Lot of drunken shenanigans with him for many years after. I was in his wedding party a few years later. There were a lot more that came and went Guido and Rosie for example but I can't even think of them all in those years. However good times ended..... Much as I liked being a cook I was getting close to 18 and really wanted to be a waiter. Things had changed over the years. The manager that had hired me on had moved along. There was a new manager running things now, he had hired a bunch of his friends on. Honestly these would have been the "Vanderpump" years, for them, they were like a little clique. He only hired the popular attractive kids and that wasn't me. I said hey at 18 I was told I could work out front and he said no. So I quit..... You want some more good television though if you were exploiting reality back then?? Well there was a bus girl and I that liked each other. Coming home from the river where we had been cliff diving I rolled my car. The rumor I was getting head spread and for years like even after I moved to Edmonton I still heard that. One night two guys attacked a waiter around closing time. In the end they were subdued when cooks and then waiter fought back even smashing dishes on each other. The liquor board was always on us, they would bang on the windows after close and say they needed to use the phone. Usually the supervisor would let them in, then they would say who they were and look for drinks people shouldn't have. Your not supposed to have drinks once the place is closed & of course they would find drinks and sometimes minors like myself drinking them. Another time we were out at the fair and two cops noticed us drinking. They came and poured out my full bottle of crown! I was so mad, then a day later the cop is in our lounge having a beer. I told the bartender what a cunt he was and she laughed and introduced us. It was her new boyfriend, he ended up buying me a bottle that night. No hard feelings, he was just doing his job he explained. I think he was still trying to get into her panties. We were always told make food you want to eat! Then one time corprate came in with trainers. They tried to make us count out slices of ham or weigh cheese. The GM lost his shit, legit Gordon Ramsay moment smashed the scales and chased the out. I am guessing just cause we were the busiest back then he got away with it. The kitchen manager was my buddy Evil, I ended up hooking him up with another friend..... They had a bit of an age difference which back then was kind of scandalous. Now 25 years later the gap is nothing, they are still happily married, unlike a lot of people I have known. By the end of my time there, there was gossip the new manager was banging a lot of the new hires, sometimes in the front office. I need to be clear, not the GM he would be your "Lisa Vanderpump" but the younger manager. I am sure they couldn't show it but there were tons of after shift parties. That did have minors drinking, I was one of them. We had fist fights in the building, between coworkers. One got scary when a guy started bashing anothers head into the ground. There was a bunch of dating drama, that I was never involved in! I had a girlfriend most of my time there but it seemed like everyone else dated everyone else. I mean the one bus girl and me had gossip but nothing did happen, I am not sure how the "reality stars" can't keep it in their pants. ALSO there was a bar. Nothing high end and classy like VP rules but a dirty, dance bar, Snappers that had ladies nights Thursday and the waitresses and any cook who could make it went. If those walls could talk, I don't even know what they would say. Probably cry to a therapist for years. Of course there was another place, Triples we went to but less often. I do get the formula though for these kinda shows. Take young people, who honestly aren't adults and don't always do the wisest things. Put them in a very high stress environment and just watch what happens. For sure friendships and rivalries are gonna pop up. Also you pick the time when people really seem to not be able to keep it in their pants.
Late 90s GP didn't have a ton of "fine dining" we had a few chains and that was it BUT some clowns from out east were opening a steak house. I believe they even built the building. So I applied there, quite the process. I had my first interview ever. Then we had a few days of training, not just a quick this is what you do now get to work.... At first I wanted this to work out, I wanted it to be the "big" place in town. Then the managers started talking, they were going to show this hillbilly town full of yokels what fine dining was, how to make a steak. Well I didn't show up for my first day. GP does have some of the worst of Alberta, I 100% understand that but even back then I didn't put up with people insulting my town. One thing your not going to teach rednecks is how to cook a steak, we already got that down!! I don't believe these guys were open even a year and I have no problem with that. Douche bags. Then I had a couple odd jobs before I moved to Edmonton at 19 in 2000. There has been about 20 days in the last 27 years I haven't had a job and it was when I moved. I thought I wanted to not work in a restaurant but I did not get hired anywhere else so I cracked and applied at every place down 104ave from the Oliver neighborhood to GMCC and everything up 124St from Jasper ave to 118ave. This was before the brewery district or the rebranding of 124st when there was more hookers than hipster shops. I guess I will stop here and put up part 2 in a few days. Edmonton was the same sort of thing, which leads me to believe restaurant live is universal. In Edmonton I was an "adult" so there was a bit more than just a kid watching all this go down.
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