2009 Annual Apron Burning

People's lives are shaped by rituals and ceremonies, both conscious and subconscious, overt and covert. These rituals become part of a person's inner narrative, marking the ending and beginning of chapters in their life story. A person's internal dialogue is characterized based on their interpretations of these events. These events can range from a simple decision to change one's hair style, to a planned formal celebration, such as a graduation ceremony or wedding. Each one of these things is a simultaneous ending and beginning, the end of something and the start of something new

Many times after successfully navigating a life crisis, stressful transition, or recovering from a severe trauma, people choose to mark the completion of their journey with a ritual for closure, signifying their recovery and forward motion. Often victims of sexual assault or persons leaving an abusive relationship will as part of their therapeutic progress write a letter to the perpetrator of abuse, letting loose all of their feelings of anger, hurt and resentment. Rather than send the letters, which in many cases, would only exacerbate already potentially damaging situations, these persons destroy them, thereby signifying the destruction of the impact or hold the maladaptive situation had over their life.

Empirical support for the effectiveness of emotional catharsis achieved through these means is widespread. "Survivor to Thriver" support groups exists all over the country for persons recovering from a myriad of traumas. "Take Back the Night" allows survivors of sexual assault to reclaim their own personal self awareness and anonymously create messages on T-shirts to their attackers. LiveStrong and Daffodil Days allow cancer survivors to celebrate their recovery. Post Secret allows anyone and everyone to confess their guilty or confront the guilty in a publicly anonymous fashion.
Recently a group of former employees of the factory where cakes of curdled milk are de-frozen and presented as fresh got together and created their own closure ritual signifying the end of the factory’s control of their lives. The employees took permanent markers and wrote in bright colors all over their pristine, trademark white pants, shirts and aprons, the things they had longed to be able to say to their coworkers, managers and customers but due to fear of retribution had not been able to. Months and years of enduring the indignities described in the previous post were released, and in the end, the formerly starched stiff white uniforms (paid for, of course, by the employees, by a corporation who for no reason other than being able to continually manipulate their employees into purchasing new uniforms, requires them to wear ALL WHITE in a restaurant) were covered in a rainbow of emotionally charged statements and curse words.
After admiring their handiwork, the former staff members promptly threw it into an outdoor fireplace and saw the symbolism of their fading anger, resentment and hatred go up in smoke and blow away in the wind, leaving only a few charred ashes as a reminder of what had been a huge trash bag full of old uniforms, symbols of tyranny, a few moments before.

Where Your Tip Money Really Goes: The Hidden Abuse of Restaurant Employees

Everyday people come into restaurants who are a special type of ignorant person who has never had to work in the restaurant industry. Merely tipping the socially acceptable 15% (although most people with any amount of class agree that 20% is the new 15%) does not mean that you can rest easy at night thinking you have given that cute girl a heads up on her college tuition or student loan payments. Sure, some of your money made it into his or her apron pocket at the end of the evening, but about half of it was siphoned out along the way. So, where does your tip money go?

People who have never worked in a restaurant simply do not realize that most servers support not only themselves, but the vast majority of the front of the house staff based on their tips due to a practice known as "tipping out". Servers are often required by management to share up to 50% of their tips with the bartenders, bussers, food runners, and host staff. In most places, the amount a server must tip out is determined based on the server's net sales, not the gratuity left by the "guests" of the restaurant. So if a server received no tip or a poor tip on a $100 check but was required to tip out 5% of their sales to support staff, a server just paid the restaurant $5 to wait on the table. Additionally, servers are required to declare their income based on their sales, so routinely being stiffed by customer patrons results in servers being forced to pay taxes on money they never made and/or had to tip out to someone else.

Last, but certainly not least, some the money you left as a tip made into the hands of the restaurant itself, because requiring their servers to pay half of their employees isn’t enough. Mandatory uniform, meal plan and supply deductions and other pointless charges such as credit card transaction fees are taken from the server. Therefore, if you left your server $15 on a $100 check, understand that if they are lucky, they are ending up about $9 richer. So, Mr. Smug-Fifteen-Percenter, keep that in mind next time you sign your credit card slip.

In any other occupation, it would be illegal for to not pay an employee for their services, or to require the employees to pay to work. In the restaurant industry, it is de rigueur. If a contractor came to do repairs to a person's home and the person decided simply to pay only half the typical amount or not pay at all, every court of law would rule in the contractor's favor. The contractor would well be within their rights to confront the homeowner, and the contractor's supervisor, if one existed, would most definitely require the homeowner to pay for some part of the services.

This forced financial helplessness based on the whims of others is such a way of life for servers that they begin to get cutthroat and bitter towards their coworkers, stealing tables, trading favors for sections, even stealing unattended cash tips inadvertently laying in plain sight.

Adding to the emotional stress of restaurant workers is the often complex inability to confront those persons doing the abusing and manipulating, from customers to coworkers and managers. In the restaurant industry, questioning the amount of gratuity left by a customer is almost always grounds for dismissal, and management rarely sides with the server for any reason. If a customer skips out on the bill it is even worse for the server. Although in most states servers are not required by law to pay the bill out of their own money, they will pay in terms of incurring management wrath.

In addition to unstable finances, the fickle favor of restaurant management renders the servers powerless to reduce their stress level. Sexual harassment and drug use are rampant in restaurants and whistle-blowing or confrontation leads to unfair scheduling, longer ticket times on food, and ill-will from coworkers who wish to remain in the good graces of supervisors. Restaurant managers almost single-handedly have the ability to directly impact and manipulate a servers financial status in a completely unethical yet procedurally legal manner. Servers must choose either to up with the abuse or become poor and unpopular. Having worked in several restaurants while in school, I have spent time in both camps, and neither is a calm place to be.

Restaurant employees, almost without exception, encounter stress, trauma, instability, anxiety and attack while on the job as routinely as cubicle workers receive phone calls, faxes, check e-mail and make copy. The borderline financial stability and poor benefits offered by most companies do not allow workers to receive any mental health support or crisis intervention services, and thus many servers and other restaurant workers attempt to cope with these stressors using a variety of less-than-adaptive self-medicating techniques. Occasionally, however, the creative talents of the downtrodden employees prevails over corporate control and truly amazing things happen, such as the first ever 2009 Annual Apron Burning, which will be the subject of my next post, complete with photographs, so stay tuned!

Pledging The Restaurant Sorority

In many ways, beginning a new job in a well-known corporate chain such The Restaurant is similar to pledging a sorority in college. After being surviving a selection process that often involves multiple interviews with different managers, math tests and even psychological assessments, new staff members are assigned a date to report for the beginning of orientation and training. Often this date and time will change several times, which the newbie server may or may not be notified of ahead of time, resulting in the server showing up for work and being sent home, only to return again to potentially repeat the process.

In addition to completing all the necessary paperwork and watching the mandatory sexual harassment videos, training is a newbie's first introduction into their new life. New servers are typically taught the ways of their place of employment in groups called training classes. Like the bid and pledge process of any sorority, one can expect that about half the people who enter will not make it. At The Restaurant, two of the five people hired at the same time as me did not even return the second day. By the end of the week, only two of us remained. During training, the trainee's uniform must always be pristine; wrinkles, stains, and dress code violations can result in write up and extended training periods. After about a week of taking classes on everything on the menu and the culture of the company, complete with extensive testing to ensure newbies absorb all the necessary information, the trainees are assigned a senior server to "follow" for further training for several days on the floor.

Similar to the "Big" and "Little" process of sororities, who your trainer is can make all the difference in your experience. During training, the trainee must do whatever their trainer says, whenever, and without complaint, and hand all tips over to their trainer without complaint. It goes without saying that the trainee hopes and prays that they will not make a mistake that will cost their trainer a decent tip, and that the trainee will also do every bit of the trainer's sidework. A decent trainer will give the trainee a small cut or offer to buy them dinner or a drink at the end of the shift, but many won't. The newbie who is stuck with the anal-retentive career who dreams of one day becoming management but somehow after ten years is still only a server, faces an unfortunate experience as he or she will not have an "in" into the clique which dominates the serving staff of every restaurant. One's only recourse here is hope that a sympathetic member of their training class has a "better" trainer who will vouch for you by association because of your friendship with their trainee.

Depending on your bond with your trainer, the follow period can be anywhere from 3 days to 2 weeks. The training during this time is a delicate balance between wanting to do well but not so well that you outshine your trainer, as then you will soon be competition for better sections and shifts. Fortunately, I was assigned to "Special K", a long time but likeable server who manages who got along with everyone. Special K to the management and other veterans that I was "good" and recommended I be allowed to complete training with only three days, the corporate required minimum. Upon completion of your follow training, the newbie server must then take even more tests, and wait on a manager or senior server to prove their worth before being allowed to actually take tables. However, if you trainer vouches for you, even this process can be skipped.

For the first few weeks on the floor, members of a training class receive bad shifts, run everyone's food, and in the rare event they are allowed to take care of their own tables, can often be seen huddled together near the computer trying to navigate the confusing computer system together. They make mistakes, lots of them, but learn from them together. The members of your training class are the first ones you become close with in the restaurant, the first ones you ask when you need a shift covered, and the first to volunteer to help run food to the six-top management finally deemed you worthy of handling. Your training class is there for you as learn the timing and temperament of all the cooks, the proper way to stage your guest orders, and offer much needed support at the end of the night when you have more comps than sales on your check out. The members of the training class are the first you get drinks after work with, the first ones you begin to interact with outside the world of your establishment.

Eventually, the other staff start to notice that the newbie no longer takes too long on the computer, gets weeded easily, and can take care of themselves without bothering others. The first sign of assimilation into the culture of the restaurant is when another server, typically their trainers, tell them where the staff is going for drinks after work. More than a social activity, this is a therapeutic ritual necessary for the psychological survival of the staff members. These drinks out as a group involve a role reversal, where the servers are now being served, and where one can blow off all the stress of being treated like a slave by abrasive guests and bi-polar managers for hours on end. The invitation to the nightly drink signifies that now the servers are accepting the newbie as one of their own, since the mistakes the newbie made which affected everyone else is are no longer one of the main topics of complaint during the group sessions. The newbie server's response to this invitation is crucial, as refusal of the invitation can have negative consequences for the newbie.

If the newbie does not accept the invitation for drinks, one is not likely to be issued again for very long time. During that time, the newbie server's food will not be run, the host may "forget" to seat them or seat them with undesirable tables such as notoriously difficult customers and poor tippers, the expediter will make sure every mistake is rung into be comped, and bar drinks will always be made last no matter what the order of the tickets. The newbie server, if the invitation is refused, will always receive the hardest side work and be checked out using the most stringent criteria, and be tipped out the least.

Upon accepting the invitation for drinks, the newbie servers tend to sit next to the other members of their training class for security and listen and learn the unwritten rules of the interactions of the veteran staff members. As time progresses, the newbies will eventually gain more and more interaction time with other staff members, as venting over an obnoxious 20 top birthday party split with an experienced server gives them enough credibility to contribute to the conversation. Nothing is worse than the newbie server who complains out of turn too soon, about the wrong things. Within a few weeks, the newbie servers will be full-fledged members of the staff, a transition demonstrated by the fact that their uniforms are no longer perfectly clean and starched and they have been taught all the sidework short cuts, maybe even come up with a few of their own, and they will smile knowingly as the next bunch of wide-eyed training class members fluster about trying to find their way.

However, the fellow members of your training class will always hold a special place in your heart. It is not uncommon to hear long-time staff members reminisce about the many others who have come and gone, saying "Oh, you remember, she was in the training class after mine," and joke with other staff members about the days when they were their trainee. Servers always tip out members of their training class or the staff who trained them more than others, and are more likely to give up and table or be generous with section splitting than to those persons than just other "regular" staff members.

It's interesting to me, this innate need we all have to fit into the groups of which find ourselves members, by choice or not, from sororities to waitstaff at a suburban chain restaurant. Humans are social animals, and we all need to feel acceptance and warmth from at least some of our interactions with others. I think about all these things as I complete my sidework at the end of the shift tonight, which seems notably easier than the tasks I have been assigned previous days. As I wipe down the to go counter by the door, Special K walks by and instead of the usual goodnight or see you tomorrow says "We are all going to The Bar tonight, see you there." I look up at Little J, the only remaining member of my training class who is rolling silverware at the bar, and we smile at each other, knowing that perhaps our pledge process is finally nearing an end. Maybe I'll figure out what my needs are tonight over a cold ShockTop, or maybe I won't. Eitherway, I'm one step closer to being "in".

Introduction

"I will not stand for this horrendous treatment!" shrieks disheveled middle-aged woman in her as she gathers her children and flees the scene of unimaginable indignities as fast as her legs will carry her, her breath heaving and body shaking in the aftermath of her traumatic experience. Curious onlookers gape in disbelief at the scene unfolding in front of them. An attempted assault? Confrontation of a husband and mistress caught red-handed? Discrimination? With no apparent cause, the onlookers eventually return to business as usual. I too watched expressionlessly alone in the knowledge that I had been the inflicter of this woman's pain.

The scene of a person attempting to cope with crisis unfolding before me is surprising in its familiarity, similar to many interactions observed during my time as a mental health worker. However, due to the recent economic climate, I have returned back to the profession which helped finance my graduate degree that is now somewhere in a pile of papers and books stacked in the corner of my bedroom, waiting tables. At first upset that I was not having much luck finding new employment in my field, I decided to use the next several months re-evaluating options and working a 'stress free' job to pay the bills while I de-stressed. I thought the menial task of serving in a moderately priced yet popular chain restaurant would be easy and an escape from the constant pressures of helping others cope with their mental health concerns.

However, on this dreary Sunday afternoon, I had apparently come full circle from helping people transition through periods of crisis to being the cause of said crises. The act which caused all this? Not knowing The Restaurant had run out of Corona the previous night. I began walking toward the kitchen and saw a long-time employee of the restaurant mouth "new girl" to her sister, another senior staff member, and they simultaneously looked at me with an expression of condescension. In that moment, I came to the realization despite the change in industries, job titles and pay, dealing dysfunctional interpersonal relationships, difficult people and people in crisis was still a large part of my job description.