May I?

Over the course of the past couple of months, there has been a bit of a spotlight shining on to the restaurant worker community. Essentially, a Red River student created a book for a project that asked some local chefs to tell her "uncensored" tales of working in a kitchen. One local chef wound up in a jam about what he spoke about. I'm not interested in getting into that - not my business. However, I do want to talk about behaviour by restaurant workers.

Let me preface this discussion by saying I grew up in a feminist workplace. For ten years, I worked in a unionized, left-wing, feminist, health care facility. Loved it! Loved my co-workers. Loved working in this very safe, highly protected work environment. There were days of dark humour born out of the life and death situations we found ourselves processing but there certainly was always very respectful behaviour amongst staff and clients.

Then I came to work at a restaurant. Wow. I'm not in Kansas anymore. First of all, we are in a tiny workspace. I have to say that the amount of bodily contact in a night would make anyone blush. What can you do? Sometimes you can't get pass another person or reach for a bottle without some inappropriate touching! And, the language! I have become the queen of the f-bomb. I talk like I was raised by sailors! And then there are the jokes and put-downs. Got to have tough skin and be able to laugh at yourself or you'll never survive. I always use to admire that Alex can so easily laugh at himself but now I get it: he grew up in a restaurant. Now, I too have that skill. Essentially, it's a brutal environment: you are hot, tired, and inevitably someone has treated you like something they found on the bottom of their shoe, running for about 10 hours at a go. And, SMILE! (Not every day is like this but every day has at least one of those elements.) Add into all of this, the predominantly 15 year old boy support staff and you have a recipe for some very basic humour.

I have to admit, I was shocked by it all at first. I am now acclimatized.

Here's the interesting thing, tho. The piece that hasn't been talked about in the FreeP or the Guardian. During service, restaurants work on an age-old system of basic respect. Everyone says, "May I?" before speaking to you. Servers run each others' food, bussers hustle to clear tables, cooks make beautiful meals for their co-workers, shifts are covered, cooks call each other 'brother' and when they are in the shit, they mean it. Sometimes people comment on how long we keep staff. And we really do. We've had people with us since the beginning. We're small and started with no money so they haven't been staying for their stellar salaries. The environment at Bistro is very familial. We are there to take care of each other. It is amazing how sweet and kind we can be to each other and to the customers. That's very important to me. But just like siblings on the playground, when we play it can be ugly!

So, yes, restaurants breed rude and inappropriate behaviour in their staff. And, yes, restaurant workers are some of the sweetest, hardest-working, most respectful people I have ever met.