Insights from a restaurant worker.

Hi folks, this is Eric here! It seems like roughly forever since I have written a complete post myself! I have almost forgotten how to type! As you know, I have been working at this vegetarian restaurant for the last couple months, mostly behind the counter on the self-serve side. It has been nothing if not glamourous! Oops--when I typed "glamourous" I meant to type "exhausting and at times completely frustrating." But, for the most part, the people I work with are genuine and very laid back--which makes dealing with many of the frequent customers much easier. This job has given me new insight as to how we, as people of privelege, have come to take for granted the services and products that we buy on a daily basis. Having changed to this new job from a position of considerable respect (pastor in a United Methodist Church), it is all the more pronounced. A few things I have observed from behind the counter of the Blind Faith Cafe:

(1) Unless you are only working at this place because you have bigger ambitions toward which you are striving, customers aren't very interested in treating employees as equal human beings--and even then, it is rare. Once it is established that you may some day be able to afford to eat there, then you are related to with dignity--not merely as "the help." Also, this is a generalization, and not just about Blind Faith customers, but how workers are generally treated in the service industry.

(2) Restuarant workers (except maybe servers) who work full time, are not able to afford to eat at the place where they work without the employee discount. For example, cooks get paid $12-15 per hour, regardless of their output, which can be up to 30 plates per hour. If the average dish costs $10, after taxes, that is about an hour's wage--1/40th of your week. Considering the amount of actually pretty intense labor there is in restaurant work (washing dishes, standing over a hot stove for hours at a time, heavy lfiting, prep-cooking), the amount of respect and imbursement restaurant employees receive is pretty low. Also, since there is no profit-sharing below the management level, and most of the workers do not see the tips that servers receive, there is little incentive to perform well at one's job, aside from being able to keep it.

(3) Like the grocery business, most people who go to restaurants have no concept of where their food comes from or how it is prepared--and most people assume that vegetarian restaurants are pure in their purchasing habits, which, for cost purposes, simply cannot be true. Of course, knowing this has not stopped me from eating the food at the restaurant, but it has given me a deeper awareness that food does not come pre-wrapped in neat packages. Someone has to make the seitan loaf, someone has to chop all the onions, someone has to prepare all the sauces, someone has to make all the granola, someone has to make the corn bread, someone has to wash all the soup spoons, and someone has to buy all this stuff. So when I visit a restaurant I try to remember there are 20 people with 20 things for which they are responsible all coming together to make my meal possible. Thus, when I visit a restaurant I try not to complain when when the restaurant is sold out of something that "I can't live without," or make an employee search all over the restuarant for a soup spoon becuase I refuse to eat soup with a regular spoon. Apparently this concept is lost on many of the people who frequent this establishment.

(4) A valuable lesson taught to me by an all-too-frequent-customer: As a customer, never will I ever refer to someone who forgot to put a small container of guacamole in my to go bag as an "idiot," becuase it is demeaning and wrong--and, the employees would probably say mean things about me when I am not there.

I am looking forward to the opportunity to become a server, as it will give me greater insight to the vegetarian restaurant connoisseur, and I feel like I can do a good job without taking anything personally or freaking out like some servers do (we are not negotiating the Cuban missile crisis, people--really, we're just serving food to people who pay for it)--but mostly I am looking forward to working less and getting paid more, which will allow me to take more time to pursue film studies. Wait, isn't that why I wanted to work in a restuarant in the first place...?