You say aioli , I say aioli, let’s call the whole thing off! My Life In a Restaurant

“Would you like to try that burrito, ‘wet style?’” is a completely different question than, “Would you like fries with that,” okay? Restaurants are my husband’s whole world. I feel like everyone always wants to work in a restaurant at some point because you can make good tips. I always thought I had the personality for it but never had the opportunity.

When my husband and I take leaps we take big ones. When we moved to Tampa, Florida almost immediately after my graduation from the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication, and literally right after our wedding we had no idea what would happen but we knew our destination was Tampa. We had family in both Tampa and St. Petersburg so we know we wouldn’t be completely alone but we certainly had an amazing adventure ahead of us.

The original plan was to get me a job that paid the bills, get him a job that paid rent and then get my man into Culinary School at the Art Institute. 2 weeks after we arrived and moved into our new place, one week after we started looking, my husband got a job at a Sushi place not too far from home. About two and a half weeks after I started looking, I got hired at a place in a hospital that sold “medical apparel,” aka scrubs. Retail was easy for me and seemed pretty cool. We were settled into reality ready to dive into the unfamiliar.

My husband’s job sucked. That place was a health code violation and he single-handedly cleaned it up and turned it around. He negotiated himself a raise and felt pretty good. The hours were kind of tough but he made it work. Then on payday he noticed not only did he not get the raise but they had paid him a dollar under what they’d originally agreed on in the first place. His worthless boss said “I pay you what you’re worth, and that’s what your worth.” Needless to say, my husband knew better and left gracefully and angrily hoping Tampa had something better to offer.

He spent three days at home making progress on little household projects and combing the listings on Craigslist setting up interviews and applying for new positions. I checked on Craigslist one afternoon and saw something that looked awesome and promising. It was a small, family-owned Mexican Grille about 10 miles away from our place that was only open 11am-9pm and was closed on Sundays. Since the bulk of my man’s experience was indeed Mexican and Latin-based, I knew he was a shoe-in, so long as any knowledge of the Spanish language was not necessary, because he barely knew anything.

He walked in, had the interview, and was hired within 48 hours. He rocked it, and it was the perfect fit for him. He really could not have found a better job. I was sitting pretty at the scrub store and freelance writing for a local alternative, trendy paper doing music reviews and getting us into free concerts.

About a month and a half into his employment at this amazing lil’ Mexican Grille, he was already on the fast track to management and an interesting opportunity came up. The front of the house was short a person and I was looking for a second job. My husband knew I could do it and that I’d always wanted a restaurant job so he threw out my name.

The owner only had one question: “Can you work with her?” We contemplated it. We discussed it..a lot! Before our wedding, before we went through all this relationship drama and getting past it all, we couldn’t have worked together for five minutes, but this time, it felt like it was doable. So we did it.

Where my husband was in his element, boy was I out of mine. The closest thing I had to restaurant experience was Burger King right near the University of Oregon campus, which has been long closed down because we failed all our health code tests. Plus, I wouldn’t exactly call that a real restaurant job. They call it fast food because of all the short cuts the employees take to get the customers out of their faces and on their way!

I dove right into the Mexican Grille and almost ended up drowning more than a few times. The first 3 months were terrible. It was so hard and my boss and I totally had a problem communicating on many levels, leaving me to consistently come out as the bad guy, or the one coming up short. I never had any problems working with my husband. For a long time, he was the only friend there I had.

Working the two jobs was treacherous. I was always tired, never had time to do anything and Sunday was the only day I ever had off. By the time Sunday rolled around I had to do laundry, get caught up on housework and I just wanted to be with my husband. We barely had the energy to leave the house.

For six months I killed myself at both the scrub store and the restaurant. I thought I would do better to put more effort into the scrub store, since my co-workers and managers actually liked me there, than to go the extra mile at the restaurant only to end up being fired from the scrub store and be left with only the restaurant to save me.

Right after the New Year, my life at the restaurant got better. I stopped letting things bother me so much and I got into a rhythm, comfortable with my position and started getting good at my job
and finding things I actually liked about it. I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, really. Things got really bad at the scrub store after January and I just wanted to make it to my one year and then move onto greener pastures.

I got fired from the scrub store right before my birthday and the first visit we were making home to Oregon to see family. Getting fired ended up being the best thing that ever happened to me. As a great friend, Lonnie Stoner, once said to me, “It’s a blurse: a blessing and a curse.” I was down a steady paycheck but something had happened at the restaurant that very same week that was kismet, or some kind of sign.

The same week I got canned for being an ambitious scrub store salesgirl the front of the house manager from the Mexican Grille had put in her two week’s notice for leaving the company. Not only did this mean we were short an employee, but I actually had a chance to do well at the restaurant now because this particular manager hated me from the start and always had it out for me. The clouds had just lifted!

The day we left for vacation I threw myself at the mercy of the restaurant owner and told him, if he trained me to work a different position I would work hard and shine for him, I would do what he wanted from me 6 months ago, only even better.

He was skeptical, a little bit unsure but also a little bit stuck between a rock and a hard place. I was less of a gamble than someone completely new. I’d gotten this bad reputation with him as someone who was just there for a paycheck, liked to play more than work, and always had a list of excuses in my back pocket ready to get out of trouble.

Some of those had merit. The restaurant felt like my husband’s realm and I was just a small part of the whole thing, inconsequential really. I never felt like I actually fit in, and I always felt like I had far more weaknesses than strengths in this business. Also, after years of being a nanny I had become an expert at “turning on the happy” and was good at being silly. So, when things got crazy tense at the restaurant and I wanted to run away forever, I’d make guests and employees laugh just so I could laugh with them, which can look kind of bad if you aren’t in on the joke.

As far as the excuses thing, I’m a major explainer. If you start accusing me, I get defensive and I will always tell you exactly what happened, which if you aren’t in the mood to listen, sounds a lot like an excuse. There were a lot of miscommunications and misrepresentations of my comments, issues and personality traits too weighing against me. But, the boss man agreed and I was ready to move forward.

Six months after all of this, I’m actually happy asking over and over again if our guests would like to try that burrito “wet style.” It still bothers me when people pronounce the Grande burrito as “Grand” and when people emphasize the “a” in cilantro, but these are things I can deal with.
When I entered the world of the Mexican Grille and stepped into my husband’s hopes, dreams, and career happiness, I wanted to kick some major ass completely unaware of the notion that the restaurant might instead completely kick my ass. However, I prevailed!

The owner saw it in me. He knew I could hack it, and I do. I worked with an amazing team. It’s hard to mesh with that many people and often at times I feel like there is always someone on my “shit list” but I’d rather be annoyed with them than work without them.

It often is like that movie “Waiting” and I have almost freaked out on many people, and definitely have come unhinged letting out an attitude or shrill statement here or there. No joke, you don’t want to piss off a short red-head. I have days where I feel depressed and like I am going nowhere but then I think about how I built myself into the restaurant structure from nothing and if the owners want me there, what more is there.

I’ve never had a single argument with my husband about anything that happened at the restaurant. We never take that home with us, but we do complain about work…a lot! Sometimes it seems like that is all we can talk about, but then again, it’s a great thing we share.

I never expected to fit into the world of food service. I thought that would be my husband’s thing and I would just come into his restaurant one day to eat and feed the kids because I can’t cook, but now I feel like I want to work towards being a part of it. We have a great couple we look up to as perfect examples of how it all works. I’d like to think that when we grow up we will be like the owners of this amazing restaurant.

I’m not saying that this is an easy job. Anything but easy really, and there is always something to be done! But, I like my job. Ninety percent of the time I feel competent, happy and confident. I’ve met a lot of really great guests, made friends and really know the restaurant. I love working for the owners, and most days I think they like that I’m working for them. I like all the people I work with. The team is great. Sure, we clash, we annoy, we fight, we snap, we yell, we stomp but at the end of the day we are a team and having someone is a lot better than no one.

If you asked me 3 years ago, I could have never even remotely predicted my life, my plan, or my lack thereof would ever bring me here. My husband would definitely say the same. We have our good and bad days but we have a vested interest in this place, this life, this industry. Sure these jobs may not be a forever kind of thing, but we are learning things we will need to make it to forever, and we are forever grateful for the experiences and the people we have supporting us through it all.

My life in a restaurant is anything but ordinary, but then again neither are the items on the menu at my beloved Mexican grille. Sometimes I feel like life has left us behind when I hear about the things that other married couples and friends our age are doing, but then I remember that we left our old life behind to try something new, and something new is exactly what we found…and we even got more than we bargained for. At least when you live your life in a restaurant, you live life to the “fullest!”