Summer Lessons Learned

Posted by Manda(rific) on August 13, 2010 in Island Life, Ramble | 1 comment

So, yesterday, I may have given myself a minor concussion.

In typical Manda fashion, this is probably a vast exaggeration¹ and I’m pretty sure I just gave myself a nice little knot and a headache, but man, that shit hurt. Who knew that ceilings could be so…well, hard? Especially, like, low-lying rafter beam things. I don’t know what you call them. Things that bonk tall people in the head and remind me why I shouldn’t wear heels to work. Being tall must be miserable.

At any rate, it’s like the restaurant itself is trying to give me a proper (violent) send-off. My last day is in less than two weeks, making for a total of six months of straight up foodservice. I am so completely over foodservice. I gotta hand it to myself though, I didn’t think I’d last the season (well predicted, Past Manda) but two months shy of the whole thing isn’t too bad.

Well, let me tell you folks, foodservice in the city is one thing, and hostessing at a popular seafood restaurant on a very tiny island with not many dining options is a beast all it’s own. I would like to take a moment to reflect upon a few of the things I have learned in this experience so that other potential summer jobbers can learn from my…er… well, just keep reading.

- Wearing heels is sometimes a good idea. Usually it is not. In the past few days I have hit my head on a rafter thing becuase I was TOO TALL, missed like three stairs, and had to wade across a completely flooded parking lot barefoot. Because I chose to wear heels. Sure, they may be stylish. Practical, they are not. It also is a known fact that if you wear heels thinking “oh, it should be slow tonight!” it WILL NOT BE SLOW. That’s God’s way of saying “Let’s get you some exercise so you can look good in them things!” Without fail, every time I wear dressy shoes to work, we get slammed. It’s like some hate-filled law of hostessing.

- There is no World’s Stupidest Question. I sometimes think I have heard every ridiculous question that one could possibly ask while on vacation. This summer we’ve had everything from “You fly the Mahi in daily from Hawaii, right?” to “Do people, like, live here?” and last night someone asked “Where’s the nearest Karaoke Bar?”² – you may think you’ve heard it all. You haven’t. Someone will trump it, eventually, and you will have to smile and nod politely while thinking to yourself Holy-wow-someone-really-just-asked-that-what-the-hell-do-I-say. You’ve been warned.³

- There are, in fact, people who expect to walk into a restaurant with 10 of their closest friends and family members and be seated in less than 20 seconds. In defense of these people, I’m sure if you walked into Chili’s with 10 your closest friends they could probably seat you pretty quickly. But in the tiny restaurant I work at – you’re gonna have to wait a little bit if you want a table for eleven people right now. That said, who goes out to eat spontaneously with 10 other people anyway? Were you just having a dinner party and decided to go out? Thought you’d round up the neighbors and just drop in? On one hand it’s like, jeez, make a reservation. On the other it’s like man I wish I knew ten people who all wanted to go out and eat with me at the SAME TIME!

- Everything is over at nine. There comes a point on a busy night where there’s 35 people waiting out on the deck and the wait for those 35 people is something like an hour and a half and the cook is glaring at everyone like they’ve just taken the last steak at a barbecue before he got one and the waits are hollering at you an want you to know exactly how miserable your tables are and some tourist is trying to ask you for directions to the nearest ice cream shop⁴ and your phone keeps buzzing in your pocket because your mother is trying to relay some stupid information about the cat and YOUJUSTWANTEVERYTHINGTOBEOVERRIGHTNOW but it’s okay. Because 9:00 will eventually come around, you will flip the sign to closed, and it will be over. If there’s one thing that has really struck me about restaurant work – there is no “we’ll finish this paperwork tomorrow” or “oh we’ll just stop here for the night.” When it’s over, it’s over. Nobody’s mad anymore, the tourists are gone, the food is served, and everything is just over. Fin. Finished. Awesome.

Have you ever worked in foodservice? Have any crazy stores to share? Even if you haven’t – what’s the stupidest thing someone has asked you at work?

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1. We have footnotes again! This word took me about 50 tries to spell, and by tries I mean I had to mash in about 50 different spellings before wordpress figured out that I was trying to spell exaggeration – previous suggestions included “acclimation” and “maturation” if this says anything about my vocabulary skills.

2. This may not seem like a stupid question, actually, if you are from the outskirts of Toledo or live in a flat in, say, Brooklyn. However, I live here. Does it look like, in our 9 square miles of mostly-marsh-and-sand-and-maybe-a-little-bit-of-protected-historical-area, we have a Karaoke Bar?

3. The answer to all these questions, by the way: Mahi Mahi is also known as Dolphin. It is not Dolphin the Mammal, it is this fish. Sometimes it’s called Dorado if you live in, like, South America or something. It swims in the Gulf Stream, which runs up from the Gulf of Mexico. So, no, we catch it locally, it is not flown in daily from Hawaii. People do actually live here, although there are far less inhabitants in the winter than in the summer, and you can sing Karaoke (sometimes) at Howard’s Pub on a Friday Night if you feel like dealing with the tourists. See! Betcha didn’t think we actually had karaoke!

4. What is completely ridiculous about this issue is that the village of Ocracoke, in it’s vast like-one-mile-at-it’s-widest-point size, has (to my knowledge) five places to get ice cream by the scoop. This is not including the grocery stores and gas station, which all sell you know like popsicles and crap. So pretty much ride your bike five minutes down the road in any direction (okay, well, unless you’re like at the Pub) and you will eventually stumble across fresh scooped ice cream. I promise.