The many hats you get to wear….

When you work at a corporate restaurant, you get to wear many hats……(most of which you don’t want)……but then, no one asked what you wanted…..

When you first get hired on, you think, okay, I’m a server…and then as time goes by, you realize that you are so much more…..it’s hard to decipher just which category some of these tasks fall under….

For instance, at closing, you are asked to sweep the floor. Does this fall under janitorial work, or housekeeping? I mean, the place is closed, there will be no more tables for the night, I’ pretty sure $2.65 an hour is not the going rate for either one of those services. And then, just to pour salt in the wound, there is a cleaning crew that comes in at midnight to clean the floors. All understand that this is totally illogical and a waste of our time and effort,….all except the over-zealous manager who demands we do this.

How about the cleaning of glass shelves, that we must stand on a counter to reach? I like it when they make it especially challenging by asking you to do this at the beginning of the shift, and then when you are half way through, you get busy with tables, and then they tell you to hurry. Hurry with what? The shelves or the tables? As two servers were hurrying with the shelves, one of the shelves was not put back up as it should have been. For some reason, it is an odd, but satisfying sensation when you see an entire shelf full of glassware come cascading down to counter and the floor, and you have to smile at the unmistakable symphony of sound created by the descending glass.