Tag: writing

thank god for restaurant work

thank god for restaurant work

girlseekingpeanutbutter2 Comments

I never recieved my college degree. I earned it, sure— as much as you can earn anything in a university—I just never got the physical copy. Before it reached me, my landlord sold the house I was living in, and I moved from Boulder to Nashville. I never gave them a forwarding address. 

Tonight at work I had a 30 person table—parents and children and friends all celebrating each other over dinner for whatever reason. They treated me like a dog—taking pictures of me without asking, not noting my name or looking at my face. I overheard one of them talking to another after waving me away, “my daughter who, as you know, is starting at Harvard in the fall—“ I wish this was hyperbole. Way too on the nose.

After they left, I spent the better part of an hour cleaning up after them—clearing, sweeping, scrubbing—I brought a trash bag to their table to clean up the bits of food and trash they’d left and to save us several trips back to the kitchen. My coworker said, “genius!” 

“It’s that art school degree.” I’m hilarious.

We laughed. I think it gets tiring when the most regular interaction you have with people is them telling you what to bring to their table in exchange for hopefully 20%, usually less. 

Still I am grateful, all the way through to my core, for restaurant work. It is there for those of us who need it, and for those of us who love it. The community you find working in a restaurant is unmatched, truly. You make friends hard and fast and you become important to each other with impressive speed and sincerity. You don’t get friends like that anywhere else—you just don’t.

I love the people I work with, I love working hard and being on my feet and balancing a fucked up amount of things at once. I love that I make a living taking care of people. I love working in restaurants, 

I just have some things to say about it I guess.  

An important thing to know for those who’ve never worked in a restaurant is that the server who carries your dirty napkin from the table to the trash for you is the most beautifully dynamic person you’ll ever have the goddamn pleasure of speaking to.

Your server studied philosophy and painting, hitchhiked for 2 years across South America, played shows with your favorite artist—the person bringing you your third Diet Coke writes children’s books. Your server is just as smart, if not smarter than you, they’re just poor. 

I wish people understood that. And maybe they do. I sound like I have a chip on my shoulder, and yeah whatever, I probably do. I’ve just had a long night, and I’m feeling like a sack of shit. 

I don’t have a savings account and I’m 27 years old. I don’t spend my days reading and writing and making things I’m proud of. I spend my days waiting tables and my nights drinking $10 Prosecco and writing about it. 

It could have been me, I just told myself, after looking at a photo on Instagram of a woman I graduated college with who is now living a life I wish I had. It would be so nice to believe in destiny. It would take the edge off the knowledge that I continue to fuck around and find myself in the very same place. 

I would like to believe that a life spent writing was just not meant for me. That it wasn’t mine and never could be. What a relief it would be to know that there’s nothing I could have done that would have made that life possible. It isn’t true though. If I’d worked harder—if I’d not moved to Nashville so eagerly—if I’d not gotten sick at 18 and spent the next 9 years digging myself out of psychiatrist offices and dialectical behavioral therapy and meal plans—if I’d come from generational wealth, maybe. 

I’d do anything to go back and do it over—what, exactly, I’m not sure. Just It. I did it wrong. Whatever it is that propels people forward towards their dreams or whatever, I don’t have it. 

I am discouraged before I begin. It’s a character flaw. I find myself tonight at the bottom of a very large, very familiar hole. 

I’m also aware that my safety, sure my existence, is a gift. I am grateful for both. And yeah, when you go through hard shit, your goals become smaller.

I was hospitalized four times in four years, the last of which I was maybe not going to make it back from. I had doctors telling me I would never recover—my family telling me they’d already grieved for me—my life dissolving. When I did not, in fact, kick the bucket, I was left with the mush that sickness had made of my life. For the past 5 years, I’ve tried to put it back together, with some success and a lot of.. not success. 

There are days when I am happy. There are days when I am devastated. There are days when I KNOW that here is all that matters—that scrubbing the floor of a restaurant is enough because I’m here scrubbing it. That this is good work and I’m doing it. That there’s no need for a grand plan for my life. That I’m a massive bitch for feeling like a failure for doing honest work that I love. 

I’m here, scrubbing the floor, sometimes happy. 

I have everything I need. 

Not Limited To

Not Limited To

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The top row of my google docs reads as follows: Resume Summer 2024, Writing Cover Letter, Restaurant Cover Letter, Writing Resume 2024. 

It used to read something like: poem, lament, longing, the pain of existence etc. Does this difference mean I’m growing up? Probably not. It just means I haven’t been writing. 

Words not coming from or in support of Palestinians are hollow and vacant and I have very little interest in them. 

What else is there to write about–think about? There is nothing more important. Nothing.

I’ve been thinking about space recently–the spaces where we come together to talk about these most important things—where we organize both our thoughts and ourselves. Where are we, people outside academia and its ring of constant, encouraged discussion, supposed to go to talk and learn and be with each other? 

I work nearly every day, serving overpriced food for $2 an hour plus tips, to afford an apartment in a city I hate, whose agenda reads, “welcome drunk racists–we hate women too.” 

So, work doesn’t feel like the place to organize. Outside of work then–I’ve decided–that’ll have to do. 

You may say to go online–follow people whose beliefs align with yours. And yeah, absolutely do this. Genocide is being livestreamed, and those people risking everything to capture the images that we now see whenever we close our eyes are the ones we should turn our attention towards. 

Unfortunately, truly evil platforms like instagram and twitter are where images like these are given proper attention. So we follow, we look, and we do not disconnect. However, the commodification of genocide brought about by these platforms is something I will never forgive us for. Never. 

Sponsored posts–commissioned prayers–western individuals who are making money by selling postural support for Palestine are misguided at best, sinister at worst. I cannot begin to touch the rage I feel at this–ME, who is sitting here safe and warm and fed. 

There has to be another place to gather, away from people that would sell our souls back to us half priced. 

Nashville, with its rolling highways and green, pasteurized developments, feels like a place where ideas come to drown in booze. If you park in an unmarked spot, or god forbid one you haven’t paid for, your car will be booted in a matter of minutes. There are no sidewalks on the main strip of East Nashville. You have to pay at least twice my rent if you want to be able to walk down your block next to your friend without fear of being hit by a car. The bus line only leads to one place–downtown. This is where you go to drink, get drunk, and abuse the waitstaff. This city is DESIGNED to kill ideas. 

Where do we go then, to talk to each other? Where do we go where we don’t have to pay to sit next to each other? The park? Absolutely, great idea, but it closes at sunset. 

Naturally, I started looking into Tennessee loitering and trespass laws. 

“This is private property” seems to be the biggest hurdle to jump with this deal. Do businesses own their parking lots? Yes. Do businesses own city sidewalks? No. They don’t. You can stay there as long as you want so long as you do not solicit money, sex, or otherwise threaten passersby. However, things get foggy when we deal with “threaten” as people, especially business owners, will say just about anything to make us look dangerous. 

11-605. Loitering. (1) A person commits the offense of loitering when he or she is lingering, remaining or prowling in a place at a time or in a manner not usual for law-abiding individuals under circumstances that warrant a justifiable and reasonable alarm or immediate concern for the safety of persons or property in the vicinity, including but not limited to any of the following circumstances:

Then they name reasonably understandable situations–being outside a school without reason, selling things that are illegal to sell. But the “not limited to” rubs me the wrong way. Why even indicate specific scenarios if disclaimed by “not limited to.” If all laws were written this way, where would they end? Here’s an important bit:

(3) Prior to any arrest for violation of this section, unless flight or other circumstances make it impracticable, a law enforcement officer shall give the person an opportunity to dispel any alarm or immediate concern by requesting the person to identify himself or herself and explain his or her presence and conduct.

(4) No person shall be convicted for this offense if the law enforcement officer failed to comply with the foregoing procedure or if it appears at trial that

Loitering laws have been raked over in multiple cases for vagueness and unconstitutionality, and the reasons are obvious. “Not limited to” gives cops the opportunity to do what cops do–things Not Limited To what is required of them. 

Third spaces–not work, not one’s home–famously called, “That space where the oppressed plot their liberation” by Homi K. Bhabha in The Location of Culture, are essential to the success of our collective action. And they are getting harder and harder to find. When spending money feels like throwing it down the throat of a weapons manufacturing machine, and working feels like passively doing the same, there is a need for a space that exists outside of these two options. 

I want for us what universities have for their students–accessible spaces and people who want to talk about what they find there. How can we do this–create this–for people who don’t have the resources to go to or back to school? 

We have to find a way to be with each other in spaces not limited to the ones sold to us. Well, I guess, like everything-the-fuck else, we have to build them ourselves. 

When we do, I’ll meet you there.