When I was around fifteen, my dad bought a restaurant/music venue called Louie G's Pizza. When he first bought it, I was super excited because I love food. What I didn't realize at the time was just how much time and energy goes into keeping a restaurant running smoothly. My dad owning a restaurant has been both a great joy and a massive pain, but overall it has been an amazing journey. I have been taught people skills, work ethic, and responsibility, all things that are ingrained in me today.
I started to work at the restaurant not long after we got it I started out as a dishwasher, which I hated. Every night I would come home smelling like food and I would almost always be the last person to clock off because I would have to wash all of the kitchen dishes. I would work Fridays and Saturday nights, usually from around five in the afternoon to one in the morning, which also meant I had no social life outside of school. At the time, I loathed working because I would much rather be hanging out at the football games or at my friend's houses. Now, I'm glad that I was working at such a young age because it taught me responsibility and I was able to spend time with my family.
After about a year of dishwashing, my parents decided to move me to the hostess position. At first, I was extremely excited to be out of the dish pit, but after a few weeks of hostessing, I realized that being a dishwasher was one hundred times less difficult. As a hostess, it was my job to answer phones and take pick-up and delivery orders. I, also, sat people in the front and back of the house, making sure that a server got to them in a timely matter. Before I was a hostess, I heard the horror stories of customers being extremely rude to staff, but I had never experienced it. As a hostess, I was involved in a lot of the slander that people would give the staff, which wasn't fun at the time but made me better able to handle conflict as I grew older. Being a hostess, also, meant that I was part of the server drama in the restaurant. It could be hard to keep track of which server's turn it was or try to find a server to take an extra table on an extremely busy night.
After I went off to Bellingham for college, my younger brother took over my hostess position. Now that I'm back in town over the summer, I have been helping in the kitchen, making pizzas and learning to make some of our other food items. I think being in the kitchen has been my favorite position in the restaurant so far, I love working with my hands, but having done so many different jobs at one place has made Me better understand the world of hospitality and understand why every restaurant worker should be treated with the utmost respect.
