On pride and humility
My recent stint with Mexican bartending and relentless continuation of a never ending application process to possible job openings has yielded a big fat mixed bag… of what? mixed feelings.
Mexican bar tending came to an end this past Thursday. I didn’t necessarily quit and I wasn’t necessarily fired. It was more of a mutual agreement between my boss and myself. We both arrived at the same conclusion… that maybe this job wasn’t the best fit for me and that maybe I wasn’t the best fit for the job. To be capable of working at this bar alone on a busy night, one must be a bilingual, bartending superhero force with a big fat zero readout showing up on the ADD charts. Though the farthest linear distance one can possibly be from the computer (while behind the bar) is 8′, it is almost impossible to walk this in a straight line. The tiny 8′ distance that it takes to walk from a customer who has just ordered to the computer that refuses to cooperate is infinite. Time and space instantly distort to a limitless wasteland where one is endlessly blasted with additional orders, requests for more napkins, attempts at beginning a conversation, etc. This makes it very hard to keep track of everything while keeping everybody, including your boss, happy.
So anyways…. this mutual agreement came about after I was, as one could rightfully interpret it, seriously demoted to the status of, not a waiter, but a busboy. After being thrown into the waters of an overwhelmingly crowded bar 3 weeks in a row and finding that it isn’t possible to shake presidente margaritas and tread water simultaneously, my boss decided that I needed a bit more training. He felt that the best way for me to learn to put orders into the computers and learn the fundamental ingredients of each plate was to have absolutely no contact with either of these and deliver silverware, waters, and nachos to all of the tables instead. Being the good sport that I attempt to be, I said that I would give it a shot. I did it for one night.
“Why are you bussing Brian… you didn’t like bar-tending??” This was the curious question that I was asked by the majority of the waitstaff.
Although bussing has secretly been a long held aspiration of mine, I simply replied that I was told that I needed more training and that I was going to possibly be a waiter in the future (which is what I had been told). Needless to say, I was not rolling in dough by night’s end. The amount of money that I was “raking in” took me back to my early highschool days. Even with the complimentary financial nostalgia that came included with the position, it still wasn’t worth staying.
And look, this is what it all comes down to… I’m not trying to put myself up on a pedestal here, but hey, I have a five year degree folks. I need to have some self respect. This was the big internal struggle… and it really was. Do I leave a job to have no job? Tough it out? If I leave am I giving up? Bob Dylan once said in one of his early songs, “a dollar a day is work”. Well… the jury’s still out on this one. I guess it’s easier to say when you have a guitar in your hands… not a nacho basket.
So I’m no longer working at the Mexican restaurant. All in all it was a good experience. I’m just glad that it was a temporary one…