The life of a seasonal slave ...
I don’t use that word lightly, as I am aware of the atrocities the African American population endured at the hands of Americans. However after 3 seasons in a seasonal town I haven’t another word to describe it.
The season begins with no one. You are working every hour of almost everyday. You go in to make sure all the prep is ready and you then work the line because no one has shown up to town yet. You are salaried and so even though you are making a good wage you’re working hours that amount to about $12 an hour after 20 years of experience. You don’t mind at the time because this is your passion and you love what you do. You soak in the joy of the praises you get.
You miss life. Your cousin who was destined to be a mother from the day she was born conceives a child after lengthy years of creating embryos and testing for a genetic marker that could potentially lead to that child dying from lungs that spontaneously collapse. You can’t attend her baby shower back because it’s Labor Day weekend. Your daughter who attends boarding school out of state has concerts and events you can’t attend because your married to your weekends. The same child comes home for the summer to sit idly by and only see her mother in passing while coming in the door exhausted and waking to jump out of bed and start the day all over. You will miss funerals and weddings and family engagements because you will forbidden from taking time off during the season.
You risk your being. You get bronchitis in the middle of July and take no time off work because you’re the only person able to work every station in your kitchen and have to jump in to bail out whoever is in the weeds and can’t see their way out and you never know whose going to show up or in what condition they will arrive. You have all the signs that you are falling very ill but your largest event ever booked is Friday and your Sous chef needs a mental health few days so you power through never letting on anything is happening until you set the final board in the window and your body says “Now, can you take care of me now?” and you crumble. Unable to move from bed the entire next day your partner comes home and says you need to go to the ER now since I can’t drive you any other time. You spend hours overnight in there to learn you have pneumonia. You have to rest you have no choice. You wake one day unable to move and literally have to crawl to the bathroom. Your back has ceased to function without pain and spasms. Your partner again says let me take you to the ER. After CT scans they say you have a bulging disc in your L4/L5. It may be causing the pain or it may be a symptom of what is causing the pain, we can’t be certain but here’s some narcotics and you can’t work for 3 days at least. You don’t listen, it’s fall. To stay within your budget and make the goals required to get your final bonus of the year you need to be at work and not giving someone else the hours. So you physically put yourself in danger of damage that could end your career.
You watch as foreign students come through your door and are told they can never be a server because that’s not the atmosphere the owners want, they are fine however to carry all of the load of running food and bussing tables and being paid far less than their worth. Or they will work in the kitchen endlessly and tirelessly for $4 an hour less than people who don’t care and have no investment and will make choices that could actually put customers health at risk. They will arrive every day without worry because when they go back home they will have a little extra or they will take some trips they won’t be able to later in life when they have to work for pennies.
The customers will love your food but they won’t know you. You will grow tired and know you don’t want to do this again next year. This will begin in July when your line cook mysteriously goes missing for a few days during the busiest week of the season. He claims he was arrested and couldn’t contact you but doesn’t have anyone do so on his behalf. He will surface a few days later telling this tale and say I can’t work today but I can be back tomorrow. The owners will tell you we have to let him because we need him. He will then proceed to have an emergency every Wednesday for almost the entire summer. He sets up a string of others doing the same because he has no penalty for doing so. You have to watch grown men act like children and not really know where it all begins but the owners tell you “when it starts just try to diffuse it but we can’t risk any of them leaving so don’t side.” You have to watch someone possibly being hate-mongered and not do anything because the owners have decided to replace him and have told ever other employee there to help find his replacement. They say he is the problem because all the others blame him. You will be told to cut his hours, you will do it. Then when others start falling apart you will be told to use his housing to make him come to work even though you despise others around town for doing the same. You never know the truth because your told you have to just lie to his face and say his job is safe while being made to locate his replacement which also puts him out on the street. You will make a statement telling him to just calm down and do his job so this doesn’t happen. He will take that a threat but you can’t tell him it was actually a warning and a plea to just chill and get through it because you can’t risk losing your job. Another line cook will blame him saying without him it would be peaceful. So you’re told you have to move the other to a different room so keep them from fighting. You will do as you are told because you have adult responsibilities. This answer will not be acceptable to that individual so he will disappear for a week. When he is gone the aforementioned employee will question why he needs to stay in the back room and you’re not allowed to tell him that the other is returning on the condition we make the necessary steps to terminate him. You give the only answer you can muster because you can’t state an actual lie even though you’ve been forced into lies of omission for a month. He will call you a bitch and you will become the scapegoat for the owners who will always save face and look like the good guys. You will have the same first line cook call you on a Friday to tell you the one that came back after the others termination has been detained by the police on a Friday afternoon and won’t be in. That line cook will be released and not come in to work which will leave the other pissed because his hands are needed and since your now working a station aren’t able to do the function of backing him up when he is getting slammed. He will be nasty to everyone in earshot, scream at the expo for doing his job (mind you this will be one of your J1s who was thrown in and taken off the floor and out of the tip pool without his consent ... his presence is comforting to you because he is your solid and you actually finish each other’s thoughts so you fight to make sure he doesn’t lose money because of all of this). He will be pissed that there are no orders on another station but that person is untrained to help and she simply says “it’s happened a lot to me also.” He will decide to no call, no show the next day (a Saturday in August) because he’s pissed at them and doesn’t want to work with them that night. He shows up 2 days later like no big deal. You’re only allowed to give him a suspension for this because the owners can’t have anyone mad at them. He will return from his suspension and two shift in have another emergency and call out. It will now be shoulder season so you’re allowed to terminate him yet the owner let it be accepted as your decision but your told everyone was given zero tolerance so now we have to. The individual who feels they are being hate-mongered will never learn the truth and will forever hold you responsible. He will go around town spewing hate at you. He will have actually been the lucky one in that he didn’t have to deal with it.
You will hear of other chefs in town who get to shoulder season and just walk away, no notice no anything. Yet you will continue to hide the decision you have made months ago to call this your last season here because you signed a contract and it’s the right thing to do. You will keep that knowledge to yourself and stay to the end and carry them through because that is your job and you are devote always to a fault.
It will be two months left to the season and they will “reward” you by telling you an opportunity has come up for them to collaborate with another restaurant in town but that means bringing in her staff and you won’t be needed. You will sit there in this meeting and never let out a word of anger or aggression even though they are ripping from you $10,000 in salary and your final $3000 bonus. You will say thank you for their generous stipend of paying you for two weeks. This will amount to you losing $11,000.
You will walk away dignified and make the best of the moment you can all the while thinking someone should have taught them the lesson you learned years ago that you are only as strong as your employees and they are your greatest assets.
When you leave you are suddenly freed of the physical pain you’ve been carrying, the weight of stress it seems. You will be free of listening to the General Manager tell everyone “secrets” and how so and so didn’t move home to their parents they went to rehab (not their story to tell) yet he will still have his job and his pay. So you will just look at the silver lining and see that you can now stop living everyone else’s lies and be the person you believe is right and just within you. You will hopefully find away to minimize that loss of income as best you can (TBD but I think I have found it).
... and the shackles will be removed and you will become your own person again and not the property of people who only profited off of you but didn’t value you in the end.
