A restaurant is just a sum of it's parts. Sadly, mine was controlled by a head that didn't have a heart. It's no surprise that anyone can be replaced at any time. However, when you aren't allowed to replace people that no call, no show several times in a few months and try to call out every wednesday, someone who tosses out the N word or faggot (or numerous others) at will, your pizza person comes in under the influence of something so extremely that she puts the entire establishment in danger, you get to the day when they let you go and you leave with relief. You take the $13,000 end of season loss and realize that being on the outside allows you to sleep better at night.
Until.
Yes, until that moment the people who were the sum of your parts reach out. The ones that mattered. The ones that were there, every day without fail. The one who's hand you held dealing with a cut that removed the tip of their finger, the one who even when the season was slowing and you were told you had to remove people from the schedule was willing to let you ask them to give you one more favor and did. People aren't disposable. You don't get to text someone who has been with you for 3 years on a saturday night and tell them not to come to work that you're doing something different, or just take someone off the schedule and they only learn it when they come to see if they still have a job.
You sir, are what is wrong with this industry. You sir, don't deserve to go back to your castle and live well of the backs of people you never cared about. You sir, are what makes me sick. You sir, are why this industry lacks new talent and a strong core. You sir, you and those like you.
It's difficult for me being a person with a heart to be in an industry where the powers of the past were strong and tough, too tough, sometimes actually brutal. And yet, I'm known as a bitch because I expect you to do the job the way you were trained to do, properly. I expect you to show up to work when scheduled. I expect you to be respectful. I expect you to not serve food that rotting. I don't throw things, I don't yell, but when I get to the moment of knowing that no matter what avenues are taken you will never care, I too, will not care and my displeasure will not be hidden.
When you are my spine, when you are my ribs, when you are my arms I will treasure your every breath. If you become the spur that makes walking painful, then you will know that I don't need you, even though you may not be "removable".
An industry is just a sum of its parts. Cooking is my passion, this industry not so much. I will continue to do what I do, I will continue to treasure the artistry, I will fight with every ounce in me for those without a voice. Yet in the end I will just be a lost part in a greater sum that rewards the bad and condemns those are the glue that holds it all together.
