"Tonight we dine in hell!"

My job is a humiliating torment which causes me to wake every morning with a cold knot of dread curdling in my stomach. When I get home at night it’s straight to the kitchen, double vodka with something in a coffee mug then to the computer to watch something hideously inane all in an effort to turn my brain to non-functioning mush and hopefully…forget.

What, you must be asking yourself, exactly makes my job so terrible? Of course it starts at the top.

Chef _____ is a relatively famous chef, you mention his name in Toronto and EVERYONE knows who you’re talking about and (however undeserved this might be) they look at you with a new respect. “Oh, you work for him.”

That being said you must be imagining that there is a crackerjack team of managers who sail around the dining room with the calm and dignity of aristocrats, fluffing a napkin there, pouring out some Moet over here and schmoozing the guests with the ease which comes from years of experience. This could not be further from the truth.

My general manager is only 23, she’s never worked in restaurants before in her life and it takes ten seconds for anyone to see that see is absolutely scared shitless and for good reason. She deals with her fear in one way, not exactly the healthiest in my opinion; she is a raging inferno of bitchiness. This is my favorite quote;

“Rebecca, your steps are TOO SMALL! You….” Pause while she seethes with frustration at my step to ground coverage ratio. “You need to take bigger steps.”



And due to the trickle down effect everyone who works in the restaurant uses every opportunity to vent their frustration at being bitched at by bitching at those beneath them.

There is one occasion which typifies a normal series of interactions with my co-workers. It’s a busy night and a table of eight have just left the restaurant, the table needs to be turned into a six top for the evening’s second seating. The two extra chairs need to be taken downstairs and put away. I have already been instructed to take the chair from the end of the row closest to the staircase (“You’re more efficient that way.”). I do so and return for the second chair and immediately I am attacked by the hostess.

“Have you been told how to move chairs?” She barks at me.

“…Yes.”

“Okay look, before you bring the chair down you have to tidy the row. You can’t leave the table looking like a mess. It looks bad for the restaurant.”

“But I was going to come right ba-“

“It DOESN’T MATTER you MUST tidy the row before you go anywhere.”

So I tidy the miscreant row of chairs and proceed to the other side of the table. I move the extra chair slightly to the side and square the remaining chairs with their counterparts. A server who is much too young for the mantle of entitlement she wears sees me do this and stops mid-stride.

“What are you DOING!?”

“I’m moving this chair downstairs but I’m tidying the row first.”

She points to the extra chair which I’m about to whisk away. “You CAN’T leave this chair here. It’s in the lane of traffic where guests need to walk. Is that a PROBLEM!?”

“But how else am I supposed to-“



But with a jerk of her upturned nose she’s gone, not ready to dignify my humanity by listening to my response. And ALL this is over a measly couple of chairs.

The former general manager (who does actually know what he's doing) hangs around a couple of days a week and acts as mortar to this condemned shack of a restaurant. The other day he dropped this gem of encouragement in my lap: "I don't even bother to talk to new staff. Not until you've been here for at least a month or so. Because if you can't even get through the other servers...well...." Such wisdom gives me that warm and fuzzy feeling.

When I reflect back on my two weeks at the restaurant it’s hard to pick out specific events because everything is pain. I feel like Conan (in the first movie) pushing that giant wheel, over and over, round and round, going nowhere, suffering constantly. Of course there was the screaming match that ended Friday night’s service. The many instances where I’ve been asked; “What the fuck are you doing?!” The war stories of people brought to tears by tirades of abuse from management. And of course there’s the fact that because of how the pay periods fell I haven’t seen a red cent for all my labour. But there is no lynch pin to my world of pain.

It just is….