Sparkwood & 21

That Was Then, and This Is Now

I got on my knees and used my hands to wrestle a giant hairy snake of digusting mass out of a bar drain, and I did it for no pay. Zero dollars an hour. That was when I was breaking my back working at Outback Steakhouse in Murfreesboro, TN.

Outback was the busiest restaurant in town with the highest ticket average per person. You couldn't make better money at any other place within 35 miles, and that included Chili's, Red Lobster and the white table cloth place out by the interstate.

I'd been promoted to bartender after years and years of waiting tables there. Getting bumped up to bartender was a big deal, and so were the tips. I soon learned that part of that promotion included getting up early on a Saturday morning with the other six to seven bartenders and detailing the bar--every nook, every crevice, every cranny--for about four solid hours.

We were paid nothing. We did not clock in. We were told specifically that this was part of being a bartender, and you could do it without complaint or not work behind the bar.

It was grueling work. I balanced on a teetering bar stool hoisting 20 gallons of hot water in a giant bucket overheard to clean the frozen drink machines. Had I slipped and cracked my face on the metal of the machine or worse, I would not have been on record as having worked and would not have been able to receive workers' compensation for medical bills incurred from my fall.

The place I work now is a corporate restaurant. The people who own it own others in the Bay Area, like One Market, Lark Creek Steakhouse and Fish Story in Napa. But it is not like Outback Steakhouse or The Cooker or large scale chains that I worked in before. Not even a little.

I am treated so much better where I work now. When I think back on how much physical labor some restaurant jobs in Tennessee demanded of employees making $2.13 an hour, I am baffled that it's legal.

Servers in San Francisco make minimum wage plus tips, not $2 an hour plus tips, as I was once paid. (Many, many servers in many, many states still make just above $2 an hour plus tips.) From my experience, when a corporation can get virtually free labor out of individuals at $2 an hour, it makes those in charge devalue not only the work being done, but the worker.

We were treated like shit. On multiple occassions a manager called us all into the kitchen to scream and curse at us until he was red in the face and beads of spit at ours. All because the people who worked there were so overtaxed that busy weekend shifts would often run on the verge of complete meltdown, every synapse on the verge of snapping. 

I am extremely lucky to work in a restaurant that values its people. I am respected where I work. The place is filled with bright, funny people who are a pleasure to be around because they are heard and forgiven and treated with care.

This return to waiting tables is better so far. In part because I am older, wiser, whathaveyou, but also thanks to those above me and my teammates. Seriously awesome people; I want to squeeze them each and every one.

Human Behavior

I love my job when an eight-year-old German girl is delighted to pieces to try her English on me: "Check, please!," she chirped. 

And it was perfect.

New Realities

• Pay rent in cash.
• Pay for items with the largest bill in my wallet so I will have a bank for the next shift. 
• Hoarding pens.
• Being the lady at the party with a wine key in her purse.
• Two pairs of socks to prevent blisters.
• Rarely having to decide what to wear.
• Ponytails.
• Untangling apron strings after the dryer.
• Days are nights, and nights are days.

P.S.

No more having to work on/with Facebook is worth any amount of starving that I may endure.

Here Goes Nothing/Everything

Writing about writing is like movies about dancing about architecture. The second I begin I immediately cringe at the words I've chosen to group with those other words because it is writing about writing, so by God, it had better be good writing.

This writing is about writing. It's writing about writing on a post at a blog on the internet, a place where people have their choice to read just about anything they want. This writing is about writing because that's what I've decided to do. 

I went to school to be a writer. My degree is in magazine journalism, and I decided that course because I wanted to write essays. I also wanted to write short stories and memoirs and film criticism and articles and screenplays and yes, of course, of course, a novel.

I landed a job blogging for the ABC affiliate in Nashville, and that was a glorious get. I'd been blogging for well over five years and was very passionate about self-publishing on the web and it was, frankly, a dream job. But that was seven years ago.

Somewhere along the way, slowly and with my hardly noticing, my career involved less and less writing and more and more marketing. Less creativity, more metrics. I went from blogger to social media editor. That role, while great for many, is not what I signed up for.

I credit my friend Carlo with tipping me toward a revelation. We sat at Southern Pacific Brewery, catching up and visiting for the first time since I moved back to San Francisco from New York. I was telling him that my freelance gig as the social media editor at NBC Bay Area is coming to a close (the five hour round-trip commute is not sustainable, and so my stint is a short three-month one) and that I was on the hunt for something else. I mentioned a social media strategist position for a big bank branch and doing community management for a retailer or how I was even considering social media for a local university when he interrupted me and asked, "What do you want to do?"

Six short words. He put them together to form a question that felt like a slamming of brakes. As soon as the question left his mouth I realized with great force that I hadn't stopped once to ask myself that very thing.

I was going to continue doing what came before. It's what I did, so I was going to do more. But suddenly a simple inquiry stopped everything spinning and sat fat in my lap, glaring up into my face.

I thought about it. For many days I turned that question over in my mouth, in my palms, in my mind, in my gut. Each rotation yielded that same result: I want to write.

It is important to note that I didn't say I want to be a writer. Luckily, I know the vast difference in wanting to write and wanting to be a writer. I'll take both, no doubt, but I want to write regardless of whether I sell a single book. I want to write even though no one may ever call me an author. I want to write and have wanted that since I was old enough to read.

I wrote my first play in third grade. In an after-school daycare program, I sat with pencils and wide-ruled notebook paper and re-wrote Cinderella. A brilliant parody, I'm sure. I cast myself as Cinderella, obviously, because even at eight years old I knew a prime role when I saw one, and cast anyone out of diapers who was willing to play the remaining characters. To their credit, the daycare workers gathered all the children into the main room to watch as my re-telling of Cinderella became a real happening thing, albeit with some major hiccups. I got my first taste of creating whole universes that can come to life more than a quarter of a century ago. And I'm not done yet.

I am 34 years old, and my only responsibilities are a few bills and two cats. I'm not married. I have no children. As a result, I have the luxury of taking career risks that others might not. Plus, some of us have to go for broke--why not me?

So, I've decided to go back to basics. I'm returning from whence I came. I've taken a job waiting tables, and when I'm not doing that I'm going to write. I'm going to pitch article ideas to magazines. I'm going to fill my paper journals full. I'm going to flesh out the outline on that book. I'm going to slowly, with a lot of patience and plenty of hard work, try to establish myself as a writer.

I'm not going to get rich doing this. I'm not going to get famous, either. I'm just doing the thing that I want, the thing that, if asked, tugs at me with the most force.

It's crazy. It's walking away from a career path with benefits and vacations days and good pay. It's chancing being forever in debt. It sounds wild and romantic and unrealistic, but it sounds like the only thing I want to do. 

I'm out of practice in writing. I know my writing has a million miles to go and will never get to any sort of grand ending. But unless I do it, it won't improve. So, I'm going to do it. Full on. All the way. Double or nothing. No guts, no glory. Or similar.

I have no expectations. I do, however, have a loose, long-term plan. Mostly I just want to do what the heart wants and see how that ends up. I'm alive, with flesh and teeth and skin and hair and a passion, and I feel strongly that this singular life is for riding. It's ours to grab on to and hold on to and take for many spins. It's ours not to control, but to attempt to harness in a fashion that makes the trip we never signed up for as exhilarating as possible. It is what we make it, and so I'm going to wring it dry and stretch it over my bones and see how it can fit in new ways.

This is me writing about writing. This is an announcement of a game change. This is the a spark of a start.

Live from the Newsroom (on a Sunday)

City where I live! Put the ball in that big H!

Internet Commenters

Today, for work, I wrote this on the TV station's Facebook wall:

Hikers Spot Mountain Lion near UC Santa Cruz -  If you are confronted by a mountain lion, do not try to run away, face the animal, appear as big as possible, make loud noises, and report the incident to the Santa Cruz Police Dept or Fish and Game.

Someone responded with this in the comments:

 I'm gonna shoot it with my weenie juice

Google+, I am About to be Up in You

Due to work and the postings of people I really enjoy, I'm diving into Google+.

Yeah, I know what I said before. This crow is delicious.

Ha

Getting Trashy (No More Dump and Run)

Here's a little something different about waiting tables in California versus Tennessee (the only place I was ever a server), besides the health care and minimum wage: by law restaurants have to not only recycle, but compost.

That means three different bins in the dish area: a black one, a blue one and a green one. Food scraps, paper products like beverage napkins, coffee grounds and other "organic" items go in the green bins, plastics and glass from wine bottles go in the blue, while very little, actually, goes in the black.

I'm in full support of this mandate. I used to stand at the enormous trash barrels at Outback Steakhouse and frown at all the wasted food and landfill fodder. It really made me sad. This arrangement feels a little less gratuitously wasteful.*

So, it's awesome that there are three bins.

But hoo boy, do three bins take a lot of extra precious time. 

You're in the weeds, and your table are so fucking mad at you, and you come into the kitchen with a complicated arm load of dirty table items, and you can either dump everything with a quickness into a single, massive tub then gingerly sling flatware into its proper stack and be on your way. 

Orrrr, you can get to the kitchen with the same complicated arm load of dirty table items and stand there trying to determine whether the paper liner will decompose or if that plastic will degrade, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to just dump and run.

But this is better, even though it is more difficult. And it's just different. Sooner than I know, it won't be.

*And for heaven's sake, the portion sizes at Outback Steakhouse contribute to a tremendous amount of food waste. Another plus for smaller portions than that of a trough. 

[photo credit]