The Restaurant That Finally Broke Me

I always wanted to be a server/waitress because I thought it was a rite of passage in the professional world, plus, I loveeeee talking to people. My first job was at Tio Juan Margarita's in Collegeville, where I truly had the best time. We were so understaffed that we usually did a rotation for servers, so the first time I got a section, I had no idea that I had to check which tables were mine. I was so used to someone telling me I got sat lol.

I loved my managers, my coworkers, and the food. I rarely had difficult customers there. I always worked doubles on Saturdays or Sundays and came home with around 200-300 each time in cash. This was the most perfect first serving job I could have ever been gifted with.

My second serving job was at a lovely French place called Bistrot La Minette. This was one of my favorite restaurants to go to for Restaurant Week in Philly. The prices are a bit higher than my family likes to spend, but the Restaurant Week deal is a no-brainer. With my love of all things French, I couldn't resist this authentic restaurant with beautiful decor and phenomenal food. I always got the lapin à la moutarde, which is rabbit with mustard sauce, that comes with a lovely fettuccine too. The crème brûlée is also to die for there. This was my first step working in a fine dining restaurant. I thought I totally botched the interview because I knew nothing about wine, just beer and tequila, but I was still hired anyway. had to learn a lot and I had to learn it fast. This was also the position I worked the hardest at because we did EVERYTHING. NO bussers, NO food runners, NO polishers—just us. Plus, we got there at 3 to eat staff meal, or 3:30 if not, and open by 4 pm. Once we finished at around 10 or 11, we swept, wiped down, and vacuumed the entire restaurant. We also straightened all of the tables and chairs.

I loved my uniform too. It was the classic white button-down with a vest paired with black pants and a long white apron. I also enjoyed wearing ties to go with it. We did our own laundry in the basement as well, so we could keep our aprons and white shirts there instead of bringing our uniforms back and forth. We also did laundry because we had white hand towels for guests to use in the bathroom instead of paper towels. I'm such a sucker for earth-friendly bathrooms.

At the same time, I started a job at an extremely well-known French restaurant as a host. This job had so many ups and downs. The host team was very friendly, but also a bit dramatic. I learned that everyone in restaurants hates the hosts from this job. I loved working here though because I could work some mornings from 10-3/4 and have the rest of my evening ahead of me, unlike most restaurant jobs. I loved being the one to get the fresh bread from our bakers and chat with them. The staff numbers here were absolutely out of this world!! At Bistrot La Minette, we had maybe 7 servers in total. At Margarita's, we had a pretty solid 10 people when I started and around 15-20 once I left. Here, there were probably 15 hosts altogether, 8 bussers (which are called "porters" there), 5 food runners, 5 to-go people, 4 baristas, 5 bartenders, and who even knows how many servers. We had around 7 managers as well who were almost always on the floor, plus an upstairs manager who handled all of the paperwork and phone calls. However, because of the size, there were a lot of things that I would say do not live up to the expectation of such a huge celebrity dining location. For starters, the tables would be cleaned with extremely wet sanitization wipes, and then silverware would be put down promptly after, causing it to stick to the table ever so slightly. Also, the bathrooms were HORRENDOUS. Every host knows how awful bathroom duty was here, but the bodily fluids left in these stalls were truly atrocious. There were also some servers there that were just borderline gross men. One of them had hit on pretty much every single woman who worked there.

Regardless of the crazy environment of such a big restaurant, I still thoroughly enjoyed my time there because of the handful of people I worked with. Many of the porters were African French-speaking men, so we could chat together all the time. I wish I remembered all of their names because they were always so kind to me. Since the restaurant was famously known as the big French restaurant in Philly, we got a lot of French people that I could speak to. One time, I helped someone find the bus to the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Another time, I spoke to a very lovely older man who was visiting his daughter during Christmas time and bought baguettes every morning; Another time, the previous French ambassador, Phillippe Étienne, came there with a woman who left her bag, and I was able to speak to her on the phone and locate it for her. I also learned that French people give their phone numbers in double digits, which threw me a bit for a loop at first.

At the end of my time there, lots of hosts were getting fed up with the way they were treated by management, and rightfully so. I'm glad I left when I did. I actually worked there for about a month after I returned from Japan so I could help out Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day until I moved to Chicago, and that in itself was pretty eventful. I was happy to see a lot of old faces, but others weren't as welcoming. This position solidified my decision to never be a host again. I started searching for server positions in Chicago and found many server assistant positions too. Thankfully, I didn't hear back from any of those because that's Chicago's term for "busser." I only heard back from one restaurant, but I wasn't in Chicago yet for the interview. However, when I arrived and emailed them again, I didn't get a response until I already had a job at the same restaurant group (lol).

Once I got to Chicago, I decided to let myself relax and get accommodated before working. Two weeks in, I started applying to tons of restaurants, but got radio silence back. It wasn't until a month later when I saw a TikTok saying that you shouldn't have contact information in the header because AI automatically filters it out. I reapplied to many more restaurants with my update résumé, and to my surprise, I did get more responses. I'm so glad I made the effort to reapply to places, because that's how I ended up at the restaurant I was with from February all the way until August when I started to get ready for my Fulbright program.

I helped open this restaurant and I will always have a soft spot for it, but the Executive Chef has left a sour taste in my mouth that I will never forget. I was so excited to meet him and was in such awe to be in his presence during training. I was kind and tried to show that I knew Japanese culture since I had just gotten back from my final undergraduate semester in Tokyo. Yet, no such impression was made on him. I still feel that I was given more of a hard time because we are both Asian, and I didn't dare stand up for myself because I didn't want to seem like I was disrespecting my elders. But there was a small bit of rage that grew every time he said something to me that was uncalled for because it started to feel more and more personal. I never observed the way he treated every other server, but I knew in my heart that I was getting worse treatment than everyone else—not just from him, but from everyone. I was the youngest and I was picked on all the time whether it was conscious or not. Even my coworkers would say that they could see people treated me differently. This included coworkers and managers alike. However, I will always stand by the fact that I was one of the friendliest and most caring coworkers. At least I can walk away from this position knowing that I made genuine friendships with people in every area of the restaurant from dishwashers to line cooks to bartenders.

I won't list off every single thing that happened to me, because most were off-hand slights or even nonverbal. Still, I want to give some insight as to the kinds of exchanges I had.

"Pre-shift" or "lineup" is a term that refers to the meeting we have before a service (shift). In our first month of being open, we were told during pre-shift that we got a new grilled special. This special was not added to the menu, so we had to verbally tell guests about it. We didn't have a button for it in our system, so I asked the chef how he would like us to ring it into the system for the kitchen. He said "collar special," and I made a note of that. ***It is important to note that we had a kama collar sushi special as well, which we were told to put as "kama collar" under the "Open food" category. "Open" refers to a write-in element that we also have to indicate the price for. The kama collar sushi special is either one piece of nigiri for $16 or two pieces of sashimi for $30. The new grilled special was $15, so you could distinguish it by price on the ticket.

Now, I love a good competition, and we only had 2 of these, so it was a fun game to see who could sell these the fastest. I rang one in as "collar special" for $15, no problem. The special comes out and it looks amazing. The next one I ring it, the chef sees it and scolds me: "Why does it say collar special? We have two collar specials and I said grill collar in pre-shift." I wanted to show him my notebook so badly at that moment, but I kept my mouth shut and said "yes, chef."

Fast forward to April and I'm serving upstairs. This section is especially hard because you have to run up and down to get drinks. Plus, if you need to talk to the kitchen, 5 things have happened by the time you get there and back. Well, this shift in particular, I got nothing short of this experience.

I usually don't being upstairs because you get a big section and it's easy to talk to your tables. However, it's a big toss-up because you don't get seated until the downstairs dining room is full, so you have to wait at least an hour to an hour and a half to get your first table.

Things were going pretty smoothly until I had a 4-person table with a soy allergy and a shrimp allergy. Everyone at the table was trying to share to some extent, so I was trying to be extra careful. When things are going at a quick pace, but you have to slow down for one table, it feels like the most painfully long slow-motion. You can only imagine the extra measures I was taking to ensure that everyone at the table was kept safe. Gluten and shellfish allergies have been pretty common, but a soy allergy was a first. It was also especially difficult because the soy allergy and the shrimp allergy belonged to two different people.

I had a miscommunication because I wanted to be thorough, but got reprimanded for not being concise instead. I had another allergy to be cognizant of: lobster and shrimp. Other shellfish were fine; The guest made that very clear. They wanted sushi rice, so I asked the chef how much I should charge and what I should enter it as when I send a ticket to the kitchen. When we don't have a button in the system, we choose "Open Food/Drink Item" and write it it. When you ring in an open item, there are no allergy buttons. Knowing this, I wrote Temaki rice/Lobster and shrimp allergy. There was no room to put sushi rice, so I was going to tell the chef that was what I meant. Unfortunately, he got to me first. "I thought you wanted sushi rice?" I explained the situation and was told that the allergies aren't important because it's just rice. I said okay I'll change it for next time and went back to my section. “The kitchen is frustrated with you,” my manager told me. This sat with me for longer than I would like to admit.

My final straw was when another table--with allergies they did not disclose until food was ordered--wanted to get food to-go before their meal was over. They wanted to get hand rolls to go, so I rang them in. The food runner was trying to tell me that I had to ring them in a different way, but all the chef could hear was that I had done it at all.

"Who told you we did temaki to go?"

I didn't know how to respond. I chose obedience: "I suppose no one."

"So why would you think that we did?"

There was no way I could answer this question without it looking poorly on me. I stayed silent.

"Go find a manager," he commanded.

I found my Assistant General Manager and she met me with frustration: "You’ve known this since training." We were never trained on to-go orders during training because it's sushi. Servers are always told that the food runners will handle to-go orders, so I never truly knew the do's and don'ts of our to-go items.

Regardless of whether it was right or wrong, there was still a "right" way to ring in temaki to go. There was a button in our system for this exact situation and I was being reprimanded for taking the order at all.

When I spoke with my manager, he reminded me that were told that we should let guests know to eat the temaki within a minute to preserve the "integrity of the nori." This rule went out the window when they decided to make it to go. All I could think was: "Why am I sitting in the hot seat when there was literally a button for the order?" All my coworker was trying to say is that I didn't charge the guest correctly because they give a larger portion for to-go orders. Yet, here I am getting a slap on the wrist when others have placed these exact orders without any consequences. I was tired of trying to defend myself to people who only cared about saving their job.

From then on, I stopped working on Wednesdays to avoid any communication with the chef. I knew there was nothing I could do to prevent him from finding an issue with me and I would not knowingly allow that to continue.