FROM BUSBOY TO COO, Part 1

A CHRONOLOGOCAL STUDY FOR ASPIRING STUDENTS AND EMPLOYEES LOOKING TO CLIMB THE CAREER LADDER IN HOSPITLALITY

TAKING YOU BACK WITH A LITTLE HUMOR, A LOT OF CANDOR, AND LEAVING YOU WITH SOME IMPORTANT TAKEAWAYS.

Part One: Tough Beginnings

My mother has a grade school report card of mine from 1969 that seems to resurface every time the old photo box comes out. In the note section of the card a teacher described me as “the class clown, doesn’t apply himself, lazy”. Laughter erupts each time it gets read out loud, and I cringe as I go along with it. What we know today is that I was a “slow kid left behind”, the alter-ego of the No Kid Left Behind Act signed by George Bush in 2001. Today, ADD and Dyslexia are diagnosed and treated without much fanfare. In the sixties, these were overlooked or misunderstood, and many children got left in their wake. I was one of those children. My mother raised my sister and I alone. We seldom had two nickels to rub together, and she worked full-time to take care of us. There was no net for me, and no hovering set of parents to catch my fall. What about that teacher you might ask? She would pull my ear when I couldn’t spell a word or understand a math problem. She accused me of “knowing the answer, but just being stubborn”. It was hell for a 4th grader, struggling to learn, and being accused of doing it on purpose. I learned that asking for help got me punished, so I quit asking. Anyway, somehow, I made it to middle school and I never had an ear-puller again.

I started working when I was 15. It was summer, 1975. I had just been to the Dallas’ premier of “Jaws”, and the Bee Gee’s were ushering in the disco era with “Jive Talkin”. My mother had remarried a swashbuckling Cadillac salesman who was quite famous in the Dallas area. Thanks to the gasoline crisis, he was now an assistant manager of El Chico # 2, the oldest operating store in the chain. He decided that I should work with him that summer as opposed to finding trouble at home. I started as a busboy, that’s what we called them then. I think its “Busperson” now so as not to offend boys or women in today’s “offend me” culture. My routine was to keep the front of the house clean; vacuum, sweep, mop, turn tables, prepare water, and butter set-ups for the servers, and keep the front of the kitchen line stocked. I made $2.25 an hour. I wore polyester pants, and a red Paige’s smock that felt like canvas. I worked every weekend from Friday night to Sunday night, all holidays, and all summer. At 16, I was buying my own bell-bottomed pants, those silk shirts with epic collars, and high-heel patent leather shoes. I had money in my pocket, and I had something to be proud of. I also learned from my stepfather through some colorful anecdotal advice, many of the ins and outs of running a restaurant, and in the journey, it brought us closer together. He was a man I didn’t like very much at first, now I regret not being able to thank him for what he unwittingly did for my career path.

I should have been 18 to begin serving tables but my stepfather was a manager, so I graduated to server a little early. Suddenly the hourly wage became the side show, and the tips could be as much as $40 a day, a very long day that is, with about 50 table turns and generous tippers. Keep in mind, this is 1977 and per-person check averages where less than an iced tea today. The tips began flowing. One dollar was a good round tip. Less than a dollar in change was pretty common but it came in handy for the payphone, or stuff that still cost less than a dollar like a McDonalds Jr. Cheeseburger, 50 cents, or a Dairy Queen small cone, 25 cents. Take anyone back? Two or three dollars was rare but not unheard of. Four or five dollars was something to show a friend. Any more than that, and I had to question the motive! Yes, there were several of those! Serving was brutal at first, especially in a store with a bar. People can be rude on iced tea, and that only amplified when they hit the spirits. I grew to love it though, and I became a certified trainer at 18. I wore the pin they gave me proudly, and I still have it in that shoe box, you know, the one we all keep old stuff in. I dug through it yesterday, and I still have some 40-year-old coin wrappers we used to roll tip change to take to the bank. Don’t laugh kids, I routinely rolled between $300 and $400 dollars in coins I forgot I had, every couple of months!

The Takeaways

·      The critical role of a teacher and a parent is to make sure no child gets left behind in school. There are solutions to every learning challenge, but it starts with recognition, and the patience to follow through.

·      Provide open and easy avenues for your young children to talk to you. If a teacher is abusing them go directly to the school and cause their heart rate to increase. I had to do this twice with my kids.

·      Don’t allow misfortune and diversity to define you. You can do anything you set your mind on.

·      Working a job while in high school won’t kill your child – or you! There are so many valuable lessons to be learned. Social interaction, workplace discipline, and time and money management to name a few.

·      Covid aside, waiting tables remains today the quickest, and relatively easiest way to make cash money daily. I left “the floor” in 1980, and I was making $450 a week working six days. That’s about $1,421 today. Many corporate chains provide great training, and there is plenty of growth as I will explain next time.

·      Whatever you start out doing, whether it is the beginning of a serious career path, or gas money for the $40K Jeep your Dad bought you, do it well, better than anyone else. You never know who’s watching, or where life will take you. Caution: each job you have will be a part of your resume moving forward, unless of course you pretend you never had it. I’ll talk more about that later.

·      Small moves lead to big moves, in that order. 

Next Time: The First Big Move