36 The Life of a Restaurant Worker – Mackensie Delk

The Bison and The Boar was a chaotic workplace. As mentioned by a fellow coworker Elley Gose (November 12th, 2021), “It wasn’t really structured. Pretty lenient in terms of schedules, rules, everything really. Which probably wasn’t really a good thing but it was mainly teenagers running it” (personal communication). It wasn’t structured, at all. As you could see from my multiple job positions while working there, it was not in any way a functional running restaurant. Yet, regardless of the unstructured mess, we made it last for at least two years. We can blame the pandemic for the closing of this restaurant, but in reality, like Elley mentioned, it was mainly run by teenagers. With over half of the workers being in high school still, this was sort of odd for what was supposed to be an upscale restaurant. We were hard working teenagers though. I took on so many positions and in no way shape or form got paid what I deserved. Paying me $9.25 an hour was unacceptable now that I look back on it. They saved money because of me, since I was their repairman. When working there I loved the job. I loved the people I worked with, because they were a family to me. Since the closing of the restaurant in April of 2021, I have sadly drifted away from my coworkers, some of which I will most likely never talk to again. But this job really shaped me into the person I am today.

Communication Situations-

The B&B (that’s what we liked to call it) had many different conversation situations occurring throughout the workday. Communicating is a big deal when working in any job, playing any sport, or just in any discourse community. Since I worked in every position there was, besides bartender, I am able to tell you just exactly how each conversation situation normally happened. I am only going to give examples of the two I am most common with, being the communication situation of a hostess and that of a server. I will be starting with the hostesses’ communication process and situation since they are who deal with the customers from the beginning.

Hostess: Hello, welcome to The Bison and The Boar. How many are there tonight?

Customer: “There are just two of us”.

Hostess: “Alright would you like a table or a booth?”

Customer: “Uh a booth is fine”

Hostess: “Alright right this way”

Customer: “Thank you”

H: “Is right here okay?”

C: “Yes, perfect!”

H: “Alright! Your server will be right with you”

C: “Okay awesome!”

Then the hostess will go and tell the server that’s up next in rotation that you just seated a table at “A3” or wherever you sat them on the seating chart. Also, for this scenario I used 2 customers. When it is 4+ I normally try to seat them at a table. If it is just one person, I would offer a booth, or even ask if they want to go back into the bar. Also, a lot of times hostesses would get their drink order, but if it gets busy we would just leave that to the servers, and some servers preferred if we just let them do it. Now we will move onto the server’s discussion with the customers.

Server: Hello, My name is Mackensie and I’ll be your server tonight. How are you all doing?

Customers: We are doing great! How are you?

S: I am doing pretty good as well, thank you for asking. What can I start you two off with to drink?

(Normally they will order a water for now, look over the alcohol menu, then order that later)

C: Um a water for now is fine

S: Alright awesome I will be right back with those and some bread for you.

Server will come back and ask what they would like to eat. Customers will order. If it isn’t super busy I will talk to them more personally, I always liked to connect with my customers. I’ll get drink and bread refills as they need them and ask them if they need anything while they wait on their food

20+ minutes later, the food will come out (If it is a busy night) and I will ask them if everything looks okay. If they reply with no I ask them what they would like me to do (have the chef remake it if undercooked or not done right, get a missing side, etc. depending on the situation). If we mess up pretty bad (which does happen in restaurants sometimes) I will offer a 10% discount on their food. My job is to make the customer happy.

Customers will eat the food and I’ll come check on them every so often, like every 10 minutes or so. I get refills and ask how they are doing and if they need anything. Once they are done I offer dessert. If they want it I put the order in. If they don’t I bring the check.

Once they are leaving I tell them, “Thank you for coming out tonight! I hope to see you back here soon!”

That is the conversations that occur on a regular basis of working at The B&B. After a while it becomes a routine, but it is also expected to expect the unexpected. Serving is not an easy job and can become very stressful at times, but it is also very rewarding and I have met a lot of great (and awful) people in this industry – including my coworkers. Above is what the communication with customers generally looked like. Those involved are typically servers, customers, hostesses, cooks, and sometimes the owners/manager if things go wrong. Those who don’t work in the food industry need to understand that we work and work constantly to make sure everything is perfect. We servers do what we can that’s in our control, but sometimes it’s the kitchen’s fault. Especially during times of this pandemic, it is hard. Customers don’t see us back in the kitchen wanting to rip our hair out because there is only one server, one cook, one hostess, and no bartender, no dishwasher, food runner, nothing. It is just us three running the show. When things go well, the situation will look like the one above did. If the customers didn’t have a good experience, there will be managers coming out to talk to them, bad reviews left, sometimes cussing or pens thrown at us. Something else that a lot of servers deal with is being “stiffed”, which means not being tipped. Working in a high class restaurant and having a customer spend $100 on a meal and not tipping you because the kitchen messed something up hurts. When I communicated with my customers I normally would have a decent conversation with them depending on how busy it was at the time. Not many restaurants allow that to happen, and it was probably only acceptable where I worked because of the lack of structure like mentioned previously. While it was acceptable at my job to have long conversations with customers, another text states: “Interaction with texts and participants takes place in a rapid succession of small chunks. During the dinner hours, there are no long drawn out monologues. Time is of the essence during the busiest dinner hours for all participants involved: from the waiters and waitresses to the cooks, bartenders, and busboys” (Mirabelli, 2004, p.539). This contrasts with the way things were at The B&B. I was able to have long drawn out conversations with my customers as long as there was nothing else to be done. I think this can vary in different places, but most restaurants I’m sure don’t allow drawn out conversations to happen.

Genres-

On the other hand, there are ways to communicate with customers without actually saying anything. What I mean by that is through the different genres that occur in our restaurant. We have menus, comment cards, flyers for upcoming events or specials, gift cards, and receipts. Maybe the thought of “how do these communicate with customers?” runs through your head. Well, the menu communicates what there is to eat and drink at our restaurant. The comment cards are index sized cards that ask questions to allow the customer to communicate with us to let us know what we can do better. The flyers are sometimes a pamphlet with pictures and descriptions to communicate with the customers what upcoming specials are happening. The gift cards are the size of an index card as well and the person selling the gift card will write the amount of the card as “fifty” instead of “$50” so nobody tries to add a zero or anything. These are used to communicate with the recipient of the gift card how much they can spend at our restaurant. Finally, the receipts communicate with the customers how much they spent at our restaurant and these have our logo and restaurant name at the top, the food items purchased and the prices, the before-tax price, the amount that tax added on, the final price, and a place to add gratuity. They also include a “recommended gratuity” area to help customers figure out how much to tip. In more depth, I want to really examine one of these genres that is frequently seen throughout the restaurant – menus.

The following is what our menu looked like:

Every single detail added on this menu serves a specific purpose. The features and the functions of that specific feature are important to understand.

The first feature I would like to mention on our menus is the name of the restaurant and logo at the top of the menu. The function of this part of the menu is so the customers remember what restaurant they’re eating out at. It happens sometimes when you forget where you are eating and you want to tell a friend about where you went, well the name and logo helps let the customer know where they are.

The second feature to focus on is the “Specials” column. This feature made it easier for servers because it allowed customers to be able to see the main specials for every week without having to ask the server. Now of course there is the part that says “weekly specials” and that’s where customers would ask about our weekly specials, but it is nice to have the daily specials available to them. When they see that on Wednesdays it’s 50% off wine, they are more inclined to want to get wine, because there Is a deal. Also, if they see a special that happens on a day they aren’t there and they want to come in for it, that helps as well. Having the specials for the customers to look at multiple times while they have the menu boosts our sales and amount of people coming in.

The third feature to mention is the “please inform your server of any food allergies.” This feature is very important because it can function as a reminder to a customer as to what food allergies they might have. It is important to include this on the menu, along with the following statement on foodborne illness. It shows that we as a restaurant are looking out for our customers’ well-being.

The fourth feature worth mentioning is the showing of prices next to each food item. This functions as a way of showing the customers how much things cost, so they have an image of how much they will be spending that night. There are also pricier items on the menu that have the title of “MP” which stands for market price. Depending on where the meat was purchased and the quality and quantity, the price fluctuates. This is worth showing because it allows guests to ask the server how much that particular food item is.

Lastly, the fifth function is the mentioning of parties and catering. This served as a way of showing guests what we offer and who to contact if they are interested. I myself had two Christmas parties at my place of employment, and both times turned out great. A big reason our restaurant lasted as long as it did was because of the large parties and catering services we offered. Putting this on the menu allowed people to see it and plan on having big parties, which again increased our sales and the amount of people coming in.

In addition to what I mentioned about the menu at The B&B, Mirabelli (2004) also mentioned important things to know about menus in the food industry in his book. He mentioned that in his particular restaurant, there were 90 food items on the menu. He also mentioned that if wanting to substitute an item there would be a small upcharge, but that is not listed on the menu. Lastly it was mentioned how a server needs to have a good understanding of how items are prepared in the restaurant. The example he gave was about marinara. Ingredients in this sauce can change based upon the certain restaurant you’re at, so it is important to know what those ingredients are so you can relay that information to a customer if they were to ask. What Mirabelli had mentioned was very similar to the way things were in my community. Our menu did not have 90 food items, but we did have the option of substituting for an upcharge. At our particular restaurant, they required us to take menu tests in order to keep our jobs. It was required that every employee there knew what was on the menu and how each food item was prepared. This relates to what Mirabelli mentioned about how it is important to understand the way items are prepared in the restaurant. There were many times I had a customer ask me how something was prepared or what ingredients were in a certain dish. Mirabelli’s experience in the restaurant industry was similar to mine in certain aspects, but there were some differences as mentioned previously.

Terminology-

In his text, Swales (1990) explains how lexis is shared and specialized terminology within a community. Lexis is used all throughout the workday at The B&B. What terminology being used is based on what your position is in the restaurant. The terms used most are important to know what they mean if you want to know how this discourse community functions as a whole. Those that have “shouted” in parentheses next to them means we always shout them. You can’t whisper these terms in the kitchen/restaurant.

Back of house: This term is used to describe those who work in the back (Kitchen). These would be the chef, sous chefs, dishwashers, and food runners.

Front of house: This is the term used to describe those who work in the front (Dining area). These would be the hostesses, servers, bartenders, and busboys.

Corner (shouted): This term is used to let people know you’re coming around a corner. We just shout it and people will know that we are coming around. (Normally used in back of house)

Sharp (shouted): This term is used to let people know you have a sharp utensil in your hand while you are walking. It is to keep others safe as well as yourself. One thing I want to mention is that we only say this when we are walking with a sharp object (knife, scissors, slicer), not when we are using them (Also normally used in the back of house).

Hot (shouted): This term is used to let someone know you are walking with something hot in your hand. Also used to protect them as well as yourself from getting hurt. (Normally used in the back of house)

Heard (shouted): This term is used to let someone know you heard what they said. If the chef told me “One ribeye left” I would respond with “HEARD” (Normally used in the back of house) (If used in the front of house we don’t shout it. I will say this term is a term I started using in my day to day life on accident).

Behind: We state this to let other people know we are behind them. We say it so if they turn around they don’t run into us.

A lot of these terms can be used in a regular setting, but we use them on a daily basis and we shorten them into one word so they are clear to understand. There are other terms used throughout the restaurant that were not mentioned above. “2 tops, 4 tops, 86, cut, comp, flip, all day, last seating, offline” (E. Gose, personal communication, November 12th, 2021). While talking with a fellow coworker, these are other terms that she could think of that we used pretty often in the restaurant. Most of these terms would be hard for an outsider to understand, but once you get into a discourse community like mine they become terms used in everyday life.

There are many responsibilities that are endured when working in this specific community. Those in this community can have the job of being a hostess, where they seat people. You can be a chef and cook food, or be a server and provide most of the experience for the customer. You could be a dishwasher and wash the dishes, or a busboy and clear tables off and reset them. You could also be a bartender and make alcoholic beverages, or you could be our social media person and post our deals and pictures of the food to influence customers to come in. There are so many responsibilities in working in this community, but all in all, the discourse community of a restaurant can be a lot of fun. We want our customers to leave happy, but in order to do that we need to have the customers coming into a welcoming environment. We love to joke around and have fun and it really became a family here at The B&B. In his text, Kettle (2019) states that: “Those of us on the night shift are a lot less formal with one another and, for some reason, a lot more vulgar. Maybe it’s the time of night or just the company, but all of us use profanity routinely while there are no customers around” (p.6). Where I worked, being professional should have been the case, but most of the time it was not. We would play music in the kitchen, joke around, cuss, and just have fun. I really enjoyed working here, but looking back at it now it was not a well rounded restaurant at all.

Conclusion-

This discourse community was chaotic, but to make it what it was we did have things set in stone to make it more structured. Before this section of this course, I didn’t even realize what it was we did as a community to make the restaurant be the way it was. This really had me reflect on my experience there, and how there are different genres used in our community. There are also different terminologies used that wouldn’t be used in other communities. We had different ways of communicating with each other, and with customers, that would appear different in other communities. As I have stated many times, my discourse community of The B&B was unstructured and could have been a lot more upscale and classy for what we were trying to sell it as. But, like Elley Gose (November 12th, 2021)  had told me, “Getting to work with my best friend and being able to goof off when people weren’t there and having someone to rely on when things got overwhelming” (personal communication) really is what made this community so great. I was able to go to work everyday and spend it with my best friend, Elley, and many others I had become close with. My community will not look like every other community, and that is okay, because it is my community.

What my discourse community will have in common with any other discourse community is the criteria it takes to make up such communities. In order for it to be a community you need to have shared goals, have ways to communicate with each other, have written genres that work towards improving the business, and have specific lexis within the community. You can have new members join, because believe me that happened constantly at The B&B, or you can have novices. Whatever the case is, we had what it took to make up a discourse community. We had the different written genres, the different terminology, and the different communication situations that occur depending on what position you work in – and I offered two different examples of this above to really give you insight into our workplace. Without each of these individual pieces of the puzzle, it wouldn’t be a discourse community. Now that I have discussed what makes my workplace a discourse community, what communities can you think of that have the criteria of a discourse community? You don’t realize how many communities you’re really a part of (or not a part of) until asked that question. What I have provided within this text has shown what makes up a discourse community, but that it does not have to be rigid guidelines for each community. Every faction is different, especially the workplace of The Bison and The Boar.

References

Gose, E., personal communication, November 12th, 2021.

Kettle, C. (2019). Walmart at night. In E. Wardle & D. Downs (Eds.), Writing about Writing. Bedford/St. Martin’s.

Mirabelli, T. (2004). The language and literacy of food service workers. In E. Wardle & D. Downs (Eds.), Writing about Writing. Bedford/St. Martin’s.

Swales, J. (1990). The concept of discourse community. Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings, 21-32.