ella's inkwell

I tend to write about the glamorous parts of my life, the exciting otherworldly parts. Hell, who wouldn’t want to read that? 

I am now going to write about something else, less glamorous, but more a part of life. More a part of the majority of the world’s life. It has to do with our interactions as humans. It has to do with economics. It has to do with class.

It has to do with the service industry.

I’m talking your servers, your hosts, your bartenders, or as the old-timers say, your waitresses, waiters. The people who typically have a smile on their face, who ask you what you need and want, and do their best to give it to you. Who will take all of your bullshit and smooth it over in hopes you give them a tip.

I am not bitter.

But I am going to remain on my self-given soapbox for a moment and say one thing simply: be fucking nice to your servers. Not saying it’s Jesus’s job (he was a carpenter), but sometimes it takes the grace of God to get through a shift.

I have been in the service industry for a relatively short time. My first job in food & bev was when I was 19 in Queenstown. I was the bartender at a nightclub called Rhino’s Ski Shack. Sounds like a blast, doesn’t it?

I lasted two weeks.

I am a morning person who was told to show up for work at 9 p.m. and get cut at 3 a.m. I also do dabble in the pleasures of alcohol, but know it for what it is.

Poison. Literally.

I had come to Queenstown, solo, to find myself, discover a new place full of outdoorsy activities, and make a lil cash on the side to get me through my travels.

As it turns out, getting my ears blasted off by rap each night while serving unlimited vodka Red Bulls, listening to the Aussies and Brits’ accents get stronger and stronger until I genuinely could not understand a word they were saying, getting ruder and ruder during this process, while getting strep throat due to the exhaustion, was not sustainable employment.

Onto the next!

I ended up working for a brunch spot/coffee shop called Bespoke Kitchen. This was far more up my alley. My shift started at 7:00 a.m. and went until 1 p.m. I received unlimited coffee (caffeine is my drug of choice, so I was in love), polished silverware, ran dishes, and cleared tables.

Technically, this is called expo/scullery and it is a step below waiters. But I did not care. I was up in the morning, I knew my job, I was simply good at it, and I knew I would be off in time to go climb Ben Nevis—the mountain the café was built into the base of.

I did not talk to many customers. I just looked for ways to keep moving through the room, listening to the café’s Neil Young playlist, navigating around the wooden chairs, walls of books, kitschy items, and floating lights.

There were days I struggled.

I constantly dumped piles of untouched food that looked delicious– we were allowed to have either eggs or soup as staff meals. Not the incredible stack of berry pancakes that is still on my vision board as something to try. Plus, I missed my mama.

I did not talk to many people during a shift. To some degree, you internalize the meaninglessness you can feel. The “less than” feeling. Which to be totally transparent was a shocking feeling as someone who comes from a privileged upbringing.

My job was literally to take the shit you don’t want and dump it in the trash, clean your plates and utensils, then prep the table for the next person.

After five weeks, my study abroad program started, and I was out.

But I would continue through the service industry. The cash is immediate and there are good days where you make out like a bandit and everyone you served was kind and smiley.

One summer I was a smoothie maker at an Almond Mom’s dream smoothie oasis in Sun Valley, Idaho. I’m talkin’ creatine, almond butter, coconut milk, açaí, spirulina-type smoothies.

I was a barback for weddings and other events in Sun Valley. I saw some of the most elaborate weddings in the country (I’m talking multi-million-dollar weddings, rented-out ranches, with a staff of ten bartenders working them).

I worked my way up into waitressing and fully bartending at a restaurant in Montecito called Local.

Oh Montecito, the little hamlet full of wealth, matte-black Land Rover Defenders, and trotting ponies.

Sunshine shines out of people’s assholes.

JK.

You get some good folks, and you get the crazies.

The ones who will sit at the bar on a Wednesday from noon to 4 p.m., chugging Belvedere martinis with a twist until they are in a state of singing while crying, then write a slightly politically charged manifesto on the back of their check and tip you $100. You don’t know whether to feel guilty or thankful, but you know you really want to get home, take a shower, and have some tea right then and there.

True story.

I did that job for nearly a year.

From Rhino’s to Local, either way, it’s standing behind the bar and watching the fucked-up social choreography of people while their minds become more intoxicated. It emboldens folks. It angers folks. It sparks romance in some, makes fools of others, and makes some quiet. It works differently for everyone. Either way, my position gave me an incredible place from which to study humanity.

At the moment, I am back in the Sun Valley service industry.

For those who do not know what Allen & Co. is, it’s nicknamed Billionaire Summer Camp, and I recently bartended for one of their dinner parties. I didn’t sign an NDA, but I’ll keep it brief since I would like to keep my head.

It is strange being clad in all black, invisible, serving people who run the world, trying to convince them to try a caviar potato chip or a spicy margarita.

Listening to them talk about what their little nepo babies are doing (turns out I’ll be in the same class as one of them at LSE). These people aren’t particularly different from anyone else, if anything, more awkward. 

But, you feel other. You are definitely not one of them. Sometimes I feel if I listen to them, I gain power. But after a lot of talk of GLP-1s, I didn’t feel like I learned anything from my eavesdropping. Either way, Lord knows I am there for an extra hour at this rich lady’s house getting her flowers into a temperature controlled room because it will rain that night.

So to all of this I say: only some people notice their servers, bartenders, and hosts. But your servers notice everyone. Not to sound threatening. But it’s a dog-eat-dog world, and sometimes it feels good to have a little power where little is found.

I don’t know how long I’ll stay in the service industry. But I think, when I do leave, a part of me will miss it.

Not because I am a masochist who enjoys getting yelled at over ranch dressing or making seventeen espresso martinis in a row. Because, for a few hours every shift, I get a front-row seat to humanity.

And for someone who can’t seem to stop asking why people do what they do, how to best navigate this world through these interactions, that’s one hell of an education.