saying goodbye
“Oh, don’t do the thing. Don’t do that thing we all do and don’t mean.”
The general manager of the restaurant I work at said that to me last week after I made some half-assed attempt at suggesting that we’ll all still hang out after my upcoming last day. I was disarmed by this statement to be completely honest, but I immediately recognized what he was referring to and remembered how many times I’ve made a similar statement to others.
See, I’ve had a lot of last days in my hospitality career. During my tenure with my previous company, I was frequently transferred to open up new locations and help struggling ones. It’s always tricky trying to navigate the space in your life that the relationships you’ve built with others in these environments amount to once you’re no longer shoulder to shoulder with them every day. The nature of service industry friendships tends to be that once one of you is gone, the most important factor that’s held the bond together is gone in tandem. I’ve made a lot of friends over the years I’ve spent slinging tacos and margaritas (a weirdly ubiquitous combination of items that I’m only realizing as I type this has appeared on every menu I’ve ever worked with) - some of which have lasted longer than others, but with very little exception, only as long-lasting as our tenure in the building together was. I can attribute a lot of that to my own aversion to overly investing my time and energy into people that I perceive as being more viably “friendly” than “friends”, but it would be pretty naive of me to think that I could sustain healthy, mutually beneficial friendships with even a fraction of the thousand or so people that I’ve worked with in the past thirteen years. Most of my very small circle of close friends are childhood friendships that I’ve managed to hold on to over the years, but my best friend is my ex-wife so that should probably tell you everything that you need to know about my own propensity to form close relationships with others.
The problem with restaurant relationships specifically is that most strong relationships are founded in mutual interests and most restaurant employees don’t really have any strong interest in the only thing you all have in common: your shared vocation. If a friendship is based on mutual disdain for your circumstances, it’s more of a breeding ground for toxicity and negativity than it actually is a fruitful relationship that empowers both of you to grow with one another (you know, a healthy friendship). Until pretty recently, I was pretty well under the assumption that this would be the case for most relationships that you have in restaurants due to my own experience working with a slew of different people while employed at the same company for a decade. But about six months ago, I landed a job at a renowned Austin staple that is generally considered by many to be one of the best restaurants in the city. Working for a Food & Wine award winning, nationally acclaimed restaurant put a lot of pressure on me to perform which, in hindsight, put blinders on me for the first month or two in terms of my ability to see my coworkers as anything other than just coworkers. What I quickly realized, however, was that everyone wanted to be there just as much as I did. The mutual interest that I previously asserted to be virtually non-existent in these spaces was present in nearly everyone that I encountered there.
This opened up a lot of possibilities for me socially in a way that I hadn’t ever really considered to be possible before. People who I’d known only in the short term were becoming closer to me than people that I had maintained a friendly relationship with for years. Every time I walk into the building, I’m greeted with genuine warmth by front of house and back of house alike. We all pitch in to get things ready for service while catching up on whatever the happenings have been since we last saw each other without anyone lagging on their responsibilities for gossip’s sake. Our pre-service lineup meetings feel like open discussions in which we can all laugh and joke while still not mincing the finer points of what requires discussion to continue flawless service execution instead of twenty minutes of managers castigating you from their position of authority. Once service starts, we’re all poised and ready to perform for the greater benefit of the people we work with and the guests who pay our bills. We all know when to tighten up and put our nose to the grindstone, but we’re never too busy to tap on the shoulder of one of our teammates to make them look the wrong way. When we go to the bar after our shift, it’s rarely to commiserate about our employment-related woes, but rather to celebrate each other’s company and have time to cut loose with some people we enjoy being around. When we enjoy our days off, our coworkers are liable to be tapped for a hangout instead of being avoided for fear of being reminded that we all share a mutual misfortune to be employed together.
It’s not as if this is the first time that I’ve publicly praised this environment, but anyone who’s spent any sort of time in the industry could pretty concretely tell you that what I’m describing lies somewhere between rare and a complete myth so it feels appropriate to sing these praises again. I love the fact that I can post in our scheduling app an open invite to the entire staff for some sort of social gathering and that I won’t be dreading an appearance from anyone be it front of house, back of house, or management. I feel like this sense of inclusion and belonging is what most everyone wants out of a service job.
Which makes saying goodbye this time somehow indescribably more difficult than the countless times I’ve had to say goodbye to a team I’ve worked with before. Just shy of two months into my dream gig, I was given an opportunity to take on a trainer role with the intention to move along from this beloved space into a new project with a handful of the team I had just started getting accustomed to. At the time, I saw nothing but positives from this choice. Getting in on the ground floor of an incredible restaurant with a ton of hype behind it by the team that made my current restaurant into such an incredible space to work in while taking a promotion? No brainer. But we were still in the early stages of getting the ball rolling and, in the meantime, I had a lot more time to spend with all of the people who made me feel so welcome so quickly in this place. Even the last holdouts who started more standoffish with me than others came around and became dear friends during this time. While I get to take a few of these folks with me to this new adventure, the vast majority will be holding down the fort back home.
It is with this realization that’s spent the past four months bubbling to the surface that I begin to worry about how much I’ll be able to hang on to all of this love I’ve developed for my new friends and familia. I have to question at some point in time whether or not I have it in me to give more of myself than I’ve ever really known myself to be capable of in order to sustain these friendships. I’m now much closer to 30 than 20 and I’ve firmly decided that I don’t want to be the type of person who lets my friendships be as fleeting as I’ve let them be just because of the environment in which they blossomed. I spent the first half of this post talking about why I’ve diagnosed the slow burning degradation of many of my friendships to be victims of circumstance, but at some point, I have to assume some personal responsibility. I can admit that as much as I believe what I said to be true, the truth in those statements is only exacerbated by my own unwillingness to devote myself to be a better friend to many of those that I’ve encountered over the years. I think that I tend to fear how making time for people will interfere with my routine and I selfishly prioritize this over tending to the maintenance that friendships require.
It’s impossible to deny that I need to work on balancing how much time I can give to my loved ones while still making time for my kids, my partner, my hobbies, and my fitness. Somehow, I’ve never given this as much thought as I’ve been due to give for years, but my newfound friends have forced me to challenge my conceptions about how I operate in my day-to-day life. I think that’s personal growth, right? Isn’t that what friends are supposed to help facilitate?
I’ll miss seeing my coworkers as much as I do now in a way that I’ve scarcely felt. If you’re someone who fits into this post, you know who you are and I urge you insistently to remember that I love you even though I’m not around five days a week anymore. I’m excited to live through the next phase of my life, but departing from the current is bittersweet to say the least. But as I said to my last set of coworkers (including the five that I’ll be working with at the new spot), in my experience, this is far from the last time that our paths will cross; it’s never the last time until it’s the very last time.
Bien suerte para siempre.
