July 10th, 2023

“Every night you make somebody’s day.”

I can’t easily explain why I’m still in the restaurant business after all these years.

There are the reasons I keep freely between my fingers like playing cards, displaying them when people ask me to show them a magic trick.

As a writer who makes very little with his writing, the industry offers me freedom: flexible hours, instant cash, infinite opportunities to make connections, a bottomless pool of human beings who provide both realism and inspiration to my art.

Is this a satisfactory answer for a life’s work? Is this your card?

The quote above is from an exceptional episode in the middle of the brilliant new season of The Bear, a show which I have frequently recommended to friends and family as the most accurate fictional show to portray the restaurant industry that I’ve ever seen.

It’s a response to a question we on the expo line are often asked: why do you keep doing this?

I keep this slip of receipt paper in my frayed black server book.

It’s a note that reads: “the milk is so graet. five stars. Thank you so much!! the pancakes war good.” – from Kira & Will

This note keeps me grounded. This note keeps me elevated. This note is the reason.

I’ve always believed in service, even when I’m an absolute dick about it. But after I got sober, the phrase “acts of service” (also referenced in that extraordinary episode of The Bear) took on a radical new meaning.

An act of service is the truest form of humanity. I believe that what I do for you says the most about me.

I read a lot about algorithms and AI. What most people don’t realize, hilariously, is that technology will never replace us; we create ways to make ourselves replaceable.

For example, we teach children that there are correct ways to write words. The five-paragraph essay comes to mind. Then we all write in that specific style, which AI can then easily replicate given all the available examples, giving us the impression that AI can replace us all, when it can only replace that which we systematically teach and reenact.

But AI can never replace the simplest of human interaction.

Some co-workers told me last week that I cause them to say stupid things, things they would never normally say, because I say things to them they would never expect. I do not mean to do this. It is simply how my broken, or normal, brain works.

It isn’t tuned to an algorithm. I interact based on the moment, reflective of my entire unique past, my ephemeral present, and the intentional use of my unpredictable hand in shaping the future.

As we become more immersed in cold, lonely technology, expect the demand for service — real, warm, honest, sometimes awkward and divine human interaction — to rise.

The future of service isn’t whatever you want, whenever you want it; it’s the unexpected, the kind of exchanges that happen between people when they’re in the same room, participating in the kind of dance that defies any preprogrammed rhythm and finds its own, polyrhymic moves; the kind of moments that can’t be captured for social media no matter how many pixels we use to try to hold it.

I’m still in this business because every night you can make someone’s day.

And sometimes all it takes is a bad joke, or a genuine question; the intentional giving of your time to another human being to remind them what life is all about.

It also doesn’t hurt to make sure the milk is so graet.