I worked at Chili’s in Knoxville around ’85 when it was freshly bought by Brinker (Maggiano’s, On The Border, Romano’s). This was before the days when corporate food ruled the Earth.
It was your typical restaurant scene: mostly 20 somethings, working hard for tips then spending it all on booze at the club across the street. (Some things NEVER change!)
Anyway, this was before the days of “holiday” parties that don’t allow booze and other corporate bullshit and our management decided to give us a summer party. I can’t remember if it was Memorial Day or Labour Day, but it was summer. They reserved Carbide Park (a national park in Oak Ridge TN that was created for Union Carbide employees back in the day) and told us that once the gate was closed, we were in for the night. This was how they got this approved, I’m sure. It prevents drinking and driving.
We all take pup tents and the store provided TONS of burgers and sides and three or four 6 foot long bar coolers FULL of booze. Yes, you read that right: FREE BOOZE. The party was supposed to be for the over 21 only, but I know that even the 20 year olds were there. I was one of them. ;-)
We get there in the afternoon and the cooks start grilling and everyone is WOO HOO! and getting drunk. Let me tell you something, for those of you who’ve never worked in a restaurant: restaurant peeps can DRINK. Everyone was wasted in short order.
Everything is blurry – it’s been 24 years! – but I do remember eating burgers and drinking everything in site. So the party rocks into the night and I remember few details of that. What I do recall is sobering up sometime in the night and realising that we are hungry. We stumble down to the grills and scavenge for some leftovers. Well, we found them: burgers that had been abandoned on the grill hours earlier! We were drunk enough to think that these were perfectly fine to eat, so we did. I also remember digging around in the coolers looking for ANYTHING to drink – water, cokes, anything – and only finding some opened bottles of white zinfandel (it was big in the 80s, but still as gross as it is now). We feasted on nasty burgers and white zin then we promptly ended up in the bathrooms violently ill from the BAD BURGERS we’d eaten.
I remember throwing up a lot, then crawling into a pup tent with someone and passing out. The next day we all had to help clean up, but as soon as they opened the gates I zoomed out and went home to sleep it off.
Yah, I still remember the little hot pink beach dress I wore – I loved that thing. I wore it OUT. And I was driving my ’79 convertible bug (baby blue w/ white top). I also remember the WOO HOO factor of this party. It was off the chain.
This sort of thing would NEVER happen today, but lemme tell ya: it was crazy fun. Despite the grueling work and the low pay, working in the food biz was a fun time for me. I can’t imagine working as a waitress my whole life, but for 20-somethings, it’s the perfect job. There’s little responsibility, no skills required and the money is ok. You can show up drunk and still do the job. And no one CARES.
Ah, I still get some warm fuzzies when thinking about my tour of duty in the restaurant biz. I wouldn’t do it now for anything, but I think everyone should work in the industry for 6 months. It should be required. Then perhaps everyone would understand how fucking hard the work is and why longterm restaurant people are usually fucking alcoholics and/or pot heads. And perhaps they’d understand how to TIP.
Ah, the days of my youth. 20, stupid and in East TN. Gods, I shudder to think of how I’d be if I had stayed there. But, I tell you, I did have fun. Lots of it! :-)
