I
For most of my life, interactions with my father have been limited to late-night visits at the front desks of various local hotels. At this hour (sometime between 11:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m.), the lobby mise-en-scène would take on a liminal quality, a comforting emptiness that contrasted the frantic scenes of tourists rushing out of the door in the mornings and returning after evenings of experiencing Utah’s “greatest snow on Earth” and après-skiing too heavily. Save for the intermittent ringing of his desk telephone (hopefuls seeking room service hamburgers), the wood-paneled vestibule was hushed. Any passersby drifted like snowflakes in a light flurry, graupel. In the midst of this stillness, my father and I would converse in the back office, our discussions usually ending up with my father concluding somehow that reality was a simulation. Sometimes I agreed, the dreamlike state of our surroundings (and my sleepiness) helping reinforce the idea that we’re caught up in an illusion. We would often be jolted back into real life, though, by the chime of a desk bell—his cue to step away and tend to a guest’s complaint or request.
II
An observation I built from my own eventide restaurant shifts: ironically, service workers (myself, to a certain extent, included) complain more than even the most particular of clients. But this seems justified. Eating at a sit-down restaurant has a pretty standard script. Those playing the role of “guest” should enter, sit, eat, pay (and improvise when it comes to tipping), then exit stage. The ensemble of restaurant employees, then, should play off of them and their counterpart mechanicals, to ensure that the above-described action sequence goes off without a hitch. With, of course, the extra responsibility of making the experience enjoyable for the guests in order to receive favorable ratings.
But a truly perfect night, try as we might, never happened. “Menu modifications” and miscellaneous mistakes were constantly rewriting the scene mid-act. An overly particular 2-top (or an overly familiar 2-top, or an all-too-regular 2-top), a rowdy family (6 kids of varying ages but very consistent chaotic energy), a supercilious private party. An overflowing host stand, an overcooked steak, a missing béarnaise, the band playing too loud. Tension built throughout the night, the ascending arc of this recurring play; the third act bringing a cathartic rant over cigarettes at the back of the kitchen by the trashbins. “Chef is always fucking everything up,” “table Y left 6 fucking dollars on a 1000-dollar check,” “Table Z were such fucking pompous-paunchy-fatfucking-perverts, and look at the way they shoved those ribeyes down their cock holsters.” Yet due in some part to a genuine desire for consumer satisfaction, and the demands of the Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse employee handbook, we would make our way back out onto the floor and re-embody the personas that captured the “inviting, yet high quality, professionalism” expected of us.
III
Of the ten-plus jobs I remember my dad having, he only avoided a front-desk, concierge typecast once. This was at a bank where he had to administer mortgages and inform people that they were being foreclosed. It was soul-crushing, and I think he liked to give more than he did take. This affinity for hospitality made sense. He was just right for those kinds of jobs. Warm, “presentable,” and talkative, with many years in the industry making him well-rehearsed in “anticipating and meeting guest needs.” I saw his people-person prowess in how he acted everywhere, in front of his seemingly infinite number of friends, coworkers, and patrons.
What struck me, though, were the unorthodox hours he had to work. Rarely, apart from the few-hour glimpses I saw of him, was he out and about during the day. Like a vampire (age stasis included), he would sleep during prime matinee hours, preparing to clock in for his evening calltime, work, then reappear at home at dawn. At first, I understood it to be just an obligation of his profession.
I would later come to find that he actually preferred working graveyard. Only when I started working either late or early enough to simulate this nocturnality, did I understand the appeal. It was peaceful. I felt comfortable being able to mooch about (in order to romanticize my life, I liked to think I was some type of like spy or assassin or something on a covert mission, idk), and not worry about being followed by the things that nagged me during the day.
IV
Overall, I enjoyed the service industry. There was a sense of honor in putting on my costume, a white Oxford-collared shirt, tie, and apron. I liked testing out different knots for my ties. I liked paying attention to details. I liked the thrill of rushing around when we were busy, and the immediate feedback of a live audience.
Unfortunately, I don’t think I was ever imbued with the explicit extroversion of my father. Doing my job required that I talk to guests. On a surface level, this should have been simple enough, if anything useful, to keep my cast members’ and my performance compelling.
This was awkward. Beyond just clarifying what type of water a table wanted and when they were ready for some to-go boxes, it’s a bit cumbersome to build a two-hour-long relationship with a random cluster of people through small talk and the sharing of details about our lives that feel too intimate. The stakes for this, however, still shouldn’t be so high. But now consider having (and I’m being a bit hyperbolic here) fifty more people to serve, and apparently not just on a material, “here is your food” kind of way, but in one where you feel pressured to larp as a gracious host. This now creates the worry that you’re having to put on dinner and a show to earn a customer’s business. So to maintain the crowd’s suspension of disbelief, you dismiss the uncomfortable flirtations, odd comments about how “clean and surprisingly well-spoken” you seem, and having to take pictures with people because your hair “looked cool.” After all that, despite an eighty-dollar per-person meal and a nice tip to split with the whole team, the talk ends up cheap.
V
One time, I just decided to ask my father why he liked working nights. This may have been when I realized it wasn’t so normal for humans to live like bats, but also because none of my friends’ parents had schedules like his. His answer was simple: he “didn’t want to deal with people,” and the night shift was an excellent “outlet.” Still, no one I knew was better with people than he was.
He often hinted at the fatigue of his routine. Through jokes and commentary, not dissimilar to my coworkers’, I gained a better picture of the hordes he hoped to dodge. The smiles-on-demand only to be ignored, condescended, or outright insulted (some comments were kinda funny, like “fish eye,” the others weren’t, like the n-word). Somehow, he met it all with a steady composure.
I realized he had mastered this performance because he had to. He worked a job to make money, to survive. And still, while he let the mask slip a little when he came home, I still have particularly vivid images of the wide grin he plastered on his face when he saw us, regardless of how tired he was.
VI
Most of the time, I was able to perform well enough. In my mind, this is either because both participants are aware of the facade but refuse to acknowledge it, or because I am genuinely convincing. This was not the case with one particular couple. To them, I talked weird. Weird enough, even (and the holiday cocktails probably helped), for them to call it out.
I suppose it was a regular enough shift, the only difference being that it was Christmas Day, so the dining room was festooned with poinsettias and pine needles (that were a terrible inconvenience to clean up). I was assigned to the plexiglass-covered patio and was grappling with the bipolar temperature dynamics that were the heat of the kitchen and the frigidity of the sun deck (our heaters never worked out there, and if they were ever on, ash would rain from the heavens to add a little extra seasoning to someone’s mashed potatoes). But, in my most goodwill and cheeriness, I approached this table, metal water jug in hand, and began my usual spiel: “Welcome to Ruth’s Chris, my name is Zach, and I’ll be your server’s assistant for tonight. Is tap water ok, or would you prefer a bottle of sparkling?” The usual response would be something hand-wavy (“sure”) or over-the-top enthusiastic (~grins and squeals YES THANK YOU SO MUCH). This time, a “why are you talking that way?” was received.
I don’t necessarily talk weird, as in “wrong”, but more so just in an unexpectedly polished way (which I thought was gonna put me back in the situation of having to fake appreciation for being called articulate). Admittedly, at work, I do adopt this forced, butler-esque voice, not unlike Geoffrey’s from the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (minus the British accent and some of the confidence). While I had expected I code-switched at work, I never fully confronted it, and never really needed to. But this got me to bite. Maybe they were harmless quips, but (maybe because I’m a bit jaded) I let the comment linger more than I allowed other ones to.
Honestly, though, I appreciated their candor. A curtain had been pulled open, a fourth wall broken, revealing the curious absurdity of my situation. My dad always went on about this whole simulation idea, and I always thought he was thinking up a quirky meta-analysis of the world. Now it returned as a feeling. An awareness of moving through space with practiced versions of yourself. In the awkward silence, I was stuck thinking about all the parts I play, and whether they’re convincing or genuine. I thought about the roles my dad took on.
Then I had to go deliver bread to a table of twelve. My tie was loose.
