Black is the New Orange: 10 Ways Working In a Restaurant Is Like a Jail Sentence

Welcome back to the blog formally known as Conscious Residue (TBKACR for all you hip cats). If you've seen one episode of MSNBC's Locked Up, you've seen them all. Each prison has the same cast of characters and cliques. It's a bunch of individuals confined to a large secure building, forced into a "family" with people who, under normal circumstances, they would probably never intermingle with. Most prisons force their prisoners to wear identical uniforms. Every inmate has an idea of how long they should be there, but not actually sure what their actual release date is. Blah, blah, blah...I could go on, but then this would just turn into a post about a shitty repetitive reality TV series.

My point? I worked a shift at my second job (a restaurant) last night. As I looked into the security camera and buzzed in for entrance into the back door, walked past the vatos in the kitchen, into a sea of people wearing similar variations of the same color outfit as me discussing the time they were scheduled to leave compared to the time they thought they would actually leave, I thought "holy Shawshank, Batman, this is a f*cking prison!" I started to feel less like I had just entered the back of the house of a dining room, and more like I entered Em City from HBO's Oz.

At first I thought this was merely exaggeration born through the fact that I was giving up prime Saturday relaxation time, I mean I do have the option of leaving at my own will, I'm not stuck here. The more I thought about it, the more correlations I found between prison and my hospitality based work place, with the people and attitudes within the environment. Here are the 10 most prevalent.

The Lifer: In any restaurant I have worked at, there has always been one or two people that have been there way too long and have no intent of leaving anytime soon. These people tend to work as oracles for the newer employees, telling them about the "good ol' days" and how much things have changed. You can literally see the years of numbed pain wash over a lifer's face each time a regular guest or an ex-employee comes in says "wow, you're still here?!" The guards/managers tend to let the lifers go about their business, they understand that there is no punishment greater than the years the restaurant game has stolen from them.



Wheeling & Dealing: You need someone to pick-up your opposite of profitable Monday lunch shift, you better get some polish and make that turd glisten. There are deals around every corner, host to server deals, server to server, manager to server, server to busser, and etc. The only difference in a restaurant is that very few deals involve Ramen noodles or cigarettes, some do, but very few.

Racism & Stereotypes: I'm not talking about Vern Schillinger and the Aryan Brotherhood, but there is a slight introverted racism and belief in stereotypes that exists in each server. Now don't read this and be racist yourself. It's not just straight, white, male servers, its servers of all races, genders, and sexual orientation. To be honest, the racism that goes on in restaurants is almost scientifically and mathematically sound, and based on gratuity expectations. I guess you can say that the actual race or group that servers discriminate against is low or non-tippers. I won't get into specifics, but let's just say Black people, Hispanics, people of Middle Eastern decent, groups of women of any race, and anybody from Wisconsin need to step their tip game up.


The "I Gotta Guy" Guy: Every restaurant has their Cheeseburger Eddie. For those of you not familiar with Adam Sandler's shitty remake of The Longest Yard, Cheeseburger Eddie was a character that had a hook-up on the outside to get his fellow inmates McDonald's on the inside. Whether its hook-ups to exclusive bars, concert tickets, or good weed, there's always a guy that knows a guy.

The Hustlers: These people can't up sell a guest on a cup of soup, but they can get your dumb ass to buy three boxes of Thin Mints or a square in their Super Bowl pool every time. Thin Mints that you will never receive or a pool that you will never win.

The Matriarch/Patriarch: Every "family" needs a mother or father figure, someone that can provide comfort in times of personal crisis. Someone that knows your last write-up by management was unfair, and believes you when you say that you were "really" sick yesterday when you called in a half hour after your shift began, contrary to the story your Facebook status updates from the night before tell. In most cases, the matriarch/patriarch is also the lifer.


The Haters: The haters mostly come out when someone gets paroled. In the restaurant world, getting paroled means one of five things: A) they are moving too far to work at this shitty place, so they are switching to a more geographically convenient shitty place, B) they get a job at a better restaurant with higher tip possibilities, C) they start, finish, or return to school, D) they get a "real" job a.k.a. a shitty office job, or E) they marry rich, and never have to work again.

Whatever the reasoning behind the exit is, the haters usually hate in one of two ways, internally or externally. The internal hater publicly wishes the parolee well in their new endeavors, but is seething on the inside because you no longer have to endure pain of reciting the list of soft drinks to the same table of four, four times (mf'er did you hear me say Mountain Dew?), like they will continue to do. The external hater makes it a point to tell the parolee that they'll be back soon every day of their two week notice and at least 6 times on their last day. Haters gonna hate.

The Crier: This poor soul has an intense meltdown at least once a week, which is a decrease in numbers from their daily emotional breakdowns when they first started. They get a little frazzled or a table shows a little dissatisfaction with their service, and BOOM! Self-doubt kicks in and we have full on water works. They can't fathom themselves making it through another day here, usually nothing a talk with the matriarch/patriarch and few after-work cocktails can't fix.

The Repeat Offender: This is the server that leaves and swears they will never comeback, and then after a brief period of time something causes them to comeback. They usually do something somewhat dramatic on their last day that is on the verge of burning a bridge that will cause their tail to go further between their legs when they come crawling back. Some people just can't make it on the outside, like Brooks from The Shawshank Redemption.

States of Denial: There is always someone the underestimates the amount of time they will actually serve. The ones in denial usually come in the form of recent college grads or displaced workers (laid-off teachers, tax preparers, arthritic strippers, etc). "Oh, this is temporary. I've got a few things lined up.I'll only be here a month or two." The next thing you know, the assistant general manager, who was a bus boy when you started, is pinning a piece of flare on your shirt that signifies five years of loyal service. In scientific terms, early denial can lead to lifer status.

Don't get me wrong, working in a restaurant is not a direct parallel to prison life. I have never seen anyone get traded for Marlboro Reds and there are very few instances of rape. They do share the same "I'm stuck here for the time being, so I better make the most out of it" mentality by their inhabitants. I will admit, with some of the people I work with, I do wish some restaurants would adopt more features of prison life, like group therapy or the death penalty. You're welcome.