Next Steps

   The restaurant business can be something of a beat-down.  I got my start shortly after totaling my parent’s car.  It was 1985 and I was driving my parent's Volkswagen Dasher on a side street in Fair Haven, NJ.  I came upon a four way intersection with no stop sign in any direction and plowed into a family in a station wagon.  I careened into a tree and knocked the rear view mirror off with my head.  I remember thinking, "God, the stereo is loud".  They blamed the poor guy that I hit.  I'm pretty sure that was discriminatory, as they were black family.  My concept of social justice hadn’t quite formed by then and I was happy to get out of it without a ticket.
    Immediately following the crash, I was instructed to get a job to pay for the car I had destroyed.  My first job was on a bridge over the Navesink River.  What a job it was.  In the summer, they brought in seasonal help because of the increased demand on the bridge.  My job was to sit in a chair for most of an 8 hour shift.  As often as two times an hour, my job shifted to manually closing two gates on the bridge and locking them into place prior to the bridge opening.  When the bridge closed, I opened the gates.  Yep, that was the whole job. 
    I then got a job at a restaurant that quickly burned down.  It was a big, beautiful restaurant with several bars in Sea Bright called the Peninsula House.  I was a busboy and I hated going to work.  I was never questioned in the fire and that's all I have to say about that.
   My career began when I took a job at the Hobrauhaus in Atlantic Highlands.  This was the beginning of it all - however inauspicious.  I hated this job, too.  Actually, I hated this job more than the other one.  It was Oktoberfest and people piled in by the hundreds.  When you are really new to a job and an industry, everything moves at a hundred miles an hour and you can't imagine that you are going to be able to keep up.  Well, this was my experience.  The owners yelled, the kitchen was loud and the waitresses and bartenders were older and career people.  When you screwed up, you got chewed out.  It was get better or get gone and I knew it immediately.
    Fortunately (or unfortunately) I was great.  Within weeks I was getting side tips and servers were fighting over the right to have me bussing their stations.  (It was a much bigger deal back then, I know).  Inside of a year I was promoted to waiter, even though I was only 17 and legally needed to be 18.  Hilda, the owner, told me just to tell anyone that asked that I was her son.  Sure.
    My moment of truth came that summer.  I was in LBI with my friends for a weekend at the beach.  It was our senior year in high school and our paths were about to move away from each other.  Although I was going to school locally at Seton Hall, my friends were going to South Carolina and Western Pennsylvania and the like.  So this was it.  My plan was to call out for Saturday night and claim sickness.  I had been working there almost a year and had never called out.  It was the summer and that was the slow season.  So I got to a pay phone (yes, a pay phone) and called.

  Me:  Mrs. Lesbirel?  It's Tim.
  Her:  Yes?
  Me:  Umm.... I'm sick and I can't come in to work tonight.
  Her:  I need you to come in to work tonight.  If you don't, I'm afraid you don't have a job.
  Me:  Umm.... Ok.  I guess I'll be in.

   I got off the phone and told my friends that I had to go in.  They were like, "blow it off".  "Come on, it’s a waitering job, just get another one when you get back".
   Anyway, I went back.  The worst part is that they had to drive me a good chunk of the way to the train station.  At that moment, sadly, two things occurred and have followed me in my life since.  One is arguably a good thing.  I am extremely hard working and dedicated to my job.  I can count on one hand how many times I've called out of work since then and never for a bogus reason.  The other - and related - thing is not so good.  I choose work over everything.  I choose it over relationships and that often includes family.  That part about me sucks.
    Usually when you read about people's defining moments they're inspiring.  Mine isn't.  But I've never forgotten that day.  I've never forgotten that phone call and I've never looked back.  Twenty-five years later and I'm metaphorically leaving LBI for work all the time.  Only now it’s my kids who have that look in their eyes as if to say, "Seriously, dad?  You're going back to work?"
      I can't change the decision I made that day, but there are many more such decisions coming my way in the future.  The pay phone has turned into a Blackberry and my friends are all gone and replaced with a family.  They have gotten used to having a dad that works 6 days a week and Christmas and Thanksgiving (and often their birthdays.)  Each time I pick up that phone, I'll bet their rooting for me the way my friends did back in 1985.  "Stick to your guns, dad.  Tell them you're not coming in....."

Why The Tip System Doesn't Work

   
     There are many reasons why tipping doesn't work.  In NJ, as is the case with many states, there is something called the tip to credit minimum wage.  What that means is that servers get paid just $2.13 an hour by their employer.  The rest is to come from their tips.  So the fact that you think the server is expecting a tip regardless of the level of service they provide is not just your opinion - it's actually been written into the labor law!  That's just one problem with tipping.
     The larger problem with tipping and the main reason why it doesn't work is that 15% is no longer a socially acceptable standard for tipping.  It has become the floor.  A 15% tip is looked down upon by today's servers.  So the server, in his or her mind, is working on commission.  Just sell more and bring the check up, because they're tied to a percentage of the total.  This takes the relationship with the customer out of the equation.  Customer service becomes secondary as staff is taught to upsell from house vodka to Grey Goose. 
     This reality turns customers into "tables".  The goal of the server is to turn tables, not to give great service.  Get them in and get them out.  Because the floor has been established at 15%, there is very little reward in shooting for a great tip vs. expending minimum energy and collecting the minimum tip.  Imagine if the server actually believed that bad service might result (consistently) in a 0 or 5% tip.  This might, in fact, create the incentive necessary to inspire great service.
     None of this is contradicted by the fact that there are individuals out there who continue to give great service.  There are many reasons why this will always exist.  Some people have a genuine pride in what they do and others truly possess a service mentality and derive genuine satisfaction from pleasing others.  This does not apply to the masses.  What I'm talking about here is the systemic flaw that presently exists with the tipping paradigm here in the United States.
     So, what to do about it?  Get rid of the tip.  Who is going to be the first full-service restaurant company to break from the pack and get rid of the tip?  Could there be a better time?  With real unemployment at over 16%, the time is ripe for a company to seize this opportunity.  No Tip.  A 15-20% discount on every check.  What, you ask, about the service?  Would we all say that this present system is somehow guaranteeing great service?  I think that great servers give great service.  The servers that are chasing the cash will go elsewhere.  It will give this pioneer among companies the opportunity to cultivate its own group of servers and begin to shift the culture of service.
     Think anyone will bite?

First Steps

I recently turned 43.  That number doesn't mean anything to me. The day itself came and went with little acknowledgement.  The only thing that "happened", per se, was that my kids were upset that I had to work on my birthday.  I wasn't.  I've been working on my birthday (and most every holiday) since I was 16.  I even work Christmas Day every year.  Even prior to the passing of number 43, there has been a growing feeling inside of me. This feeling was telling me that there has to be more.  It manifests itself as an anxiety or restlessness.  I can't ever put my finger on it and label it.  It's just always there, in the background.
    I've come to understand the restlessness and even befriend it.  I think of what it would be like without it.  I don't imagine that a calm acceptance of my life is something to strive for.  And that is what I see as the alternative to this feeling.  Also, I don't imagine I will ever rid myself of this feeling.  An analogy might be the gasoline within a car.  With no gas, certainly, the car is calm and settled and, yes, present.  With gas, there is a certain rumbling, unease, energy.  With the pedal down and the car pointed in one direction or the other, the car seems obsessed with getting somewhere - a place that first exists in the future.  The gas is the potential within the car to take it as far as it will.  Okay, not a great analogy, but you get the point.
    At 43, my tank is full.  I'm ready to go.  I aspire to bigger, better and more.  I just don't know what any of that means.  What do I want?  I don't want a ton of money.  I don't want a better car.  I would like a bigger house, more for my kids and my wife than for me.  I have put what I want into a phrase that has little specific meaning.  It is all-encompassing and way too broad.  Still, it is my rallying cry and I measure any future opportunity or goal against it:

    I want to take over the world.

   I have worked for the same company for over 8 years.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  The company has never stayed the same for 8 years and neither has my job.  I work hand-in-hand with the owner and have since day one.  When I joined the company there was one restaurant with solid plans in place for a second.  In October, we'll open our sixth with a seventh right behind that in April or May of 2012.  For many years in the middle, this has qualified as taking over the world to me.  In my prior professional existence, I was a cog.  I did my job.  Sure, I had a nice title and dozens of people under my supervision, but I basically followed the rules and implemented some other guy's plan.
   In that respect, this new job gave me a new life.  It gave me my first real taste of autonomy.  Even as I passed every major concept, growth vehicle and change past the owner for approval, it was more mine than I'd ever know, professionally.  Autonomy, in many respects, is everything.  So now what?  Keep building restaurants?  Keep building the company?  Keep growing the brand?  To what end?
    I have conflicting views on this.  Part of me wants to jump and figure out the landing in mid-air.  In the past, before this job, I feared being fired so much that I quit every time.  Before I quit, I interviewed and took another job.  Usually the new job paid me a couple of thousand dollars more.  I became a pro at it.  Of course, that catches up to you pretty quick.  "Nice progression" on my resume turned into "jumping around quite a bit" very quickly.  I needed stability.  I needed to stick it out and accept being fired as a possibility.  So I promised myself, upon taking this job, that I would never quit.  I'd be fired.  So...success?
   When my thinking is at its clearest and my demons are sleeping I know that the right move for me is to leverage the position I have right now and branch out while doing it.  Branch out into things that also inspire me like writing and speaking and teaching.  So thats the plan any given day.  And it changes a lot.  This brings us back to the title.
    First steps.  These are the hardest, for sure.  Mine is to start a blog and begin communicating, daily, my thoughts on moving through this life.  43 might not be a milestone of any kind.  I don't recall seeing a birthday card in the aisle at Rite Aid that says "Hey, You're 43 today!  Still, it has moved me.  It has taken my nervous energy, my anxiety, and turned it from potential to actual.  Today my trek begins.  Out of my mind and into reality where it can be touched and read, beaten down and exalted.