Everyone Should Work in a Restaurant
What We Learned on Set: Episode 2
Over the last few years, we’ve been lucky enough to travel the world gathering and curating stories. One of the countless and inspiring moments from our time on set is from our work with our amazing partners at Holland America Line.
Here at Faculty, we’re really into food. Our team is spread out across the country, and whenever we get together at our HQ in New York (back when getting together was still a thing), one of the first questions someone always asks is, “So what are we eating?”
And it’s a big question. Because we’re a group of vegetarians, vegans, flexitarians, health food enthusiasts, sweet tooths, carnivores, with the standard mix of allergies and very valid cilantro-tastes-like-soap beliefs.
Our meals together were hours-long rituals. We shared plates, directing each other towards our favorite thing on the table. We said yes to another round of drinks. We retold stories from the last time we were on set together.
We can’t do that now, but food is still a way for us to stay connected. Early on in quarantine, we started sharing photographs of our meals with each other over Slack. It was simple, but it gave us a glimpse into each other’s lives and made this whole thing feel a little less distant.
We talked about food all the time. We lamented how poorly Zoom Passovers went. We shared coffee recommendations. We reminisced about the best gui fei chicken in Boston and worried that the tiny restaurant that made it wouldn’t emerge from the quarantine.
We thought about all the restaurants we loved, and the people behind them. The work that they had always done in orchestrating some of our best memories seems so obviously, painfully magical now. So many people come together to make a dining experience possible, and for the most part, they work thanklessly and invisibly.
That’s why this quote from Ethan Stowell is so important to us:
“I think everybody should spend some time in a restaurant or some sort of environment where they have to be a little bit selfless.
It’s not about you. It’s about their requests and their needs and their desires….there’s kind of a magical connection that happens when you’re feeding people.”
That hit home for those of us who worked in restaurants. We’ve carefully set immaculate place settings and waded through lobster-juice-stained table linens hours later. We’ve changed kegs in a mad dash during happy hour, only to be soaked in beer for the rest of the night. We’ve remade entire meals from scratch because a customer misread the menu, even as our tickets stacked up. The lessons that we learned working back-to-back shifts on our feet, obsessing over every detail on a plate, and ensuring that we’ve done everything we could to make an experience perfect for a stranger have stayed with us.
The selflessness of all those who play a part in feeding us has become more obvious than ever in this moment. Restaurant owners, their tireless staff, as well as grocery store employees and delivery people, are frontline heroes. They brave enormous hurdles and unknown dangers everyday to keep the rest of us fed and safe and comfortable.
And while we can’t enjoy a meal in a restaurant or even shake the hands of those who feed us, that magical connection Ethan talks about is still there. To feed someone is to be selfless. And to receive food is to know what it’s like to be cared for.
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