Have you ever thought about working at a corporate “chain” restaurant? I worked at a restaurant like this for a year. I actually enjoyed working there. Like many jobs, most of my coworkers were great, although a few wouldn’t do their job. This meant someone else had to do their job on top of their own.
Depending on what position you work in, you could make a decent amount of money. Hosting you made a bit more than $4 an hour but you also got tip share, so in reality you were making more than $8 an hour. Working in ToGo you made $9 an hour; you also got tips but they were split between the people you’re working with. Working as a busser you could make $8 and something with tip share. Working as a silverware roller you made $10 an hour with no tips. Cooks and dishwashers made twice as much but got no tips – but counting on tips only works if you’re busy.
It usually never got too busy in the summertime during the week (Monday-Thursday) because there aren’t a lot of college kids in town, but Friday-Sunday are always busy. Even if the restaurant isn’t busy you still have jobs to do. While working as a host when you’re not seating customers then you have to do side work like refilling the peanut bucket, checking the bathrooms, restock the toilet paper and paper towels and clean the floor. (Sometimes this was the responsibility of the ToGo workers. Duties seemed to change all the time.) The easiest position to work was rolling silverware because you sit in the back and you can either watch a movie or listen to music on your phone; sometimes the silverware didn’t get clean so dish people would bring back the silverware for you to sort. Although this was an enjoyable job, you didn’t make any tips.
To make tips you had to serve customers. While most were nice and understood how busy we would get, some customers weren’t nice and complained a lot about their food, which isn’t the servers fault. While hosting, there’s more than just sitting people and getting their plates, silverware, and bread with butter. During hosting, if it was super busy someone would go to the office to answer phone calls and someone would go out to the name station and put names in so the host stand wouldn’t get too busy. Most workers were glad to help you out, but some weren’t team players.
Depending on your hours, you can actually make good money; as long as I had 30-39 hours a week, my paycheck was really good. Before I left though I was only getting 8-12 hours a week, so I was only making $30-$45 every week. I didn’t make enough to pay for gas, so I had to leave. If I had a chance to get all my hours back, I would go back to working there, because it was an enjoyable job with great managers.
