My working life
Hi there! My name is Gene, although you probably already know that from my profile. Allow me to tell you the quick story of my working career and how I got to where I am today. At least in the working sense.
I started to work at a young age, I was about 14 when i first got a job. It was a part time gig just being a receptionist at a church. I’ll be completely honest, it was a cakewalk but it was probably that easy simply off my age and the fact I was hired by family members to just redirect calls and run papers all over the place. Regardless, it started me on a work ethic to work my butt off at even the most menial tasks for all future endeavors and I will always have the upmost gratitude for that start into a career mindset.
When I turned 18, I decided to get a new job to start into the real working world. I went around placing applications as any high schooler would, not knowing where to end up. Eventually I got to a restaurant I least expected named “Perkin’s: Restaurant and Bakery”, and that began what became the saga that is my working career. I applied as a server, and as any restaurant workers can tell you, that’s the main job in a restaurant aside from the cooks as they run the frontlines in taking orders, talking to all customers and do most things in a kitchen. At least at my restaurant they did. As a rookie 18 year old kid, I didn’t know anything about serving customers. I didn’t know anything about working with people in any aspect and I really needed help. This restaurant had a fantastic training crew and worked with me as a rookie and gave me the best of all of their knowledge. Because of my college schedule and hectic life playing in marching band and such, I trained for a few hours at a time but I didn’t know any better as a new worker that it was super inconvenient. I did get the best of all worlds though considering I trained with every trainer at the restaurant there and got the best of all of their knowledge. I became a fully trained server who dominated his job within a short period and starter to get better and better daily.
About a year in, my supervisor asked me if I wanted to train new people. Now I have been there a year and I had incentive and did my job correctly and this would only inprove my skills and work ethic, so I said yes. I went to training and came back with new knowledge to pass on and show the next generation of servers how to excel at work and provide the best customer service and overall personality to succeed. This restaurant had nothing but successes in the restaurant, it was a fantastic starting job because they have you do more than most other restaurants do. Now to some it may seem a lot, but to me I say “Challenge Accepted” and take on any extra task given to me, my logic is: I’m here to work, use me; and they did. I was a server, host, took as many tables as they gave me, did any extra given work and trained all the new staff. I was working 60 hour weeks and I loved it. I wanted to excel and be indispensable to the restaurant. It was after this took notice, about three years I was asked to be a supervisor.
This was a completely new area for me. The previous supervisor was leaving and they needed help up front and felt like I would be a good choice. I was only 20 years old so I was very new to thing and didn’t even know how to react. I simply thought it would look great on resumes and took it without thinking too hard. I didn’t realize how the job would be. Fast forwarding a little bit, it took me about a year to accustom myself to being management. I wasn;t innitially respected being a young kid in charge of a staff older than me but over time they came to see that I was there to do a job and wasn’t going to fold and just let me push me around. I started to run my own shifts and had my picture on the wall with management to show I was in charge. don’t get me wrong, a lot of customers tend to not respect a young person in charge but I took every scoff with a grain of salt and put myself on a pedestal of respect. Over time it became second nature. I was doing the job everyday with ease and could assess any problem with ease and just rolled with the punches. I was getting really good at my job and it showed. I was offered a salary manager position with the owner and was respected. I wasn’t sure how my life was going to turn out being as I was still young so i respectfully declined, maintaining the supervisor position. I wanted to try new things.
It was at this time I decided to get another job bartending. I wanted to try other restaurant jobs. My restaurant was breakfast and lunch, we had no bar so I went to Olive Garden and applied as a server to start. I was promoted to bartender within two weeks. I quickly learned the drinks and how to bartend and within a month I was up there with the top three at my restaurant. I worked there for a year bartending before just sticking with perkins due to coronavirus and such. Over time at perkins moreso, I tried numerous positions with baking, cleaning, serving, hosting and management with ordering and scheduling. We eventually set up the delivery service like doordash, ubereats, postmates and grubhub and that gave a little more excitement. I set those up with management to set a system to package orders and streamline production, I also helped reopen when we closed due to coronavirus. I became a crucial part of this restaurant moreso than I was and I would dare to say it would’ve been extremely difficult to reopen without my help. I cared about the business so I didn’t mind one bit. The employees were like a family to me, it was awesome to help as much as i did. I brought numerous ideas to the restaurant to make it more efficient like service partners in the kitchen, food running, sidework sheets, extra cleaning logs, training new trainers myself, and making sure everything is satisfactory to everyone’s standards. I love the restaurant and appreciate the job I’ve had this long.
