Dear Feastlings,
Working with the public is inevitably a situation fraught with uncertainty: there’ll be those who fill your cup and those who drain it, and the holiday season seems to push an inordinate number of people to the outer edges of the bell curve of kindness.
I regard a job interview as a two-way street- yes, we’re deciding whether we’re willing to hire each person we talk with, but they’re deciding whether they’ll be willing to work here as well- and one of my hard sells to potential new front-of-the-house coworkers is our relationship with our guests. As a rule, they treat us- all of us at Feast- like fellow human beings. Sure, there are any number of people who’ll wander in and be sweet and deferential to me as the chef, or as the owner, but who’ve never made eye contact with a server before and likely never will. On the whole, however, we’re lucky to have guests who are a part of the same community that we are.
The holiday season often changes that, and within half an hour of opening up shop today, a kind and competent coworker of mine has already been yelled at, told her coworkers are idiots, hung up on, called back and called an idiot herself. I’m not sure whether it’s good or bad news that that all came from one person. Since Thanksgiving is upon us, I’ll choose to call it good, as it means only one person behaved disrespectfully, rather than four.
And really, one person who’s taking their bad day out on one of our own isn’t really all that bad. I know the list of times I’ve taken my bad day out on someone else is not insignificant, and let him who is without sin and so on. So really, I’ll take this week to regard that unfortunate incident as the exception that proves the rule: our guests are indeed lovely people. It being the week of Thanksgiving, I’ll serve up a large helping of thanks along with what you’ve all ordered for pickup tomorrow.
At this point, it’s likely too late get anything ordered for tomorrow, as we’ve done all the prep we can do with all the ingredients we can get, but until we get it all packed up, we don’t know whether we’ll have any extra odds and ends to share with you. It’s worth a try, but no promises just now.
If you find yourself looking for a weekend activity, we’ve got our customary wine tasting planned, this one with larger pours, fancier wines and food pairings, since it’s the last Saturday of the month-
https://www.eatatfeast.com/events/2023/11/francy-pants/
and we’ve got heating instructions up on the website, in case anyone leaves tomorrow with their food but forgets the heating instructions:
https://www.eatatfeast.com/events/2023/11/dont-panic-if-you-lost-your-instructions/
And ultimately, here’s a link to one of my favorite bits of gratitude:
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/58990-god-made-mud-god-got-lonesome-so-god-said-to
You can look up “wampeter” and “karass,” and Bokononism if you’re unfamiliar, but I’d like to extend my gratitude to all of you, whom I regard as fellow members of my karass, and to Feast and everyone who’s helped create it, since I regard it as my wampeter. Lucky me. Lucky mud. Thanks, everybody.
Love,
Doug