On Serving: Part 2

As I've said before, I haven't been in this business for a long time but since last September, I've learned a lot. So here's a short(ish) list of some things working in restaurants has taught me-

1. You're an actor all the time. The saying "fake it till you make it" applies to every aspect of being a server.
2. Guests will yell at you whether you they're the only ones in the restaurant or if you have a full section.
3. If a guest yells at you there was probably something that had happened or has been happening in their life where they needed to take it out on someone so they took it out on you.  
4. Explaining to a guest that you will do everything you can to try and fix a situation doesn't always make them any less angry. Crying in the back or behind the bar is kind of inevitable because being yelled at while at work feels like it's a personal attack. 
5. Going to the soda station and telling one of your fellow servers about how unruly and needy a table is being is a great time for a laugh or to let off some steam. 
6. Some dry humor and a Starbucks Double Shot make a 14 hour day a hell of a lot easier. 
7. Spilling wine on a guest, dropping glassware on marble floors, and dropping plates full of food are things that happen. Everyone has at least one horror story. 
8. Your personal checkbook is your lifeline. You make sure none of your checks or cash spill out of that baby during a shift. Also never let it out of your site, try finding it when there are at least 20 other black American Express checkbooks sitting around the server stations. 
9. Always tip out your busser, bartender, and hostess a little extra at the end of every shift. These people work their asses off for you so giving them a few extra bucks will keep them working hard for you. 
10. Managers will always have your back unless you screw something up big time. There is never a time when it is ok for a guest to mistreat a manager's staff. 
11. The kitchen staff are some of the most hard working, humble, sarcastic people you will ever meet. They work their buts off for people who don't have faces to them. 
12. However, working 15 hour days doesn't mean they won't make you some food at the end of the night. 
13. Your coworkers will take orders for you, drop checks, or go talk to a table for you if those pesky guests created this temporary hysteria where you cannot stop crying. 
14. These same coworkers will also drop food or drinks or clear a table if you ask them nicely because you just got triple sat. 
15. Spending more time with these people than you do your roommates and friends creates relationships real fast. There's a certain family atmosphere that comes along with working in this industry because of how stressful things can get at times. 

I often complain about how I don't like being a server in this industry but I'm grateful for the opportunities I've had through it, the lessons I've learned, and most importantly the people I've met. 

The Flock

Today was a pretty exciting one in my book. Well it may not seem like a huge deal to some, but let me tell you about why I am so freaking excited. 

Today I joined The Flock. You might be thinking to yourself, "what the hell is Lexi doing joining a bunch of birds?" These birds aren't any kind of birds, people. They're inspirational ones, they're unique ones, and they're fast ones. These birds are the Oiselle Flock. It consists of women like me. Women that want to find a community of other athletes, more specifically runners, who are as passionate as they are.

The Flock isn't insignificant per say, but the Oiselle Elite team has some pretty big names who also happen to be my idols in all sports- Kara Goucher, Lauren Fleshman, and more recently Kate Grace. If you know me you probably know my obsession with Kara Goucher, American marathoner who came up short at the 2012 London Olympics. I first grew a liking to her when she was supposed to speak at an Arizona Girls Sports Expo I attended back in 2007 when running was new to me (she didn't attend but Alicia Shay's talk was just as awesome). So I began to follow Kara. I loved her as a Nike athlete. But when her contract was up with Nike she went to Oiselle. I had known of Oiselle before because of Lauren Fleshman. She's the wife of triathlete Jesse Thomas. I followed Lauren on social media but didn't know a whole lot about Oiselle till Kara joined the team. In short, Oiselle is a running apparel company specifically for women. What woman doesn't like awesome looking clothes that fit her correctly!? But anyways, I was on the company's blog a few months ago and saw a post about The Flock. I got super excited and texted some friends about the prospect of joining the same team as Kara and Lauren. So today I sat on my computer at 10am hitting the refresh page on Oiselle for at least 10 minutes. I was growing concerned because I didn't know if I had been to late to the train and had missed a spot, but turns out, I didn't. I got in. I get to connect with all these inspiring women and I'm so excited. I also get a really awesome Oiselle singlet (I hope to debut it at the Lake Powell Half Marathon a month from tomorrow), a spike bag, and free shipping for a year! I think my most favorite part of the membership, however, is that a portion of my membership fee is going to support the elite athletes of Oiselle. These women inspire me everyday so having the opportunity to help them out a little means a lot. 

With this exciting event expect to see some more Oiselle/triathlon/running things on this blog in the future because yay passions!!!

On Serving

When I started my first restaurant job in a fine dining restaurant as a busser, one of the servers told me I wasn't cut out for working in a restaurant. She said I was too gentle and naive and quite. She was right. A year later and I'm still that way. She wasn't trying to insult me or steer me away, but she was honest with me as she had worked in the industry for well over ten years. She grew to know me better than anyone in the restaurant and ended up being like a big sister to me. This business is rough, but on the contrary, some of the most rewarding relationships I've had in my life have come from sharing this commonality. 

I would be considered more of a newbie in the restaurant business. Having worked in fine dining and, recently a more casual setting, I have found that being in introvert is my biggest setback. It's hard to make an introvert talk to complete strangers. It's not something that's easy for someone who needs quite, alone time to regain energy to just go up to a table and be like "Hey! My name's Lexi and I'm your server and I love talking so we can talk as much as you want!'. No. I mean, I've learned a lot from this job and although I never wanted to pursue a career in Hollywood, I'm still an actress. I have to be happy when I'm not, smile when I feel like crying, and bust my ass off when I'm tired because I just worked five doubles in a row. 

On the contrary there are some pretty rewarding things like how quickly you develop family-like relationships. Working in a restaurant, you instantly have something to talk about with the other staff. It usually goes something like,

"The lady in the yellow shirt just told me she has a gluten allergy but insisted on having regular bread. And then she asked me for a water and when I went back to the table the husband wanted a glass of wine and we were out of the wine and then the food is taking forever to come out so now I'm not going to make any money off the table and now my life is over."

And sometime that's as far as the conversation goes because venting is all you need for a temporary release before you get out there again and the same thing happens to your next table. But sometimes one of your coworkers makes a joke about something and it's an on going thing for the rest of the night or even the week. Because of this sometimes you'll go out to a table still laughing about what just happened by the computer. It's all worth it though because it gets you through a slow shift, or a double, or a busy Saturday night. 

Working in this industry has taught me a lot about the real world and myself. I've seen that sometimes the work you put in doesn't yield the results you're looking for but the same can be said for the opposite. There are generous people in this world and people the genuinely care about your well-being. Waiting tables certainly isn't my dream job but I'm grateful for what it's taught me, the friends I've made, and how it's shown me that things are temporary and that you have control of where your life goes. 

#igotitfrommymama

So as some of you may already know, I am the daughter of a food blogger who has had some recent success. 365 Days of Baking is a blog my mom started back in 2010 when I was a little freshman in college, four years ago. She started it as a hobby while she was still a stay-at-home mom. Mom wanted to challenge herself to bake for 365 consecutive days. And that she did, with only a few minor setbacks. But with myself almost a sophomore, and my sister not soon from college herself, my mom took up a job as the office manager at a local vet clinic.The blog was put on hold for a little while until the family moved to New Hampshire on a whim. Mom became more interested in the idea that this could create a real income for the family. So she dove right in last year and has made steps to create a profitable website where people can see just how easy baking can be. Recently, every call home to New Hampshire from Arizona (I recently moved back to AZ after living in New Hampshire for a year and 11 years in Arizona before that) I hear something about how well my parents are doing because of the blog. It's awesome and I couldn't be happier for my mom because she's found her passion and is able to make money while doing it. 

So with this and a little tangent, a friend and former teammate from high school has mentioned to me a few times that I should get back into photography. For those of you who didn't know high school me, I was really into photography. Like really into it. I had undertaken a project, much like my moms, where I was going to take a picture of myself or something everyday for a year. I was obsessed with Flickr and Tumblr and had made some friends through it who I still talk to to this day. My teenageness showed in every self-portrait but people loved my pictures and I loved expressing my artistic side that my parents said I inherited from both of my grandmothers. To only fuel my obsession, I wanted to study the medium into college. I did that but found that I didn't like being told what to take pictures of. So with some changes in majors, the start of a new obsession (triathlon), a year long adventure in New England, and trying to figure out what I want to be when I am an adult, I've decided to give blogging a shot. Maybe a photoblog with some other snippets in life will take me somewhere I haven't even explored yet. You can make it online nowadays, I've seen it. Waiting tables pays well for a twenty-something who's trying to figure things out but it's never been a dream of mine to bring people their food. Here I go, following my mom's blogging footsteps and posting my thoughts onto the internet for the world to see. 

This blog won't be focused on anything for awhile. My brain tends to change a lot so, there will be some triathlon things (actually a lot), some photography things, some #twentysomethingproblems, and who knows what else. And there's this quote by my favorite long distance runner Kara Goucher, "dream big and dream often" and I think it explains me in a nutshell. So here it goes, I am now a blogger.