Last updated on March 24th, 2017 at 06:50 pm

The first thing I did was go back to the Thai restaurant and ask for my job back. I hunted down the manager, who emerged from the staff room, cash drawer and last night’s receipts in hand, looking frustrated with her day already. I asked if she was looking for help.

“Yes,” she snapped. “Who’s asking? You?” she jabbed.

“Yes.”

“Oh.” She thought a moment. She started to ask a question, then stopped to ask a different one. “When can you start?”

I picked up my first shift back a week later. Three days after that, they cut me a paycheck – I was already back on the books. It took a total of ten days to take my first step towards rebuilding. I was ecstatic about the turn around, but there were mixed reactions as people found out I retreated back to waiting tables.

Some employees, like my manager, were genuinely happy to see me back. Others were pleasant, but they recognized this as a temporary move, the one-step-back to my next two-steps-forward. They understood the simple truth: sometimes, you just gotta make money.

The strangest reaction was from a young food runner named Rigo. Before I left, Rigo was my mentee of sorts: smart in his own way, a hard-worker for certain, but his own naiveties were often his own worst enemies. In the 9 months I’d been away, that naiveté had bloomed into a full blown sullenness, a FTW mentality, and I think he saw my return as a betrayal. Like, didn’t I tell him I was moving onto (bigger, better) things?

“What about everything you said?” he demanded. “About trying something once, then moving on? About always looking forward?”

“I tried,” I replied. “I tried something new. It didn’t work out. So now I have to rebuild before I try again.”

He shook his head, not understanding, and walked away.

The other noteworthy reaction I received happened last week, when I told another entertainment assistant that I moonlighted as a server. His eyes darted up from his Blackberry, as a flicker of recognition crossed his face. Then a hint of smugness with the words, “Oh yeah, we order from there all the time,” treating my statement as if it was an admission of humiliation. It wasn’t.

I’m not immune to what others think, though. There’s a reason why I still haven’t shared with my family that I returned to waiting tables, something I started when I was 14 years old. There’s a reason why my bosses don’t know why I cut out at six o’clock sharp on certain days of the week. Not humiliation per se; humility, however, is safely in the ball park. But there’s not a dumb egg amongst them, so it’s likely they already know – it’s just a matter of who’s going to bring it up first.

Then there’s my own pride I have to contend with, the idea that I am “too good” for this station in life. Last night, I approached a couple to get their order. The man looked me in the eye and said with a straight face, “I take it this is not your day job.” When I asked him if it was that obvious, he shrugged  and returned his gaze to the menu. “You stand out. You don’t belong here.” Then he ordered a vegetable pad thai.

It reminded me of my friend Karen’s father, a man whom I met only once. He was a multiple-Master-degree-bearing man who found himself jobless in 2008. He remained jobless as he uncollected his unemployment checks. And he continued to remain unemployed through 2009, and into 2010. His ex-wife, Karen’s mother, busted her ass to provide for Karen while he shrugged off his various parental duties, like child support, or being-the-fuck-around. Not that he didn’t receive job offers – he received several – but he refused to take one that was lower than his level of “prestige.” The jobs weren’t good enough, and he let his family suffer for it.

When I let that inkling of superiority creep in from the edges, threatening to leave me feeling ungrateful or entitled, I compare Karen’s father to my own. He had his own fiery and tumultuous rise in the restaurant business, where he reached an enviable level of success for someone barely into his 30’s. And when it all crashed down around him, he found himself set back further than where he started out seven years previous. My father, too, had to rebuild, but with a family of six, he had far more at stake.

He took on a blur of jobs during those years, as he worked to right his course. He managed sewing factories in Queens, a failing Chinese restaurant in Albany, then he tried getting his foot in the door at the chain restaurants. So between sending out resumes and going on interviews, my father started waiting tables again, swallowing his pride, and providing for his family.

Which is how I know that no matter my humility, or the smugness of others, or what any customer may say, I’m right where I belong.

Photos Credit: gttexas

Last updated on March 24th, 2017 at 06:52 pm

What do great assistants do?

At 24, my father owned his first restaurant. The first Chinese delivery spot in downtown Albany, with stats like quote you’d get off the phone with Lee Fong and the delivery boy was ringing your doorbell unquote. When five p.m. came ‘round, it was sweet ‘n sour and Moo Shu out the wazoo. And my father, he’d storm the kitchen, up to his nostrils in hand-scribbled orders, and 1X1 he’d Gatling gun it to his partner and chef, Sam.

As quick as he shouted orders, Sam prepped the ingredients into wire handled white boxes. His hands dove in and out of his prep fridge like a conductor’s stroking his orchestra into the climax.  No premeasured portions, this wasn’t no Subway operation run by teeny boppers paid minimum wage to pretend to be sandwich artists. Fresh broccoli crowns and snappy peapods and crisp baby corn was weighed by their texture against your palm, by their feel, not by numbers on a scale. Sauces didn’t come in La Choy glass bottles, they were recreated from pinches and dashes of soy, sesame oil, ketchup, salt, sugar, mirin. Nothing written down, nothing completely standardized. Every improvised off the top.

Ticket minders lined every wall, and by five thirteen, white tickets with mental math computed totals surrounded my father. He and Sam were very fast, very smart. Both retained information like a sponge retains E. coli. But those qualities alone didn’t make them a good team. That wasn’t what made them a success.

Anticipation made them a success. My father didn’t just read the orders; he watched Sam, constantly aware of how fast he was packing, that if he was packing Orange Chicken, he only memorized the next seven dishes and he forgot there were two Kung Pao dishes, not one. It was a jazz duo between the two, never missing a beat even as they trampled notes and forgot orders, because at the end of a string of tickets, Sam would ask, “What did I forget?”

And my father knew. No hesitation, straight off the top.

The story sticks, on this slow descent towards Santa Monica Blvd, after day one on a manager’s desk, my introduction on How to be an Assistant. It sticks because amidst the coagulated information on the brain stem, the major takeaway, the 90 to the 90/10 is: great people anticipate. Don’t matter the industry, of food or film, the most important skill is the ability to anticipate the needs of the people around you. That’s what makes someone an asset to cause and company. Anticipation.

It’s not some voodoo extra sensory perception, neither – no ting-tangling spidey-sense alerting you of lasers or sentient metal claws in the immediate vicinity. Good anticipation is measurable. Actionable.  It’s work and research and focus on the details that directly affect you. The other components of a good assistant: phones mechanics, conferences and schedules and messengering, how fast you read and write; all trimmings. Anticipation, attention to detail, that’s the turkey. Not just saying it, not just putting on the resume because it sounds good. Living it, breathing it, delivering on it:

What’s on next week’s schedule? Next month’s? What meetings must The Big Cheese take? With whom, pertaining to what deals? Where and at what time is each of these meeting? How many glances and double-checks till you’re positive? Are you confident enough to schedule appointments on the fly, Blackberry unattached to fist, and without a peek at Outlook?

How far back have you read their e-mail? What projects are in the works?  Are you researching everyone in the phone log: who they are, who they work for, what’s their relationship to your employer? Are you building your own mental dossier of the people in the business? Why not?

Who are the clients? Who are the important clients? How does he speak to them when he’s got them on the phone?

Do you know when to interrupt? Which calls to give him when says, “no calls?” After your third reminder of who he owes, do you know who he’ll actually return to and who he won’t?

Who is the competition? What is their relationship to these people?

The assistant position isn’t a fair one. It’s not fair to get dumped on with miscellaneous chore, to take on work outside of the job description, or to get screamed at for failure to communicate, especially when the failure happened on someone else’s end. It isn’t fair that mind reading is required to succeed as an assistant. But since when was any aspect of this industry fair? Agents and managers get paid to make deals, not have myelin coated communication channels. That’s what the assistant is for.

It can be frustrating, thankless work, executing the duties of an assistant at this standard. It’s easy to ask, “Is it worth it?” especially if joining the ranks of the Masters of the Universe isn’t the end goal.  Why kill yourself in this role if it’s not the angle you want to break into the industry?

Because people don’t align themselves with you because you’re acute or obtuse. They get on your side because they see you’re smart, that you’re going to be a success. And an IVY league diploma is hardly a guarantee of that. Getting the small details correct, following up on the miniscule, is.

Nailing the small details is the only way to prove you can handle the big ones.

Photo Credit: David Wheeler

Last updated on November 2nd, 2021 at 05:09 pm

People know if your heart isn’t in the right place. Don’t matter how smooth you are, how charming, how highly you think of your acting chops. You can be Debonair to the capital-“D,” but that doesn’t mean squat because heart isn’t seen or heard. It’s felt. Heart pours from the pores, and no amount of gleaming incisors or flirtatious grazing can reproduce them pheromones.

If you’re putting on a show, putting up a face to compensate for lack of heart, it’ll seep through the cracks. People front but can’t nobody front forever.

Everything starts with heart. The rest of the package matters: luck, talent, image; but a glossy veneer don’t hold much weight.

What is heart? It’s looking out for others, even/especially when they can’t help you in return. It’s networking with Priority One to put others in position for success, and developing your own career the ancillary mega. Heart is doing what you say you’re going to do.

The service industry – waiting tables – is primo case study for heart. The experiments happen in rapid succession, the outcomes are measurable and immediate (read: cash $) and servers wear their attitude like a paisley tie around the neck. There are servers who see customers with a dollar amount tattooed to their forehead. I don’t want to serve them because they don’t tip well – sometimes a judgment made on past experiences; more times than not, made based on race, dress, or apparent educational level.

Some treat serving as a reflection of themselves. The bartenders who talk more about themselves to the customer than vice versa (when did this start happening? When did it become okay?) Or the seasoned server, coaching trainees about her personal philosophy rather than the fundamentals of good service: When I serve, I’m on a stage, you know? I’m a fun server, I’m a flatter, I’m a schmoozer. (Why not try being professional and helpful, instead of working on your bit?) And the server who postures about, pretending to care beneath a waxy smile, who asks questions like, Is everything delicious? (if you’re not going to give them much of a choice, don’t waste your breath) and says My name is blah blah blah, feel free to ask for me next time (if they planned on it, they’d ask for your name.)

Then, there are servers who want their customers to have the best experience. They look the customer in the eye. They listen. When they train you, they say This is the proper way. This is best for the customer. When they work, they do things because it’s the right thing to do, not because they think they can glean more green.

In the long run, they’re the ones who earn the bigger tips, anyway. Because they didn’t have to rely on gimmicks or bits or up-selling to convince someone they cared.

They just cared.

Heart doesn’t always come easy. Especially not living in a city where it feels like few people are listening, and everyone’s looking out for themselves. But in the long-run, it makes life easier. Because you never have to look around to see what other people are doing, or how they’re doing it. You always walk tall – the consequences be damned – when you start with heart.

Photo Credit: Diego Santi