i've worked in various restaurant positions, mostly in kitchens and not with a whole lot of skill in the way that you need skill to cook in a resto and not for yourself or a dinner party. i don't think they changed me. what i learned about was the importance of who you work with and of functioning as a team. i also learned about differing coping strategies people had for stress and the ways in which kitchen workers and alcohol abuse often go together. it was fun, all in all. i'm glad i don't do that any more though.
i waited tables briefly until i told someone to fuck themselves. i was carrying a tray full of glasses through the bar that separated the diningroom from the kitchen in the racket club where i worked. it was polka night. i remember seeing a very large white object dressed like a sofa moving quickly toward me in a kind of polka intoxication. she steamed into me and i stumbled toward a row of people in low chairs who were drinking, watching other people play tennis and lying to each other about their own games. i managed not to drop the tray on anyone or break any glasses, but i did run into someone who started yelling at me about tennis elbow. fuck yourself seemed both logical and necessary.
i was a busboy when i was in high school. i had to wear black pants. the pants i bought weren't correct. the maitre d' told me they reminded him of a small town without a dance hall. no ballroom.
i worked at the harvard coop in a print department for a while. i hated every minute of it until i figured out that it was easy to steal books on the way out at night.
i worked in a record store for a little while. for reasons i dont remember but which probably had to do with drugs i got the job while pretending to be english. one day i forgot that i was english. management decided there was something fishy about me. one day you're english, the next day you're not someone said to me. so it appears i wish i had said in return.
i didn't learn much from either of those gigs. but i took away from them more or less what charlatan said. people are fuckwits. try not to be one.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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