At the beginning of August in 2005 I started my career as a professional server when I graduated Olive Garden's severe training. Even though is a huge corporation that Olive Garden belongs to, their server training for their restaurants is pretty intense and it covers all the important aspects of being a professional server in one week. After the training you are supposed to be knowledgeable with setting the time pace with the guests to ensure they have a delightful experience at the restaruant (their so-called "HOSPITALIANO"), wine/beer and Italian food of course. As simple as being a server might seem, there is a lot of stress to be handled. I think the restaurant business is very vulnerable when it comes to customer service since dining is apparently a very delicate activity for human beings. Basically you have to understand what are you doing otherwise both the customer and yourself will suffer a bad experience.In the month of July of 2006 I was hired at Billy Berk's in Skokie, Illinois. This is a restaurant that belongs to a small San Francisco, Ca. based chain. It is hard to classify their style but they call themselves "American comfort food with style" . They have a little bit of everything and their desserts are pretty massive. This restaurant is a little more family style in which there's at least one head chef in charge of each shift in order to make sure every single aspect of the kitchen is working right to ensure the customers are having a "fine" dining experience if you like to call it that way. Here's actually a picture I decided to take so you can understand what is it like when they get ready for a busy night shift:
It is important to recognize and give credit to ourselves every once in a while because it is hard work honestly. Nobody else is going to give us credit but ourselves, so I dedicate this article to give sincere congratulations to the team i work with and myself. Keep up the great work!
Even though being a professional server is something I will rather not do for a long time, especially because holding a meat plate for somebody is one of the most ironic things that I could be doing with the ideologies i try to keep in my life, I think I've learned lots from it and I hope it will help me in my future projects in life.
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By the way, I've served a few tables with people from Scotland lately and it's been more than a pleasure to do that because they have excellent table manners, great sense of humor and very well educated. Serving seems like a career that might have a certain social status in that country!
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