Trading Places at the Red Apple

A couple months ago a good friend of mine, Eric Hansen, and I spent about 90 minutes talking about all the restaurants we had worked in.  You'd think that a conversation like that would take, at max 5 minutes.  But when between the two of us we have 37 restaurants and 37 combined years of experience, just talking about where we worked turned into a lecture.

In the summer of 1994 I moved to Walla Walla, Washington after graduating from Dakota Adventist Academy.  (please explore this hyperlink and find the snow pictures...the dorms are under snow drifts for 3 months of the winter)  Never mind, I just added the hyperlinks...*shrug*.  I enrolled in Walla Walla College, and the first job that I got was working as a landscaper for the grounds department.  It was physical work, and I enjoyed it.  But it was a lot of hours for little money.  I didn't like being a clock watcher, and there is nothing more dreary to me than the thought and lifestyle of a 9 to 5 job. 

After, a month of working my ass off in the heat, digging waterlines, hauling dirt, changing sprinkler heads, mowing lawns, and watering flowers, I was bored stiff and needed some social interaction.  One of my first dining experiences in Walla Walla was at a restaurant called "The Red Apple".  It was a 1950's style greasy spoon diner in downtown Walla Walla that was open 24 hours.  They had terrible food that was cheap and it was a great place for college students to go, drink coffee, do homework, or just hang out.  I was enchanted with the place, and it was always busy, and for peets sake, they had the BEST CHOCOLATE MALTED ever conceived of.  It was great...they used high quality ice cream, and served it in those old-timey parfait glasses with the tin on the side that essentially had an extra milkshake left over...the malt was caked to the metal sides of the tin, and scraping it off with the silver spoon that they served it with was amazing...it was like being back in utero. 

While I did not have a ton of restaurant experience, I had worked at Pizza Hut for a couple summers, and worked in my High School Cafeteria, I thought that the Red Apple would be a fantastic place to work.  Think of all the free Malteds you could have....the opportunities were endless.  Needless to say I filled out an application, and a few weeks later got a phone call to interview (which really wasn't an interview...the manager asked me if I was available to work the following Sunday) for a bus boy position.  "Ok..." I think to myself, I can do that for a few extra dimes through the summer.

I report to work on a Sunday morning...I guess I was working Sunday Brunch but at the time it was all just breakfast to me...and I spent the entire day there.  I was there from 7am till around 6:30 that evening.  It was one of those situations where you don't really need any training, and they knew it. They showed me how to set up the table and from there I was totally left alone until the end of the day.  The Manager at the restaurant was so disinterested in what was going on that she never even bothered to ask me my name, then asked me to wait till after my shift to fill out paperwork.  It was a total shit-show.  It's amazing that it even functioned.  But it was a great learning experience for me to assess that not all places that you like are great places to work.  I never bothered to go back as an employee after that day.  I never filled out paperwork or even bothered to ask anyone about a check.  I did return as a patron and no one ever recognized me or said another word.  I took a job as a dishwasher at Jacobi's Cafe not long after, and worked my way up to Waiter in less than a month.

After reminiscing with Eric that night, for some reason that one day at Red Apple was sticking out in my mind.  I learned with great definition what I didn't want as an employee, and that may have been an important lesson for me.

I am briefly reminded of the '80's classic comedy Trading Places.  I think everyone needs to be on the other side of the service fence for at least one day.  You will find a new appreciation for what it takes to be a servant.  Everyone struggles with their own ego and compartmentalizes who they are as an individual, when you are busy scraping discarded food into a 30 gallon trash bin filled with 150 other peoples discarded food.  People would be humbled by the strung out dishwasher eating dead food from those plates (vulturing as we put it).  I think the most important lesson people would learn if they spent one day in our shoes, is that the great hierarchy that we put in place for ourselves, is just a facade.  It takes everyone to make the whole thing run, and I refuse to accept the fact that we as humans should ever be placed any kind of pecking order.  The "vulturing" dishwasher is often more at peace with who he is as an individual, than the hot shot 30 year old rich businessman, who will spend energy attempting to prove that they are a better person that you strictly because they have more money.  This has been a popular theme as long as there has been a wide separation between the 2%-ers, and the rest of us.  And with 6 billion people on the planet, it's easier to find something in common with everyone you come in contact with, than it is to dwell on our differences.  Thank you, Red Apple, for teaching me a valuable lesson of compassion, and equality.  And you didn't even have to pay me do learn it!!!