Some Things I Learned at a Restaurant
Date Written: September 30, 2022; Last Modified: September 30, 2022The summer between my last two years in high school, I was really bored and generally unfulfilled. A significant source of that was my lack of income and hence lack of money. My parents didn’t really see what I could use an allowance on, and they saw my one interest (video games) to be a complete waste of time and money. I thus starved myself for twenty bucks a week, which was my lunch money.
Anyways, twenty bucks a week was nothing, and I still spent some of it on snacks to keep me going throughout the school day. Plus, when summer started, I no longer “needed” lunch money, and I lost my reliable revenue stream.
I remember walking through downtown Mountain View, stopping by every restaurant on Castro St. that had a “Now Hiring” sign up. I was dressed in black sneakers (I wasn’t going to bike in dress shoes), black slacks with a brown belt, and a black button-up. I had hastily tucked my shirt in, and either my shirt or my belt was off-centre.
The place I ended up working at hired me on the spot. I walked into the restaurant the minute they opened (by chance), and the host got the manager for me. The manager was this short Japanese guy with goatee-adjacent facial hair, and he found me spacing out at the doorway. I told him that I had no experience and lots of free time, and I guess that’s good enough to get you a job.
My time there was truly special to me. I have a lot of resentment towards my high school, but work was safe. Work was consistent. It gave me money, it gave me freedom, and it gave my life meaningful structure. I learned so much from my coworkers and my manager, and I have so many heartwarming, sad, and weird stories that I want to immortalise.
Shabuway
First, let’s set the scene. The restaurant, which was called Shabuway, had since shut down. It was a shabu-shabu restaurant, but there was fierce competition from bigger, newer, and more Chinese hot pot restaurants in the same area.
Shabuway itself was relatively small. We only had 26 “tables”, 18 of which were single-seaters at a bar. I worked as a waiter most days, but I was in charge of slicing meat on Sundays.
Shabuway was perpetually understaffed. There was perhaps a single month of the year that I worked there where we had a comfortable number of people, but that was balanced by my lack of experience.
We got a 10-minute break every 4 hours, and we were allowed to buy (non-alcoholic) drinks for ourselves. It was my only source of Calpico and Ramune, two of my favourite soft drinks. We also had UCC Coffee, which my coworker and friend David and I decided must’ve had more than just coffee in it.
I usually got off work around 10 PM, sometimes later. On Monday nights, I would sometimes catch the open mic show at the coffee shop on the other corner. Other nights, I would buy pho or a snack and some boba at the cafe right behind our restaurant. I’d bike back home at around 11 PM, pass out after showering, and sleep through a class or two the next morning. Man, I miss that a lot.
Katsu
Katsu was the manager. Like I said, he was a short Japanese guy with an almost-goatee. I feel like Japanese people often have a reputation of being reserved, polite, and even timid, and I saw that side of Katsu when he was talking to customers.
Katsu may not have been far over five feet, but he worked out almost every day after work and could easily beat four giraffes in a fight. He had an intense work ethic, and I remember a several-month period where he didn’t have a single day off because we were so shortstaffed.
His temper was shorter than our staff. He yelled at me so much during my first two months working there because I was always messing up. I almost cried the first Tuesday I worked. It was so busy and I just couldn’t keep up. I didn’t know which tables needed sauce and which tables needed soup and which tables needed water and which tables needed rice and which tables needed food nd whatnot.
Every time he got pissed at me, he’d come up to me and say, “Hunter, c’mere.” We’d then step into the kitchen, where he’d then pop off on me for several minutes five feet away from the customers. Every day before work, I’d say to myself “I am not a pussy” before eating shit for four and a half hours.
As scary and stressful as it was, I’m honestly really grateful that Katsu didn’t take it easy on me or anyone else. Nobody hated him for it, either. Katsu was tough but fair, and he held himself to the same standard that he held us. He always had a reason to get mad, and it was always a good reason somehow.
I have two specific stories I want to share about Katsu.
First was the Memorial Day shift. Katsu came up to me asking for a favour. He asked if I got school off for Memorial Day, and he asked if I could come in for the lunch shift that Monday. I said yes, of course, and when I got there I found out that it was just Katsu, the chef, and I working the entire restaurant. On top of that, everyone was off school and work, so it was really busy. Katsu was able to seat and serve and clean up after every single table in the restaurant somehow, and he even stayed behind to help clean the dishes, mop the tables, and get set up for dinner.
I made my fair share of mistakes that day, like crowding eleven people onto eight seats (oops), and Katsu and I both knew that he didn’t have the time to chew me out. After the shift was over and the two of us were cleaning the restaurant up, he called out to me just after I clocked out. I thought he was gonna yell at me or something, but he pulled out a twenty from his own pocket and told me to get something nice to eat before the dinner shift. I could see the exhaustion on his face, and I suppose he saw it on mine too.
Second was a Friday night sometime in November or so. Winter months were busy, and winter Fridays were lethal. One of our waitresses had just quit on us too, so everyone was high-strung and overworked. I was standing behind the bar, scanning the tables and customers to see if there was anything to do. Did anybody need a drink refill? To get an order taken? Was anyone waiting for the check? Did we get all the food out?
Katsu walked up to my side, and using his divine restaurant intellect to sense my anxiety, he said something like, “You can chill out for a moment.”
He sighed and leaned against the wall beside me, and I felt like we were two criminals lining up for a firing squad. After a brief silence, he said, “How many people do you think get dinner here every day? Probably two to three hundred, huh?” He smiled to himself, and his eyes caught the warm lights from the restaurant. “Isn’t it so cool that all these different people come here to eat every day? For birthdays and for dates and for just dinner?” It was the first time I’ve ever seen someone look truly happy and proud and fulfilled.
The moment was fleeting. Inevatably, some chubster wanted the check or something, and one of the tables left, and things got busy again. Nevertheless, the memory persisted, and I still think about that look on his face from time to time.
Katsu ended up going back to Japan when Shabuway closed. He said his goal was to save enough money so that he could come back to America and start his own restaurant one day.
I really looked up to Katsu. He was far from perfect, but he was perfectly aware of that and was always trying to do better.
Dara
Dara was the waitress that trained me, and so she was the first friend I made while working there. She was just a few years older than me. She had wavy hair that fell to her waist, which would have been impressive if she was taller than 4 feet.
In stark contrast to Katsu, Dara was a really chill and laid-back person, and yet she still managed to keep up with the intense and busy winter nights. It was later revealed to me that Dara was high (weed, not coke) pretty much every shift she worked. I could never tell, but I guess that means I just never saw her sober.
We both worked full Sundays, and between the lunch and dinner shifts, we both frequented the boba cafe two doors away from work. I started going to that cafe so often that the barista had memorised my order, and my food would sometimes be ready for me before I was even done ordering. Dara and I would also often nap in the corner booths and tables.
She was even a legend at my high school. Apparently, she wore a TMNT backpack to school every day. Perhaps my favourite story was when she (allegedly!) brought a thermos full of vodka with her one day and finished it by the end of lunch. She fell asleep for three straight hours during her next class, and neither the teachers nor the bell were able to wake her up. It wasn’t until school was out that she woke up.
My family and parents were heavily anti-drug when I was growing up, and they probably would’ve told me to quit if I had told them about Dara’s antics. Despite the heavy stigmas against her lifestyle and habits instilled in me (and since lost, thanks to college life), I felt that I respected her far more than the people my parents wanted me to look up to.
A by-product of the frankly toxic academic environment that I called “high school” was that so many people tried so hard to look “good”, whatever that meant. I think this is a normal teenager thing — we all try really hard to look “cool” before we figure out what that word means — but it was taken to an academic extreme.
Dara was just a good coworker, a good friend, and a great person, and I don’t even know if she knew that. She just kind of lived her life the way she wanted to, and her existence was overall really positive.
One particularly Monday, Katsu was doing something in the back rooms while Dara and I just hung out in the front, watching the two people in the restaurant eat. Around an hour and a half before closing, Dara told me I could probably get stared on restocking drinks in the fridge, something we usually only did just before we closed.
Unbeknownst to me, a new table got seated not long after I ducked into the kitchen, and Katsu got insanely pissed. “What are you doing? Who told you to restock the drinks?”
I didn’t say anything, not wanting to throw Dara under the bus, but she overheard the conversation and told Katsu what happened. Katsu didn’t care and continued chewing me out anyways.
I don’t think I can put a finger on precisely why this incident stood out to me so much, but I think it’s because it highlighted what I looked up to so much in Dara. I think my view of her was tainted by her lifestyle; I thought she was impure, and I had stereotyped her as a directionless addict. In reality though, she had a really strong heart and moral compass, and I was just blind to it.
If you’ve ever been yelled at by a parent or by an intense boss, you know how scary and tense it can get. Looking back, I’m not sure I would’ve done what Dara did for me that day, had our positions been reversed.
Regulars
The customers were the best part of the job, and there were so many regulars that I loved seeing every now and again.
There was this guy who showed up at the exact same time nearly every single evening, wearing the exact same outfit, and ordering the exact same food. Katsu never even had to take his order; I don’t even remember having to get him a menu or anything. One day in February, he disappeared. Either he moved or got a new job or found somewhere better, who knows.
There was an elderly couple that always showed up the second we opened for lunch on Sundays. They also ordered the same thing every time. Katsu would still take their orders, but we’d prepare their food before we even opened the doors. They would always thank us extensively, and that always brought a smile to my face.
Every month or so, this woman who definitely consumed a rabit’s soul (in a good way) would show up to dinner. She was always alone, and she was always really polite and friendly. One fateful day, perhaps about three months after I started recognising her as a regular, she showed up with a guy, presumably a date! I remember sneaking peeks at their table and wondering if the date was going well (I’m sorry I’m nosy!). Unfortunately, she never showed up after that, and I have to wonder if the date really did go that badly.
I found out in October that one of my classmates was a regular. Katsu recognised them and struck up a conversation, which told me they were regulars. The only reason I found out was because I was moved from Wednesday dinners to Thursday dinners. I was mortified. We weren’t friends or anything, so I felt so incredibly awkward the entire time they were there. Oh god. I think they started eating there on Wednesdays instead because of me.
One regular that didn’t disappear was a guy that looked like a retired rock star and was stingy with words. “How many?” He’d just hold up a single finger. “What can I get for you?” He’d reply by pointing at the menu, sparing the two words “extra carrots”. I remember he used to tip me with pennies, which was messed up because he paid with a card. He tipped better when I got better, though.
During one of the few weekday lunch shifts I’ve ever worked, a woman waltzed in at around 2 and asked if she could be seated at one of the tables for four despite being alone. “It’s more comfortable when I have more space, plus you guys don’t have any other customers right now.” I asked Katsu just to be sure, and he said “Oh yeah she always does that, I think that’s why she comes so late.”
Quitting
In April or May, my mom asked me to get her friend’s son Eric a job at Shabuway. I told Katsu about Eric and that he would be able to work through the summer; since I planned to quit in June, he would serve as a temporary replacement until they could find and train someone more permanent.
Oh god, what a mistake that was. I was a terrible coworker for the first month or two I worked there, and Eric was pretty awful too. But it wasn’t his glaring incompetence that irked everyone, it was the fact that he didn’t care. He dragged his feet to get people food, but he sprinted out the door when his shift was over.
Apparently, it never got better. Katsu ended up cutting Eric’s shifts until he was only working a single day a week, and the only reason Eric didn’t get fired was because of his connection to me. I would go back and eat at Shabuway every week or two over the summer, and my ex-coworkers and friends would tell me all sorts of horror stories associated with Eric.
One week, I went to Shabuway for lunch, and my friend and ex-coworker David ran up to me and said, “Oh my god Hunter you won’t believe what Eric did.”
Eric had taken the assistant manager Henry’s non-slip shoes. They were too small for Henry, and they were pretty pricey, so Henry planned on returning them. They disappeared before he could, however, and nearly three months later, Henry notices that Eric’s wearing his shoes.
Of course, Henry confronts Eric about it, and I get thrown under the bus. “Hunter told me I could wear them!”
I’m very grateful that Henry didn’t believe him, and everyone else was on my side. I think I would’ve been boiled alive and then shot in the face if they weren’t. I’m still mildly pissed about the whole thing.
Drama and getting yelled at aside, I’m really grateful that I worked at Shabuway, and there’s a lot of people that I haven’t talked about in order to keep this digestible. Ronaldo, Daniel, Hector (AKA “Chewie”), Henry, Frankie, and a lot more people had left several footprints in my life, and I’m so happy that they have.
My family was actively against my employment there. It took time away from my academics, which resulted in me getting a few B’s in classes I often slept through, and to take my uncles’ words, it was a “waste of my time and intellect.”
I learned so much more from that job than I ever did in high school. Where my classmates sought ways to cut corners and cut class, my coworkers taught me about responsibility and showed me a work ethic that was completely unrivaled in school. Where my teachers sometimes assigned classwork that was thrown out by the end of class, I felt that my time at work was productive and valuable, even though it was so unremarkable and mundane from the outside.
I sometimes wonder why I care so much about that job; I’ve had several others since then, and there are millions of others that have worked in restaurants all over the world. What makes this one so special? Nothing, really.
That being said, Shabuway was special to me the way everyone’s family or friends are special. It’s been wiped off the face of the earth by the Covid pandemic, but I hope it never gets wiped from my memory and identity. Thanks for reading.