GatewayRedbirds.com

Every dinner shift, all but four lunch shifts and two deliveries. The last shift tonight on about 2 hours of sleep.

On the bright side, my paycheck at the end of this week is going to be awesome. (Yes, I get my tips on paychecks as opposed to being cashed out - goofy as hell but probably saves my irresponsible ass money so I can live with it.)

I did like 62 straight days- mostly doubles- way back when. No time to spend any so at the end of the tunnel I had enough cash to quit and fund my travels to Alaska.

I am dreading hitting the holiday season here and starting this lifestyle through about February. Ugh.

I worked with a guy from Bulgaria that wanted to pay off some student loans and worked something like 13 shifts a week for almost a year straight. He was the most pleasant guy in the restaurant and never [expletive] about a single tip, coworker or anything encase you can think of. It was astounding.

Almost every Latino cook I know works two jobs. Our badass Honduran saute guy has turned down a 50 hr/wk salary position in favor of his two hourly jobs because then he couldn't have both and it would be a big paycut.

I work four ~8 hr shifts a week and by the end of it I'm praying for a Biblical plague to wipe out the restaurant. I guess I used to do stuff like that every once in a while, but I don't know how some people do it.

Last year's bar I was on 5 11 hours a week, often 6, working til 5am. Got a super cushy gig this year where we closed at 11pm, and I was working 30 hours a week (and making like 80% of the stupid last joint). Some shady business going on there, and left. Now I am gonna go back to late night bar life and do 50+ again. Sigh.

Once you get used to simply never being home or having friends, it's not that bad. I guess. That's what I said for all of 2014 or so.

I sold my stake in the restaurant I owned recently to my now ex-partners there and took a Beverage Director job at a fairly big-time place. The last place, the one I was a partner in, we closed at 12 and I had to clean for a couple hours after when I worked the bar and regularly got home at 2:30-3am. My wife basically gave me an ultimatum a few months ago that it was that or her, and I'm glad she drew that line because I was probably fooling myself that it was ok for me and my life. The place I'm at now closes at 10, and the couple nights a week I'm behind the stick I'm breaking down the bar at like 9:59:59 and getting home regularly by 11:30. It has been a massive upgrade in quality of life. I'm glad I work a restaurant-bar and not a bar-bar. Some of my colleagues who work/own bar-bars go home regularly at 6am because they close at 2 (3 on weekends) and have to get everyone out, then need 4 hours to clean and close at the end of the night. Even if working a job like that meant pulling $500-600/night in tips, I could never do it.

Oh god yeah, most of my friends that also work service work at bars and not restaurants so I never see them. I'm done 10 pm at the latest except for extraordinary circumstances so it never impedes on my social life.