the fluffy and the not so fluffy

I’m surprised by the mildness of my headache.

Is that a strange thing to announce? Not if one has just gotten back from Tobin James Industry night. I had never been to one of these events before, and let me just say, I have been missing out. Here’s the rundown:

Free food was provided, including ridiculous delicious items like Kobe beef hot dogs, barbecued oysters, wood fired fresh pizzas, and my favorite item of the evening… Plush Puffs Gourmet Marshmallows. I realize I’m sounding like an ad here, but the marshmallows are insane. I brought home two bags of the lemon kind. Not to mention annoyed Ryan and Patrick and roughly another thousand people with my drunken marshmallow ramblings:

“Oh we have to get somah those marshmallOHs now ‘fore we go. And then shmore wine!”

The wine itself was good too… All of us agreed that we liked the sangiovese the best, which is weird since normally my uneducated palate doesn’t agree with Ryan and Patrick’s fancier, wine-employee opinions. We brought home a bottle of that as well.

On a totally different note, work has been… special. I’ve always understood that there’s no job security at the restaurant… That’s the management’s intention. It matches their style, which could be summed up as: ‘People who are afraid of being fired all the time won’t dare fuck up.’ Unfortunately for them, that’s not how the universe actually operates. It’s hard to threaten a bunch of people in their early twenties with possible firing because most people in their early twenties still kind of like the idea of being out of work, it equates to summer vacation.

I feel like the best managers treat employees as individuals and educate them so that they can do better work. Occasionally this takes place at the restaurant, but it’s tempered by constant friction between the owner and the managers that flows like lava down the employee chain of command.

And to get at what I’m really trying to get at, the things one can get fired for are just innapropriate. Take one of my coworkers for instance: He’s college aged, taking a speech class. (It just so happens that the owner of the restaurant is also a city councilman.) In his speech class he gave a speech about the impending downfall of San Luis Obispo, and placed a lot of blame on the city council, and particularly on the restaurant owner. These are his opinions, he is allowed to voice them, and the speech was obviously well-crafted because the response it garnered was unusual… It got him fired.

Only for a few hours, but nonetheless, the owner heard about the speech (because apparently a third of the class contacted him? Because that’s somehow alright?) and then proceeded to call my coworker and fire him over the phone. Because of a speech based on political opinions that have nothing to do with work.

In the end the worker got his job back on the condition that he would help the owner campaign for re-election. Wow. Viva la democracy.