Please Tip Your Writer

I owe my followers on Vocal a little bit of an explanation for my signature on the majority of my posts. I had spent a good chunk of my years serving for a small-town family restaurant. The place has been near and dear to my heart for so many years because a part of me feels as if I grew up there. I grew up serving.

I remember the first tip that I ever got.

I was helping serve coffee when I was eight years old in my family's small town restaurant.

It was just a toonie, but it was a very valuable moment for me back then.

I truly loved everything about serving for the longest time. I had watched my mother work in restaurants from such a young age. And I always admired someone that was naturally a good server. It's something that I grew up doing.

I loved every single wedding that I had catered, served, and set-up. That was my favourite part of working for my family, the catering side of things. I sometimes wonder about how those couples are doing because of how my own little love life had turned out. Now I see myself never getting married. I loved serving, with every little bit of my heart.

I had spent a lot of my high school years behind the counter of a bakery cooler and serving customers. I grew up in a small-town restaurant, and I had loved every single thing about it. To some degree at least. A lot of my high school friends ended up joining our crew at work and it made it feel more meaningful back then. There were so many people in my life that enjoyed their experience working at my family's small-town business, that a whole bunch of my heart hurt when I left the place in the end.

Serving people changed my life in the best of ways possible. I view food service workers much differently after serving for as long as I did in a restaurant. I think that you can tell a lot about a person by how they respond to someone in the food-service industry. At least after the years, that I had spent there, I learnt a few things but mainly one thing. Just be kind to others. Even when you're struggling. It makes life go on a little more easily. Trust me, you never really can tell more about a person when they treat someone in the service industry like shit on a bad day. You never really know how that person behind the badge is feeling and you as the customer deserve respect but you also don't need to let yourself be rude. I learnt that fact after I stopped serving for a long while.

I used to coach my ex on how to treat other people. I spent a lot of my time explaining that not everything in the service industry is about you. It's a job like any other, it really is. It bothered me to no end when he was quite rude over a simple mistake that could be easily be corrected, and it happened for us, a little too frequently for it to always be the food service worker's fault in my opinion. I like to keep my chin held up extra high over what I have gone through with that man. Because I had been there many times before with the upset customer, I was more than sympathetic. I think more people need to be considerate of what other people are feeling, I really do.

I might have started writing on Vocal during a very lonely and odd time period in my life. And I missed that place that I had called home with an ever-living passion. I know that a piece of me will forever live on serving customers with a smile anywhere that I happen to go.

Chloe Rose Violet

P.S. Don't forget to tip your writer. :)