Amy Lu's View

One of the (few) good things my mom had to say about my dad is that he was a good tipper.

He was reportedly consistently nice to servers. I remember my mom telling a story about a time when a carhop spilled an entire tray of food in his lap at a drive in and he just shrugged it off. 

My dad is a good role model for how we should treat servers on this National Hospitality Workers Appreciation Day. 

Even though I worked years and years (and years) in customer service with retail and library work (and still supervise staff who do this), I’ve never worked at a restaurant or bar. 

When I was a kid, I did pretend that I worked at Burger Chef, and used to get napkins and condiments for the whole family when we visited (Burger Chef, a now defunct fast food chain, was a big outing for the Luedke Family in the 70s.) I also used to threaten to sell my sister to Burger Chef when I got mad at her. 

Now that I think about it, I don’t think anyone in my immediate family ever worked in hospitality, although they certainly worked in people facing professions (army, teaching). 

I can only imagine how stressful customer service must be when you add food and/or alcohol to the mix–people get emotional enough about books and library services. I certainly get emotional about food and drink. 

I try hard not to be that customer, but I do sometimes embarrass Chad. Mostly, I’m just that middle-aged white lady who asks for dressing on the side (#stereotype). I don’t think that’s too extreme–even when I send a salad back if there is a mixup and I get a fully dressed salad. But I have definitely had breakdowns when a place is unexpectedly out of vegetarian food or it’s taking an extra long time to get our food when we’re trying to get to a show. While I don’t directly aim those breakdowns at our servers, I’m sure they don’t enjoy being caught up in my emotional swirl. 

Writing this post is making me reminisce about one of our favorite places–Sanctuary– that, like Burger Chef, is also unfortunately no more. That is the only similarity between Sanctuary and Burger Chef. And unlike Burger Chef, I didn’t have to pretend to work at Sanctuary, as it had marvelous staff and an owner, Michael, who was just a delight–warm, personable, funny. He made every visit to Sanctuary special. Sadly, Michael died years ago, and is greatly missed. 

Even though I know working in a restaurant or bar must be extremely challenging, I do have a fantasy of owning a bar. I’d probably call it Chamy’s, although I’m not sure how involved Chad would be. Or maybe StanLee’s  But in my fantasy, I can work whenever I want, perform whenever I want (Amy at an open mic would always be a possibility), and tell people to f*#k off whenever I want. 

What could be more hospitable than that?