0:00 From about the age of 18 till maybe 25, I worked as a waiter in about 13 different restaurants I think. 0:07 And I would bounce around a lot, due to being really reactive and triggered and I tended to think 0:13 that the grass was always greener somewhere else. And I did that work from graduating high school till about a year or two after graduating College, 0:20 until I really just couldn't do it anymore. And by the end restaurants weren't good for me, 0:26 and I wasn't good for restaurants, which is kind of a life lesson. I think my trauma kept me in that industry too long, 0:33 for fear of failing at something new, or not being able to make it in something healthier. 0:38 And that's something I see with my own clients, despite what kind of job they have, restaurants or not. 0:43 And I eventually got emotionally healthy, and confident enough to take a risk and leave for something more professional- 0:50 with regular hours and better quality of life for me. But I didn't grow up in a family system 0:55 that helped you take healthy risk or taught you to value or believe in yourself. 1:01 So going after something better was really foreign and sort of quite terrifying for me. 1:07 And despite all that, I think that everyone should actually spend at least a year working in restaurants, 1:13 to learn about yourself, to learn about humanity, and to become more in tune with how the world works, 1:19 and to make something happen for better or worse, with all different types of people. I was able to pay my rent and pay through undergrad, 1:28 and it gave me some income and flexibility to do all that, working in restaurants. I learned how to swear in Portuguese 1:35 and I can swear in Haitian Creole. I learned to appreciate someone else's hard work, and I also know that no matter what country you're from, 1:42 humans are the same in the way that we all need to make a buck to survive, and build some kind of life for ourselves. 1:48 Also, I'm eternally grateful for that period in my life actually in that work, where there are people 1:55 that I worked with in restaurants, that I still miss and love, and what got me to therapy and recovery 2:00 and where I am today, was actually a fellow server. A really good friend could see how traumatized I was, 2:07 and he just gave me the number of his therapist and that was the end of it. That's what got me here.
But after about seven years of that type of work, 2:14 you really start to rethink your life every time you pick up a plate and your thumb lands in someone else's food. 2:21 So anyway, about work triggers, which is what this video is about. All restaurants have this thing 2:27 that wait staff need to do, called 'side work', (and I don't know why I'm putting it in quotes), but it means that you have to get the restaurant ready for business 2:37 or set up for the following day. It means that you get in an hour or so before your shift, and you essentially do unpaid work. 2:45 Or at least that's how I saw it. Wait staff have historically made about $2.50 here in the US 2:51 and the rest of your income comes from tips. So, the restaurant's argument is that it's the wait staff's responsibility 2:59 to set up the place, unpaid, because they reaped the most benefit from the sales and the commission of the food, wine, 3:06 and all that kind of stuff; where other people in the restaurant were hourly employees. 3:11 And that $2.50 per hour covered things like social security and taxes here in the US. 3:16 It's been years, and I know I'm giving an overly simplified version of this, but that's kind of low down, 3:23 as it was when I worked as a waiter in the 90s. Side work can range from making stupid lobster boats, 3:29 which is like a bib with a lobster on it, and metal crackers to crack open the shells, 3:35 and a paper bucket to put the shells in, to rolling silverware, polishing wine glasses, marrying ketchup, 3:42 Google 'marrying Ketchup' if you want to be grossed out, there's also polishing silverware making butter ramekins, 3:50 if you are working a breakfast shift, there's a special hell on earth, if you're a breakfast server in a breakfast restaurant. 3:55 Here's the trigger about side work, coming back to the hourly wage, you could show up before opening your shift, 4:02 do all that side work, get ready, have a pre-shift meal or whatever, and be cut and sent home if you wanted to. 4:08 If there wasn't any real business that night. So all that might be different, 4:13 if you were making even a minimum hourly wage, it would at least be not so demoralizing 4:21 because you just wasted about four to five hours of your day getting there and back and doing all that, though in reality, sometimes you'd make great money. 4:29 But the work was incredibly hard for it on a busy night with high sales.
But the restaurant usually saw it like it was money that you fell into, 4:38 or that they provided that opportunity for you; rather than you working very hard for it. 4:44 That was the kicker or the nature of these triggers. So the vibe in the restaurant was that servers have the easiest job 4:50 and made the most money, and anyone that's ever done it, I'm sure would argue quite strongly on that. 4:57 So there was always this intense animosity between the front of the house, which was like servers, and the back of the house, which was sort of cooking and prepping 5:05 and managing all that stuff. It was rare to work in a place that you didn't have that toxic dynamic going on, 5:11 and it's a lot like the toxic family roles or sibling rivalry, and I'm getting more to that. 5:16 So anyway, like with most servers, I hated side work. Not so much for doing it, 5:22 but what was implied behind it; like the labor message behind it felt like: 5:27 'You should be grateful to do all this extra work, because you have to value the restaurant, because the restaurant does so much for you, for your meager life.' 5:35 Does that sound anything like your family? That you're beholden to them, for your very existence. 5:42 So I know I'm going out on a limb here, but stay with me.. ...that you should be perpetually grateful for your income, 5:49 or that if you're frustrated with unpaid work, you have a horrible attitude...all that stuff. 5:55 Restaurant management loves to shame servers, much like a toxic parent does. That was my experience; I know that sounds weird, 6:02 but restaurant managers were sort of like my nemesis in those years. So, to explore this trigger around side work, 6:09 I grew up in a highly abusive family, that gave me a complex around fairness, and the idea of give and take. 6:16 I don't think I've met a childhood trauma survivor yet that didn't have issues around fairness, probably for good reason; 6:23 but in a funny way one of my mentors sort of said, I'll never forget it when he said like, 6:28 I have a highly overdeveloped sense of fairness, and I knew exactly what he meant.
So in my family my father, who had narcissistic personality disorder, 6:38 in addition to alcoholism, always made you jump through hoops if you needed something 6:44 that was like a basic parenting kid thing, like if I needed a permission slip signed or some money for a field trip or lunch money, 6:50 there was always this manipulation around it like: 'well, go do the dishes, clean the kitchen, take out the trash, 6:56 and I'll think about it'. And I'm like, eight! It wasn't the parenting around healthy chores 7:01 or contributing to the household. It was something for something, when it came to my dad. And he'd use basic needs as leverage to manipulate, 7:10 I wonder if that sounds familiar? He saw the needs of his children and others, as an opportunity for himself. 7:16 Kind of like side work in my mind. The restaurant benefits from all that free labor, 7:22 and all the places that I worked in, created this shameful narrative about it that would trigger me. 7:27 So later in life whether it was jobs, college, a bureaucracy like the cable company, or an insurance company, 7:34 making me jump through hoops used to be a major trigger for me, that would get me enraged. 7:40 And I'd have an over the top reaction to such things, not knowing it was coming from how I grew up. 7:47 And at this stage in my life, I'm so much more chill, things roll off my back. If I have to get on the phone with the cable company, 7:53 I see them as more human, and I don't feel persecuted by all that. But that wasn't always the case. 7:58 So where am I going with all this? Well, I spent most of my time in restaurants triggered to feeling like I was being taken advantage of 8:05 or being made to jump through hoops, real or imagined. My work environments would take me right back to my family system 8:13 and my childhood trauma in some way, and it created a lot of unnecessary suffering 8:18 about just normal kind of work. This is what I would bring into these places. 8:24 A job is just a job, and way more well-adjusted co-workers than me, saw a job simply for what they were. 8:31 But I projected a lot of my family system onto the places of employment that I was in. 8:36 I made things into moral issues all the time, because I was trying to solve and process the moral dysfunction, 8:42 and the unfairness in my own childhood. I think many of us do that in our work, 8:47 and in our romantic relationships, unconsciously. I was the common denominator in all that.
8:53 Trauma survivors like me and my clients, often find themselves stuck battling a job in some way, 9:00 much like they battle their family in some way. So as a reminder, I'm not saying it's one thing over the other. 9:07 I was triggered by side work to my family system, but no shocker here, the service industry 9:12 typically does take advantage of its employees. Both things are true, but our childhood trauma stuff and triggers 9:20 is what's going on with it, or what we can really control and work on it. So the funny thing is, because of all that I wasn't a very good employee. 9:29 In fact, I was a crappy one, despite the one-sided employment stuff that I would find myself in. 9:36 I was always baffled by folks who kept their head down, and did their job and left it at that. 9:41 That was way more healthier than what I brought in. So I found that working for myself makes me much happier, 9:50 where I'm not in a system that doesn't do right by people, whether it's me or the clients or whatever. 9:56 I'm not good in those places, and I'd like you to think about what makes you not good in a job. 10:02 What is it about a job that puts you at your worst? Is it swimming against the tide of battling a dysfunctional place? 10:09 Is it trying to get validation from a very cold, inhumane system? Think about what it means for you, 10:15 and think about you in that system and why it triggers you. This video will help with that. 10:22 As a side note, the biggest lesson that I've learned, is that no matter what I do inside emotionally, 10:28 that won't make the place less abusive or wrong for me. A lot of us have magical thinking 10:35 that if we change our internal system totally, then we can tolerate a place or be happy at a place. 10:41 That's not always true. I've tried to do that many times.
