Humility

It seems the more blogs I read, the more I feel unworthy, but then I snap myself out of it and try to mine the untold stories stored in my head. Coming up, more tales of the absurd...

If I had a dollar for every application I've had tossed my way, I'd own Google. It never ceased to amaze me the variety of people who came in to my assorted restaurants to apply.

In North Miami Beach, one of my Assistant Manager peers took a call from a teen half-way house, and instead of getting all the info on their charges, basically told them to send everyone in for an interview. True, we needed bussers in a bad way, but, Jeez, this was something. All these poor kids came in the same outfit: ill-fitting white shirts; cinched pants, two sizes too large; spit shined shoes; desperate eyes darting around our fine establishment. I later learned that the only way out of their boot-camp-like existence was to hold a job for six weeks. All were African-American, and all were polite to a T. I would have hired a couple if they had been over 18. I needed bussers who could stay longer at night than they were allowed to. They had to be back in camp by 9pm, and that being South Florida, that's the height of business. There was one kid in particular that broke my heart. Obviously ex-gang, his whole face was covered in tattoos. I was pretty non-plussed talking to him without staring. How would he ever get any job dealing with the public? This poor kid was destined to have crap jobs the rest of his life. He was so polite, but then, they all were. They all tried so hard, but there was no way I could hire any of them, they'd have to leave at the beginning of our dinner rush. If my dufus co-worker had taken two minutes to ask a few questions of the case-worker, it would have saved me a couple hours time, since he wasn't scheduled to be there the day of the interviews ( How Convenient!).