Amanda Kullman-Kipp, General Manager, BLT Market, HRA Board Director
This month, instead of focusing on one industry professional, I take the time to put the spotlight on all of those in the restaurant and hospitality business. Our industry is already, often, thankless, grueling and demanding. The holidays are no exception. In fact, it’s ten-fold. We get beat up, fatigued, overtaxed for ten, twelve, sixteen hours a day. We grab a beer, let off some steam with our dead-on-our-feet comrades and wake up a few short hours later to do it all again…with a smile on our faces, because that’s our job. And, we LOVE it.
I imagine you can’t recall the number of times a family member or non-hospitality friend has said “you’re crazy” or “I don’t know how you do it” or “why do you do this to yourself”. Often we ask ourselves the same questions. Why do we choose to work in a profession where we get yelled at by h-angry guests, sometimes treated like garbage, why do we spend hours sweating over a flaming grill all night?
The answer? It’s fun! It’s exhilarating! This is what we are meant to do! We have the privilege of working with a family of strong willed, eager, success driven charismatic individuals. Our business is not just a job. It’s our passion. It’s our dedication to one another that gets us up in the morning! Cheering ourselves out of bed to be physically beaten down by another double, sometimes triple, so that we don’t let our guests down and we don’t let our work family down.
We do it because our guests depend on us. We are brought into the lives of so many people. Our guests choose to spend their happiest times celebrating in our restaurants. We have the honor of being invited into the lives of hundreds of people a week. Some that we may never see again. Others stay with us for years and become part of our restaurant family, too. We have the jobs that make people happy. We get the privilege of serving great food and drink to some really fantastic people. We get to see the look of awe when a beautiful plate gets set in front of a guest. The smile on a kids’ face when a piled high ice cream sundae comes walking through the dining room. Restaurant and hospitality workers make lifelong memories for our guests. This is why we show up every day. This is why we miss the champagne toast at midnight. It’s all worth it to know you made someone’s night!
This is the stuff we LIVE for. Some call us crazy…some call us foolish. Those are the people that have never felt the joy of the hospitality business (…they probably never felt this kind of pain in their feet either!!).
So cheers to all of you, my fellow hospitality cronies! And a big MAHALO! We made it into a lot of memories this holiday season. I tip my hat to all of us for surviving another holiday season!
Happy New Year! Have a successful 2018!
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