Many years ago, I worked as an EMT for an emergency rescue service in South Orange, New Jersey. When I was taking the courses to qualify, one paramedic gave a seminar on the psychological effects. She described how, not only do you become desensitize to the blood and gore, but you develop a crass attitude about it. Tasteless jokes were very common.
She told one story as an example. A construction worker had fallen into some type of hole. It was a narrow space. He was conscious and landed on his feet. Before they could attempt rescue, they needed to access his medical condition. The paramedic and her partner walked up to the hole and looked down at the man. Immediately she saw that he had a priapism. If you don’t know what that is, you can look it up, but its something only a man can have and when determining spinal injury, it’s a serious symptom. She knew, as soon as she saw it, that given the circumstances, this man was not going to survive the extraction. He had a grave injury. She turned to her partner and said, “Do you think his back is broken or is he just happy to see me?”
There was a lot of truth in what I heard that day. I found the bloodier the scene the less it affected me. It was the little tragedies that stuck. So what does all this have to do with working in a restaurant?
If you’ve been to Red Lobster, you know, as soon as you walk in the door, there is a tank full of live lobsters. These poor, doomed creatures exist for one reason, so you can eat them. As a crew, we barely even notice them. When a guest orders one, a cook will go to the tank, and carry it through our bar area to the back of the house. Everyone stops talking and stares at the lobster. Then the comments start, ‘Dead man walking’ is my personal favorite.
I had a guest not too long ago, who loved lobster but had always avoided them live because she didn’t think she could look it in the eye. She asked if we could remove the head for her. “We can do that,” I said. At the time, all I saw was the dollar sign; it’s a rather expensive plate.
Except for the change in color, a cooked lobster looks exactly like a live one .A lobster sitting in the window of our alley, unless it’s huge, has no effect on the servers as they speed past. No one misses a beat. You can delude yourself, unconsciously, and not associate it with death. It turns out, that’s more difficult to do if it’s been beheaded. When this lobster made his debut, people stopped. The cook did an amazing job removing the head, it was an extremely clean cut, but as a result, the lobster looked like it’d been guillotined. It was a horrific site.
I remember thinking the guest was not going to be happy with this. This was much more gruesome than serving it with its head still attached but I was wrong, she loved it. To her, it was no different than a flank steak.
It’s a poignant distinction between the guests and the crew. We live with the lobsters everyday. At some level, we know they are going to die. It’s easy to pack that information away in drawer in your mind … until we see one with its head cut off. The visual effects are sense of reality. Its decadent indulgence to the guest but a little tragedy to us.
I have more lobster stories but I’ll wait for the next blog. So now, this weeks quotes: Quote One:
My friend Angel reminded me of a great quote this week. Adel ... yes Adel, he an old school server, in his mid forties, with a thick Middle Eastern accent. He was walking behind Angel in the alley when he stopped her and said, “Angel, when you walk your butt looks like tilapia floating in water.”
Quote Two:
We had a cantankerous table this week. Every once in a while, we get a table, I don’t know, they’ve had long day. It’s hard work vacationing in Florida. When they come in, it’s a challenge to make them happy. We try though. One member of this particular group had ordered salmon. She returned the plate to our manager, Bonnie, because she had requested her salmon ‘boiled’ and we gave it to her ‘broiled’. In case you’re wondering, no, we don’t boil salmon at Red Lobster.
Till next time,Peace,Darla