Your Sunday Is My Friday

Working in the food service industry in a small town is a case of like attracting like; people with something in common create a tight-knit, sometimes incestuous community.

Everyone knows everyone. Or they know someone who knows everyone. Or someone who knows someone who knows everyone.

It is often much easier to form and nurture connections with those with whom you share common experiences and routines.

As a recent college graduate working in food and beverage, I often feel like an outsider.

Not because I think my experience is unique, but because I now have to navigate balancing this new community with my old one, one filled with friends who have 9–5 jobs and traditional career paths.

I never thought I would exist within a culture where it’s normal to go out on weeknights to drink and play trivia past midnight, or one where getting out of work before ten o’clock is considered an early night.

It’s odd to think about the idea that while I’m going to my 5 p.m. closing shifts, some of my friends are clocking out of work for the day.

I worked at a café-adjacent restaurant for about two weeks at the beginning of the summer.

People would order coffees, drink spritzes, and snack on chips and dip with caviar.

Young women around my age would come in with their friends, dressed in colorful, flowy dresses or expensive athleisure, and sit at the small marble tables placed on the sidewalk.

My uniform was a white button-up with black pants and a front covering apron.

On my second day of training, a Sunday afternoon, the first person I saw when I walked in was one of my close friends, along with some of hers.

We hugged, and she asked me if I worked there.
“Yep, just started!” I said with enthusiasm, trying to hide the sinking feeling that washed over me as the reality of my future weekends set in.

I would be at work on warm Sunday afternoons, watching with envy as groups of friends had a leisurely day preparing for the week ahead.

I later brought them their orders, my face burning with embarrassment as they thanked me and clapped.

I didn’t work there long, for a variety of reasons, but that was the first time I truly felt the weight of my situation.

I worked nights and weekends, while many of my friends worked Monday through Friday from morning to afternoon.

I realized how different my life and schedule would be from most people’s, and how it might affect my relationships.

Part of why I hadn’t had these feelings until then was that I started working in restaurants while I was in school. I would work two to three days a week, but never full-time, and I had many friends in the same boat.

They also had night or weekend jobs because they had classes in the morning. There was a feeling of equilibrium.

Even though I was still in school when I started working evenings at restaurants, I quickly became accustomed to the F&B social traditions.

Rough night at work? “Let’s get a drink to take the edge off.”

Day off? “Do you want to get a drink tonight?”

You go to bed late, wake up late, have breakfast at noon, and eat dinner at midnight.

I don’t want it to sound like I look down upon this lifestyle, because I don’t. It’s something I often partake in and enjoy.

There’s something rebellious about going to a bar on a Tuesday night and having beers, knowing it’s fine because you don’t work until three the next day.

I’ve also never been a morning person, so living as a night owl suits me.

While I have friends in more traditional jobs, I also know many people who live like me.

I’ve made close friends from working in restaurant friends who are always down for a drink, lunch, or a trip to the beach before a shift.

My relationships with F&B friends often feel easier because we’re on the same schedule. I can be more spontaneous and don’t have to work around days off.

Going to bars as someone in F&B adds another interesting social dynamic to my life.

In everyday life, we rarely talk to strangers. We go to the grocery store, heads down as we study our shopping lists.

We go to the gym with our headphones in. Many have office or remote jobs where social interaction is limited.

Bars sometimes feel like alternate dimensions places where we get approached by people we’ve never met, where we expect to meet a romantic partner, or make new friends we follow on Instagram only to never speak to again.

While some of these interactions can be uncomfortable, there’s an unspoken agreement that they happen, and that it’s normal.

A common interaction I have with strangers in local dive bars is discovering that we’re both in F&B and know some of the same people. I often walk into The Recover Room Tavern, famous for its astronomical PBR sales, and see old coworkers.

We catch up while they tell me what’s going on in the restaurant I no longer work at.

That’s the only thing we talk about, because we don’t know anything else about each other.

I find this is more common on weeknights when servers or bartenders have just finished their closing shifts and want to wind down with a drink.

While these kinds of experiences are not exclusive to F&B workers, I’ve noticed that my 9–5 friends have them much less frequently than I or my other F&B friends do.

They talk about feeling lonely because they don’t meet many new people. I sometimes wish I could meet fewer people.

However, if I had to work early every morning, I wouldn’t go to bars nearly as often as I do now.

And this frequency isn’t necessarily because of a need to drink, but because this is how F&B culture works. We get drinks and talk about work or our coworkers, because that’s where our common ground lies.

We need a sense of community, and this is often the easiest way to build connections.

That said, there are many times after long shifts when I have no desire to go out drinking or hear loud music. Instead, I go straight home and play the game of Are My Roommates Still Awake?

Their bedtimes are around 10:00 to 10:30, so it’s a gamble.

Sometimes I don’t mind the quiet when I come home.

Other times, I itch to have a genuine conversation and a glass of wine with my friends.

I’ve found it’s possible to appreciate what I have while also yearning for what I don’t.

I sometimes feel jealous of people who can go to dinner on a whim or take evening walks to watch the sunset.

At the same time, I love that I can go to the beach on a Wednesday morning when it’s empty and calm, or sleep in to my heart’s content.

Because I graduated from college only three months ago, I still feel caught between these two worlds.

I miss how easy it felt to coordinate hangouts with my college friends, who now operate on opposite schedules from me.

But I’m also excited about the prospect of meeting new people in the same line of work.

People who can introduce me to more strands in the web of the F&B community.

Though I feel conflicted, I don’t feel alone. I’m grateful to have two communities that welcome me, even as I try to find balance between them.