At Palma Ceia Golf and Country Club, the dining room was the stage for Tampa’s elite. Membership is strictly by invitation only, with costs rumored to be well into the six figures annually, in addition to a several thousand dollar food and drink minimum, numbers the club never published, keeping even their own staff guessing about what it took to belong. Hank Steinbrenner’s primary residence was on the course. The owner of the Tampa Bay Lightning is a member and frequent guest. Derek Jeter sat at my table on more than one occasion; once with fellow Yankee legend Mariano Rivera. Local CEOs and politicians treated the club like an extension of the office. For a college kid carrying plates and wiping tables, it was impossible not to feel the gravity of that place. Every interaction carried that subtle reminder: you are here to serve, not to be seen.
I’d carried assumptions about restaurant work long before I stepped foot in that dining room. As a young kid, I watched my dad pull double shifts; his regular day job, then restaurant work until close. He’d come home beat, smelling like fryer oil and other people’s food. Restaurant work meant struggle in my mind, something you did when bills demanded it, not something you chose. That perception was already baked in before I ever carried my first tray.
Once a year, the club threw the staff a golf outing, as if to share a piece of that prestige. It was pitched as a big deal, the privilege of playing the same course as the members. The rules were clear: don’t act a fool, don’t damage the course, and so on. Because this was a privilege, remember. The club didn’t have to sponsor this. The members were graciously letting us use the course for a day. The reality was, most of the staff didn’t care about golf, not in the way the members assumed. The whole thing felt out of touch; like the rich guy tossing his nanny the keys to his Ferrari for a joyride, convinced it was the thrill of her year. A gesture meant to erase the gap only underscored it. I never participated.
In the kitchen, the rules shifted. The cooks were more real than almost every paying member I ever encountered. They weren’t putting on a show, they weren’t measuring worth by status symbols or last names. They measured you by your work: how fast you moved, how steady your hands were, how well you held the line when the board lit up with tickets. They had scars on their souls, burns on their hands, and a humor that cut through the tension like a knife. They cursed and sweated and laughed all in the same breath. When you screwed up, they let you know immediately; when you pulled your weight, you earned their respect. It was raw, unfiltered, and honest in a way the dining room never could be.
Some of them weren’t on the line by choice but by circumstance. A mistake, a bad decision, a turn in life that narrowed their options. But even then, they owned it. They earned their way onto that line. These guys had built their bed, and every night they earned their sleep. I respected that more than anything.
I started to crave that honesty. Outside those swinging kitchen doors, the dining room was a theater. Power was the script, privilege the performance. One night I had served a member who brought in his mistress. The very next week he returned with his wife and kids, slipping back into the role of family man like an actor changing costumes. That image burned itself into me, not because it was particularly unusual there, but because of how it made me feel… like scenery. Why else would this guy feel comfortable bringing his mistress to my table? And then coming back with his family? Clearly, my eyes were just part of the set.
Early in my time there, I tried bringing a member a glass of water full of ice, not knowing his preference. We were made clear of the delineation between member and guest, by the way. These people are members. They’re not guests. Even in someone else’s kitchen. Without making eye contact, he dismissed the glass with a casual wave like I was being a nuisance. He never said a word about what he actually wanted. Another server had to explain later that he only drank room-temperature water with no more than two pieces of ice. Duh, of course. Silly me.
The next time I brought him a glass of water with exactly two pieces of ice, without a single word being exchanged in between, I assume he thinks he was magic.
What I didn’t understand then was how my college status insulated me from the full weight of that dehumanization. I could mentally check out, tell myself this was temporary, that I had bigger things ahead. Worse, I’d catch myself thinking, “One day I’ll be a member here and show these assholes how it’s done.” But that fantasy was part of the poison. I wasn’t questioning why there were people serving and people being served. I was just planning to switch sides. Some of my coworkers didn’t have that luxury. They had to find dignity in a system that strips it away, while I daydreamed about eventually wielding the same corrosive power that crushed me. The privilege wasn’t just having options; it was believing that joining the oppressor class counted as victory.
If Palma Ceia was a theater, then Olive Garden was a circus. The choice was simple. I made three times more money in that corporate machine than at the swanky club. Respect was nonexistent. Managers strutted around in polyester ties like they were running Goldman Sachs, drunk on titles that fooled no one.
I watched a server rip his shirt off mid-shift, scream at a manager, and storm out… only to see him back on the schedule the following week. Another server would routinely walk out with a garbage bag full of stolen toilet paper and hand soap after her shift, and nobody cared to notice why the bathrooms ran dry so quickly. The kitchen manager was notorious for sneaking off with a to-go specialist in dry storage or the bathroom, disappearing for ten minutes at a time while tickets piled up. Coke deals and bathroom bumps floated more than a few server’s shifts. A husband-and-wife team who ran the line literally sold drugs out of the kitchen. Everyone knew it, too.
Part of the corporate branded “Italian hospitality” was to bring an open bottle of house wine to every table, pour a splash, and push for the upsell. The bottles were cheap, the script was hollow, and no one bothered to teach us anything about what we were pouring, largely because there was nothing worth teaching. Half the time we were drinking it ourselves, during the shift, topping off coffee cups in the service alley like it was just another perk of the job. The kitchen manager, the same one shacking up with the to-go girl, was in on it too. Morals weren’t exactly floating around this so-called “family.” Because we all knew the truth behind We’re all family here. What corporate packaged as hospitaliano was, on the floor, a joke we were all in on.
Jokes aside, I worked harder than almost anyone there. Forty-plus hours a week on top of business classes and morning track practices. I couldn’t sit still. If I wasn’t working, in class, or at practice, I unraveled. I outpaced servers who lived off this job, who carried it as their identity. At the time I treated that like sport. Now it feels cheap. I didn’t need to prove I was better. I just couldn’t stand to be the same. I told myself I was a student, an athlete, just passing through. Yet every shift I stood elbow to elbow with people whose lives were tied to that place — like the guy with the ankle monitor (same guy who tore off his shirt in the dining room), the single mom working two jobs, the lifers who were grateful to be on the line and not in a cell. I respected them, deeply. But instead of owning that I was one of them, I kept running from it.
One day a coworker who was, maybe fifteen years deep in restaurant work, announced he was leaving. “Finally got a big boy job,” he said, grinning. It was sales recruiting. It sounded boring, but it came with a desk. That desk transformed it into something legitimate in his mind. He walked away from years of real skill because sitting down somehow counted more than standing up.
On more than one occasion, the general manager snapped at me for going into overtime. I told him point blank: “I have every incentive to seek overtime.” He had nothing to say. He knew I was right. The cruelest truth? My contempt made me excellent. I could stack up shifts because I wasn’t planning to stay, because this place meant nothing to me. Not everyone had it that way. For some, this was their livelihood. Their home. For me it was just cash for a college kid on his way to bigger and better things. At least that’s what I told myself when I felt small.
In my head the refrain never stopped: this is just temporary. Just cash. Just a college job. I clung to it like armor, but it only pulled me out of the moment. In lectures I learned the theory of motivation and organizational behavior. On the floor I lived the opposite, moving fast, detached, telling myself I didn’t belong here. What I realize now is that I got more from the restaurant than the classroom. I liked the rhythm, the energy, the constant mix of people. Still, I kept repeating that line like a prayer. Temporary. And in saying it, I missed what was right in front of me.
The irony only showed itself later. I chased the degrees, built the résumé, carved out an ‘applied’ career. But the moments that stayed with me aren’t from a classroom or a cubicle. They’re from the restaurants: both the theater and the circus. From Palma Ceia’s kitchen, the pace, the conversations in between tickets, the craftsmanship. From Olive Garden, the grind, the absurdity, the lessons buried in dysfunction. I can’t recall a single thing from a lecture that stuck with me. I can remember a dozen lessons from the chaos.
Both places pulled the mask off in different ways. Palma Ceia showed how wealth builds its own theater, while Olive Garden exposed the rot beneath corporate polish. But the deeper lesson wasn’t about them, it was about me. I want no part of money without respect, or privilege without honesty. What I want is work that connects me to something real: craft, community, purpose. Everything else is just noise.
SUGGESTED READING:
If this essay spoke to you, here are two more I think you’ll like:
Everything Is Content. Nothing Is Sacred. — on how life itself gets packaged, posted, and consumed.
Suburban Secession: The Crack in the Dome — what happens when safety becomes a wall instead of a bridge
