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" Call it the Scarlet Apron: the\u00A0pervasive\u00A0stigma attached to working in the restaurant industry. At a time when we&amp;#039;re more obsessed with food and spirits than ever, restaurant employees\u00A0are often\u00A0characterized as unskilled, unserious laborers. A\u00A0cottage industry has sprung up around a nation of aggrieved Yelpers who continue to harvest their dining experiences to sling\u00A0petty complaints at the workers\u00A0they believe\u00A0personally wronged them.\u00A0Don&amp;#039;t even think about raising\u00A0the minimum wage.  It doesn&amp;#039;t have to be this way.\u00A0Restaurants are\u00A0a huge part of\u00A0our lives\u2014nine\u00A0out of 10 people\u00A0say they enjoy going to restaurants, while half call restaurants &amp;quot;an essential part of their lifestyle,&amp;quot; according to the National Restaurant Association. 14.4\u00A0million people work in the industry today, compared to 12.3 million 10 years ago; that number is\u00A0projected\u00A0to grow. So too are sales, $782.7 billion this year compared to $586.7 billion in 2010.\u00A0 If so many of\u00A0us are patronizing\u00A0restaurants, why are we simultaneously patronizing the people who\u00A0make enjoying restaurants possible? \u00A0 It&amp;#039;s worth noting that some of this disdain may well be in part because of sexist gender perceptions. Seventy percent\u00A0of servers are women, so naturally,\u00A0serving is\u00A0considered &amp;quot;unserious&amp;quot; work. Yet few industries have as many women in management or ownership roles,\u00A0according to America Works Here.\u00A0 To pick a random argument from thousands against offering fast food employees a basic living wage,\u00A0&amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not supposed to be a career. It&amp;#039;s not supposed to be a living.&amp;quot;\u00A0That\u00A0came from\u00A0Matt Walsh on\u00A0the Blaze last year, a right-wing blogger with a donate button on his website. &amp;quot;An entry-level position making roast beef sandwiches at Arby&amp;#039;s isn&amp;#039;t meant to be something you do for 26 years. It isn&amp;#039;t paying enough? OK, get another job. Get a second job. Get a third job. Get a different job.&amp;quot;\u00A0 I was reminded of the barely concealed disdain many on the right, as well as those on both sides in\u00A0white collar industries like marketing, have for restaurant work by\u00A0a tweet Tuesday night from Brandon Friedman.      Looking at intern resumes. Having college kids describe their work experience is such a waste of time. The restaurant job isn&amp;#039;t helping. \u2014 Brandon Friedman (@BFriedmanDC) April 27, 2016    Friedman is the CEO of\u00A0D.C.-based McPherson Square Group, a company that helps brands &amp;quot;tell stories.&amp;quot;\u00A0 Many, myself included, quickly pounced on the tweet.\u00A0      Counterpoint: Working in a restaurant is an actual job unlike whatever it is you&amp;#039;re hiring for https://t.co/IeX3b89efz \u2014 luke o&amp;#039;neil (@lukeoneil47) April 27, 2016    Say what you will about working in a restaurant, but at least\u2014unlike marketing or blogging for the Blaze\u2014there&amp;#039;s actual labor and a valuable end product involved.\u00A0 Friedman, who told me he worked in scrap yards cutting copper ends off AC cooler cores with a blowtorch in Louisiana&amp;#039;s 100+ degree heat throughout college, as well as\u00A0sold Christmas trees and served as\u00A0a combat infantry officer\u2014all of which are certainly actual, difficult jobs--says his tweet was taken out of context. He clarified: &amp;quot;The point is that most students have jobs like these and they all provide similar experience. But they don&amp;#039;t do a lot to distinguish candidates. I don&amp;#039;t expect interns to have significant professional experience. Who they are as a person, what they aspire to be\u2014all that is more important when trying to select a 19-year-old. &amp;quot;The use of &amp;#039;restaurants&amp;#039; as an example was Twitter shorthand for any similar job that college students normally take.&amp;quot; That may well be, but the sentiment of his original tweet remains a pervasive one, and it&amp;#039;s one that&amp;#039;s manifested not only in sneering blog posts and Twitter comments, but also in how we treat the employees themselves.\u00A0 In 2015, the median pay for food and beverage servers\u00A0was $19,040 per year, breaking down to roughly $9.16 an hour, according to the\u00A0Bureau of Labor Statistics. That&amp;#039;s despite the fact that &amp;quot;employment of food and beverage serving and related workers is projected to grow 10 percent from 2014 to 2024, faster than the average for all occupations.&amp;quot;\u00A0 Because the overarching umbrella of service industry workers describes so many jobs\u2014from fast food\u00A0to high-end sommeliers and everything in between\u2014there is a vast disparity of experience to contend with when considering the industry as a whole. But there are commonalities. The couple dozen current and former servers I\u00A0recently spoke to\u00A0say many\u00A0were\u00A0invaluable lessons in other careers\u00A0and in life in general. It&amp;#039;s not that working in a restaurant just makes you better at working in a restaurant;\u00A0it can make you better at working anywhere. It can make you a downright better person.\u00A0 &amp;quot;There are countless stories of successful restaurateurs and industry CEO&amp;#039;s that worked their way up from dishwashers and servers to running their own business or company,&amp;quot; Christin Fernandez of the National Restaurant Association tells me.\u00A0&amp;quot;Restaurant jobs teach skills like teamwork, customer service, cross-collaboration, time-management, and multitasking\u2014just to name a few\u2014that are vital for any professional that stays in the industry or for those looking to enter another career.&amp;quot;  According to\u00A0the National Restaurant Association, half of all American adults have worked in the restaurant industry at some point during their lives. A third had their first jobs in one. This is a\u00A0significant number, but it should be closer to 100 percent. In fact, let&amp;#039;s make restaurant work mandatory.\u00A0 I asked Fernandez whats\u00A0he thought about the idea.\u00A0 &amp;quot;As a former host and server, yes,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;But I&amp;#039;m also biased. I truly believe if you can make it through a busy lunch or dinner rush, you can honestly make it through anything. Whether it&amp;#039;s quick service or full service, working in a restaurant can prepare you for whatever life might throw at you. Multitasking with a smile.&amp;quot;\u00A0 It&amp;#039;s a sentiment echoed by many who I proposed the idea to, from those still in in the industry\u00A0to others who moved on to completely unrelated, &amp;quot;more respectable&amp;quot; jobs.\u00A0 Adam Flowers, a professional opera singer in San Francisco, was a server through\u00A0college in California. He did everything from\u00A0working as a singing\u00A0waiter\u00A0to waiting at the Macaroni Grill.\u00A0 &amp;quot;I still maintain waiting tables was the most demanding job, moment to moment, that I&amp;#039;ve ever had,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;I have performed the lead role in several extremely challenging operas, and none of them was as difficult as the evening rush at Max&amp;#039;s Opera Caf\u00E9.&amp;quot; Flowers says\u00A0something strange happens\u00A0when we sit down to a meal. &amp;quot;We Americans get fucking weird when we have people serving us. We tend to act out fantasies of nobility,&amp;quot; he says.\u00A0&amp;quot;I think it&amp;#039;s really important for middle class kids to be in a position where they are at the whim and mercy of someone else. Food service is perfect for that, because even though it doesn&amp;#039;t feel like it in the moment--the stakes are so incredibly low--it still can teach you extremely valuable lessons.&amp;quot;\u00A0 &amp;quot;You deal with people at their worst\u00A0and have to keep behaving your best,&amp;quot; Tyler Lauletta, a writer for Business Insider, says. He worked for years at\u00A0a restaurant in Pennsylvania. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s the whole lesson of life.&amp;quot;\u00A0 John Adams, the owner of Flat Top Johnny&amp;#039;s in Cambridge, Massachusetts, agrees. He started out washing dishes at a Chinese restaurant in the &amp;#039;70s\u00A0and cooked, bartended, and waited tables\u00A0before opening his own spot. &amp;quot;I think everybody should have to do it for a year. It would teach humility and make us all better consumers and teach an understanding of all the factors that affect customer service,&amp;quot; he says.\u00A0 Ryan Dillon, who now works as an analyst and strategist for EMC, a cloud computing and IT solutions firm in Massachusetts, spent most of his life in restaurants before transitioning into the tech realm.\u00A0 &amp;quot;The amount of lessons learned working in restaurants really are too enumerable to list out, but I would say that learning how to be part of a team, how to have a sense of awareness for the things happening beyond me and my immediate work and how my decisions impacted everyone else, how to get shit done by whatever means necessary, and how to have a focus on the customer were all extremely important lessons,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;I think I learned more about how to be part of a team from working in restaurants than I ever did from playing team sports.&amp;quot;\u00A0 He too thinks mandatory restaurant work is a good idea, if only for a short time, but with a caveat: People should have to work both sides of the house, serving\u00A0and preparing food.\u00A0 Either restaurants or retail, says Suzanna Koolidge, an executive assistant at an interior design firm in Oakland\u00A0who worked everywhere from an ice cream parlor to a steak house in Manhattan and a nightclub in San Francisco. &amp;quot;And the sooner the better. I just picture it as an exercise in dealing with your fellow humans. You have this place that anyone can walk into, and they can wield any combination\u00A0of emotions,\u00A0requests,\u00A0demands. I don&amp;#039;t think you&amp;#039;ll ever be in a place to deal with such a wide variety of people where you have to interact with them face to face more than restaurants and retail. The sooner you can navigate others&amp;#039; wants and needs, the sooner you can handle more complex social and work situations beyond someone&amp;#039;s jalape\u00F1o poppers being too hot, or cold, or warm.&amp;quot; The sheer number of absurd requests and demands you get on a daily basis prepare you for a life time of weirdness. &amp;quot;I think the big skill that carries over is your ability to read people and relate to people on the fly,&amp;quot; Erez Talmone, a lawyer in New York City, says. &amp;quot;There are so many different lawyer types.\u00A0I&amp;#039;ve found that to get the furthest you really need to cater to the individual personalities.&amp;quot;\u00A0Reading the other lawyers he deals with is no different than reading a table.\u00A0 &amp;quot;Knowing how to subtly inform a guest that there is no such thing as Cabernet Sauvignon Blanc\u2014they might mean Cabernet Sauvignon or Sauvignon Blanc,\u00A0were they thinking red or white?\u2014is exactly the same as reminding your adversary that they misquoted a ruling or misread a statute\u00A0and might be making a mistake,&amp;quot; he says.\u00A0 In the short term, you might be able to get one over on the diner or the lawyer\u00A0and come out on top, but courtesy and professionalism will go a lot further in the long term.\u00A0 I worked with Talmone for years at a restaurant in Cambridge myself, so I can attest to what he&amp;#039;s saying. My first job, in fact, was washing dishes at a pizza chain, followed by\u00A0casual dining chains, pubs, bartending in music venues, and waiting tables at nice bistros in\u00A0college and my twenties. Throughout all of it, there were a few lessons that have stuck with me:\u00A0  You are only going to be as successful as you are determined to be on any given day.\u00A0 You may be able to slack for a while in a team environment, but eventually the weakest link gets pushed out.\u00A0 Everyone is an asshole, and we all know this, but you can&amp;#039;t treat them like one.\u00A0 Sometimes, your only option is to shut up and eat shit. At least until it&amp;#039;s a bowlful too many.\u00A0  No matter what we aspire to do, we could all do well to learn lessons like that.\u00A0 "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/restaurants/news/a44400/mandatory-restaurant-work/>