Yahara Journal 2021

Staff vs. Crew Allison Rudolf It is 3:57. My shift at the restaurant starts at 4:30. I am always 10 minutes early. The drive is 17 minutes, which means I need to find my uniform shirt in the next three minutes if I want to make it out to my car with a minute or two to spare. I always forget my keys, phone, or something else equally important, so I build in a couple of minutes to my time.

My uniform shirt is a little darker than periwinkle blue and has the restaurant logo in the top right corner. I have four of these shirts because I often work all weekend. The first one I got is different from the rest. It says “STAFF” on the back, and it is a V-neck style t-shirt.

I used it all last summer, and this summer, management used a new company to make the shirts. My newest three are all different sizes, but they all have a circle neckline and say “CREW” on the back. I am one of the only people who still wear the “STAFF” shirts because I have worked at the restaurant for more than one summer.

Working in a bar food restaurant makes said uniform shirt almost unwearable after one shift. Therefore, I have three shirts for three shifts of the weekend and an extra for next week when I forget to do laundry.

I have three minutes. I throw my clothes from last week’s pile onto the floor, t-shirts strewn about my room, and pairs of socks littering the walkway. Not there. I run downstairs as fast as my short legs will let me, down to the laundry room. There are more and more clothes, but no work shirt. I rush over to see if it is hanging on the drying rack. I could have sworn it was there last night. It’s not there now. I dash back up the stairs to the living room to check the other piles of unsorted laundry. I am now going to be four minutes late to my original time, which will only be six minutes early. Great.

I rush back downstairs, snatch a dirty shirt from the washroom floor, and grimace as I pull it on. It smells like a truck full of French fries with a few sides of grease. Ew. 25