Gossip -- It Is The Life Blood Of The Industry

I don't care if you work at The French Laundry, or sling hash during the graveyard shift at Dennys -- if you're in the restaurant business you fall into one of three categories:

1 -- You gossip

2 -- You are being gossiped about

3 -- You gossip while being gossiped about

Front of House, Back of House -- doesn't matter! The two things you can be certain of when working in a restaurant: almost everybody's crazy, and there is always gossip.

Who's sleeping with whom? Who's doing drugs? Who's doing drugs at work? Who drinks too much? Who's not drinking much (and why)? Who's throwing whom under the bus? Who's scheming against whom? What clique is ganging up on what smaller clique? Can the new guy/gal be trusted? Which manager needs to be fired?

And so on.

I write this because someone I know recently got fired. And one of the reasons was that person had been tap dancing to Lady GaGa's song "Poker Face" on ice that was thinner than a dishwasher's paycheck from nearly the first day that person was hired. I once referred to that person as "the walking eye of Hurricane Gossip. And we're talkin' category 5, baby!"

Now, I'm not saying all the gossip about that person was true. I'm also not saying all the gossip was not true. Some was true, some wasn't. At times that person did nothing to get the gossip rolling. Other times that person did everything to push the car off the cliff.

It's not about the gossip though. There will always be gossip. What helped bring that person down was how that person HANDLED the gossip!

See people (for those not in the restaurant biz), our work environment is not like the rest of the real world. We talk MUCHO shit! And we talk shit about stuff that would get any other company sued everyday. For example: when you can tell -- I'm sorry -- yell at your co-worker to "GET YOUR BOYFRIEND'S DICK OUT YOUR EAR AND LISTEN UP!" you're not working at an accounting firm.

Therefore, our gossip is much more intense and viral (like the internet). It's like a flash fire that burns everything, and when it's died down a new one is already heading your way. After a while, your skin toughens as you get used to it, and keep doing your job. Or you run away screaming like you woke up in bed next to a naked Larry King after a drunken night. I once told this timid woman hired for pastry that is she lasted a week she would make it. Then gave her my best Heath Ledger-as-The-Joker face and said: "But be afraid. Be very afraid." She was gone three days later.

So you know what you are walking into at a restaurant. So when the day comes that your name is in the opening credits (an analogy I came up with years ago. You are the center of the gossip, you're the star in a movie. In the closing credits? Minor role or extra), whether what's being said is true or not, you immediately own it!

If someone is spreading gossip that you are a drunken slut, and it's true? You say: "Yeah. A damn good one too!" If it's not true, you say: "No, I'm not. But I can't stop you from thinking that. So fine, I'm a drunken slut."

Either answer kills the rumor in it's tracks. Because gossip only thrives when people think you care. When they think you don't, it dies a quick death.

When I bar manager, I can't tell you how many women -- and men -- I heard people said I slept with. I WISHED I had as much sex as I was told I did! At first, it annoyed me. But then a moment of clarity came, and I stopped caring. So when a good friend quietly said he heard I worked both sides of the field, my immediate response was: "At least I always have a warm body next to me every night." My friend busted out laughing, and I never heard the rumour again.

There were a bunch of others though (like trying to sleep with my best friend's girlfriend on New Years Eve. I didn't. But it did cross my mind). Hell, I managed a shitkicking bar in a small town. The day I was hired as the first black person to ever work there, my name was in the opening credits. And stayed there. Because everybody gossiped about EVERYBODY!

So, in conclusion, what do you do when the gossip is about you? Handle It! Own It! Then walk away. That person whom lost that job didn't, in the case of gossip, handle or own it. That person tried to deny it. Came up with varying reasons why the gossip couldn't be true (which made people believe that person less). And that person freaked out and didn't walk away (which made the flash fire grow instead of die out).

I believe everyone has a limited number of Life-Minutes on this planet. So why wasting them worrying about something you can't change.

Because even after your dead, the gossip about you lives on.