The Crave Story
Reflection on my 2021 summer serving job. Where I was, what it did to me, and what I learned.
TRIGGER WARNING
/suicide
/sexual assault
/drugs
/non consensual sex
I got hired at my first restaurant industry job last summer at 20 years old. I got hired on 4/20 on the spot, with my marijuana leaf Huf socks hidden by my Dr. Martens. I remember applying to the gig because I was really interested in developing some barista skills.
I had a suicide attempt on April 9th, and started working my new job on the 21st. The entirety of my time there, I was in a terrible manic state. It took me a while to break out and realize what happened but not before the place and people fucked me sideways. Anyway…
Like most of the jobs I have, my first day is a morning shift and every shift after that is a closing. Yes I’m a closer !!! That’ll never change I fuckin’ love closing. My first week was bussing tables, and after that I was serving food. I learned the INSANELY EXCESSIVE menu the restaurant/café had, and learned how a restaurant is operated. I liked it very quickly. My shift was 4 days a week, Friday through Sunday and Tuesday. They loved scheduling me on Thursday after I told them a thousand times I wouldn’t show up. I worked ten hour shifts from 6 pm to 4 am. We were only allowed one 30 minute lunch. No 15s. I never called out of a single shift and I never clocked in a minute late.
My next job at the spot was expediting. Quick overview: receiving the ticket of every order placed, checking the meals to make sure they’re correct, being between the cooks and servers, and packaging all to go orders. With the volume of your average restaurant, this is a two to three person job. If I was working it turned into a one person job. If I had a person next to me I blew them out of the water every single time. I was ridiculously naturally talented in this specific job, and when I got comfortable it just turned into catching mistakes before they happened.
I feel like it must’ve been a bipolar superpower. My memory is always garbage but when I worked this job I had every single ticket memorized I wouldn’t even have to hang them up. There was actually a point where I stopped hanging them up and my manager told me I couldn't do that because I would make a mistake. (I hadn't made a mistake.) Looking back on it is just mind boggling. I remember the gray color of the counter in front of me and the light wood color of the one behind me. I remember customers’ names and the fucking table I forgot to bring extra Frank’s Red to. I don’t even know all my best friends’ birthdays or their parents' names. But yeah, my manic showed out and ate away from the inside, so I didn’t notice it at first. The late nights fucked up my life schedule and I stopped eating. About a month in I stopped drinking water besides the ice cubes in my cold coffee.
The People
My coworkers were nice people. I just fell in love with a few and that’s my fault.
I was off a breakup. A little over a month had passed since my big time boyfriend of an on and off three years essentially ghosted me. Yes on and off, yes three years, yes ghosting. This isn’t about him though.
I met a boy at Cr*ve who taught me the most about the job. He’s tall with blonde curly hair and he told me he was bipolar before I got to tell him I’m bipolar. He told me he had a girlfriend which made me never look at the two of us as more than friends, until I realized he was fucking friendly flirting with me. Nothing ever happened. I never got a pity kiss behind the restaurant next to the dumpsters, and he’s still with his girlfriend. I liked him a tiny bit and then it went away. We still message each other. He’s a fucking sweetheart and I’m glad I got to meet him.
I met an Aries girl who was a year younger than me and went to my highschool’s rival. She’s extremely pretty and thick in the right places with black curly hair. I’ve never clicked with anyone so fast in my life. Our humor completely connected instantly, and we would just be goofy all night long. I remember telling a boy I was talking to that I was going to ask her to be my best friend, and he told me I shouldn’t do that because it’s weird and too soon. Every man I’ve ever fucking talked to has tried to diminish my personality in some stupid fucking way. He was wrong. I asked her early and she asked why I hadn’t asked her earlier. There was a time she was cleaning and a customer told her, “Wipe them tables down, shawty.” We said that back and forth to each other all the time. When we didn't have much to do, we would take turns going to the bathroom and read the really bad Yelp reviews for our spot and come back quoting them to each other. She laughed her ass off when I bussed a table and tripped over a parking block that we had set up over in our Covid outdoor dining area. I dropped every single plate in my hand and smashed onto the floor. People ran over to help me and she didn't help me at all. She stood there and couldn’t stop laughing at me because I “fell so hilariously.” It was perfect and I loved it. We send each other Snapchats every day.
I’ve come up with a lot of lyrics, but my favorite lyrics I’ve ever written are about the girl I met at Cr*ve who had moved to California from Texas. She did an absolute fucking number on me. We started off as friends but she was so touchy. And so cute. All she ever did was compliment me and tell me how pretty and handsome I was. She used handsome because she knew I liked it. I bought her crystals because I knew she liked them. I basically “shot my shot” and gave her some of those pretty rocks, my phone number, and a note that said “you should text me.” She did text me. One time we fell asleep on FaceTime together. She had a dog and I don’t like dogs but I would’ve been so fucking happy to have a dog with her. She liked to take dabs. I liked her and I had previously loved smoking weed so I started taking some fucking dabs with her after shifts. One time I asked her for her permission to give her a kiss after we smoked and before I went home. She called me a dork and kissed me back.
We got to know each other well enough to argue. One time I made a mean, snarky remark to her during a rush and she called me out on it and I felt awful. When I quit the job she didn’t talk to me as much. We had a plan to hang out at her apartment and then she told me she got a boyfriend but he knew about me and he was ok with it. I wasn’t ok with it. I stopped talking to her and wrote a song about it. The boyfriend ended up being another server who was kind of an asshole to my bipolar friend. The boyfriend turned into her husband and she’s in her early 20s. I saw her a few months ago when I went to pick up a salad from the Chop Stop next to Cr*ve. She smelled just as good, her voice sounded just as soft, and she picked me up when we hugged, like she always did.
Hot Girl Problems
My uniform was a pair of black jeans, a black t-shirt, a black belt, a black apron, a black face mask, and a pair of high top vans. I had long black hair, I wore black eye makeup, and I wasn’t getting any sleep so I had dark black circles under my eyes. My eyes are a lighter shade of brown. They popped out. I got a lot of compliments on my eyes when I worked at Cr*ve, cause they popped out and people noticed me. I couldn’t respectfully get a compliment on the other part of my body that pops out.
When I started serving I didn’t get a lot of tips. I was nice and evidently people don’t like that. When cute groups of boys would come to the restaurant I started to make it a point to tell them I’m vegan, and when I served them their meat dominant meals I’d tell them how “fucking disgusting” I thought it was. I got a lot of tips when I started being my natural asshole self. There were men I wasn’t even serving who would give me a 20 just for existing. I had a couple stalkers at my job. They turned out ultimately harmless but it hurt my feelings. I never felt like people knew who I was because I was just objectified immediately. It started to wear on me.
Okay this is a meme but like … truest shit ever. All the men who worked in the kitchen liked me. I remember first starting the job and other servers telling me they’d have to warm up to me, and I’d have to do my job well to get any sort of communication from them. Half true. Majority of the cooks liked me quickly because they thought I was pretty and I’m a charmer. Also I was set up in front of them so they got to stare at my ass the entire shift.
In the kitchen, they had a speaker with their own music playing separately from the music we played in the restaurant. They let me connect to the Bluetooth when I grew the balls to ask them nicely and bat my eyes. They knew I liked jazz so I was instructed to play jazz. It was easy. The flirting was okay. I was able to brush most of it off and be my dorky self when I wasn’t serving. My homegirl didn’t have the same experience. One of the cooks sexually assaulted her outside one night. She got her shifts cut because of it. It was fucked up. We both left the job around the same time.
There was one person who wasn’t just nice to me because I’m pretty. The head chef waited until I was good at my job before he started talking to me. He really intimidated me and I wanted his approval. (Daddy issues alert). Whatever. I earned it. We naturally began speaking. For a while we just stared at each other.
He started telling me I was smart and that my eyes were pretty. Whenever I took off my mask he’d ask me to shoot him a smile. One night in the middle of a rush I asked him a question and he didn’t answer it. He told me he loved me and every sound in the kitchen and every conversation customers were having got completely shut out. All I heard was that someone loved me. And I was broken and I was empty and I told him I loved him back. He was most likely a clean well over twice my age plus a wife but it wasn’t a love that gets acted upon. It’s just there and it’s valid and we felt it.
The Vibes
When you work after 10 pm shit gets fucking weird. Vibes are off, weird, whatever. You get close to the people you work with and you have odd experiences and connections. But Cr*ve was different. Bipolar boy told me “yeah there’s something special about Cr*ve.” I remember where I was when he told me that and I can hear his voice saying it. It’s a true statement.
There was an absolutely miserable coworker I had who hated my guts. She was like 40 with 2 kids making the same as young, hot, childless me so yeah, I’ll cut her some slack. I wasn’t the only one she had problems with (she hated all of us lmao) so I thought it was kinda funny that my manager even wasted his breath with her bullshit. But he was a bad manager. After one shift she got into it with another coworker. They were just cussing each other out and my manager wasn’t managing shit. I was pissed and tired cuz I finished cleaning and I just wanted to go home (4am). My other coworker took a video of the fight and I’m in the back looking dead just watching em. She got fired and we celebrated. I meme out about that fight every so often. My favorite quotes from the argument are “You’re a fat whore that’s why you only make 15 bucks an hour” and “I make 16 an hour shut the fuck up.” I still have the recording and it’s fucking hilarious. Post- firing that girl came to pick up her last check one night I was working. She obviously wanted to start shit by coming at night when she could’ve just come in the morning when none of us worked. I remember her getting near my station to talk to the cooks and she started telling them how much she missed them and how bad I was at my job? I kept quiet because I’m smart and when she left I looked at the man who said he loved me and told him he couldn’t like me and talk to her. He apologized to me.
One time I served a 7 years pork free customer real bacon. We had been a pork free restaurant for over a decade and the owner decided to put real pork back on our menu and in our kitchen without telling anyone. The customer was really sweet with questioning me but I assured him we didn’t even carry pork in our kitchen. I was wrong. When he figured it out he started losing his shit. He came over to the kitchen and started cursing the cooks out while I stood there. The cooks were a bunch of fucking idiots and started to laugh to each other and talk shit in Spanish. It doesn’t take a bilingual genius to figure out they started calling him the n word. He heard this and threatened to come shoot the place up. I’m not good in these situations because I start speaking my mind. I asked him if I was gonna get shot too and he looked at me and rolled his eyes. I deserved the facial expression I received with zero vocal response because I asked a stupid fucking question.
Another time I came to start my shift and my manager pulled me behind the counter and told me to stay there. I was like, “oh I’m just gonna go clock in real quick—” but I got cut off because a customer was sitting at a front table with a knife he brought from home (lol) and was whispering crazy shit about killing everyone in the restaurant. He was on drugs and the cops showed up and I stopped paying attention.
There were a lot of drugs at Cr*ve. We were one of the food spots in the San Fernando Valley that was open late at night so people would come in after they went out drinking. Ecstasy is a big thing in the valley so customers would come and throw up on the floor before they collected themselves enough to place an order. I remember my manager asking me to clean vomit one time and I audibly laughed and said no way. I didn’t get it held against me and I didn’t get asked again.
Once, a group of kids left 50+ whippet canisters outside on the floor before they got kicked out. I was pissed because I was working in the back that night and I didn’t get offered a whippet like the other servers did. Another shift I worked a customer told me he was on a date and his date wouldn’t get out of the bathroom and he was nervous she was doing heroin. I checked. She was doing heroin in our bathroom. She was fine and I think he ended up leaving. I didn’t get offered any heroin.
In high school, I smoked weed every day for 3 years. It ended up not working out (that’s a different story) and I lost a lot of myself because of it. I had tried smoking on multiple occasions after my 8 month break when I was 18 and it never felt right. But when I got comfortable at Cr*ve, I started smoking weed again. My coworkers were into taking dabs so I got to try my first dabs. It was insane. I took my hits like an absolute champ, no coughs. The first time I took a dab I had to drive home after. I backed my car out of the lot into a pole (lol) and then three minutes into my drive I convinced myself my car didn’t work and I pulled over on Laurel Canyon and fell asleep in my car. I woke up to my Dad knocking on my window at 9am because when I was high the night before I texted him that my car didn’t work and sent him my location pin. My car was fine and I just followed him home.
Leaving / My Last Shift
My last shift, my friend from highschool/ college pre-covid came in at closing with two people I had never seen before. Her and I have always had a weird up and down relationship and we didn’t see much of each other during the pandemic. As soon as I saw her I hugged her and said hello and she started telling me the night she was having. She was extremely drunk. She started to explain how she had accidentally eaten dairy earlier in the night (she’s lactose) and her stomach was really bothering her. She asked me if she could order anything but our kitchen was closed, all we sold at closing were the pastries in the front and drinks. So I looked out for her. I went to the back and asked the chef if he could give me a to-go box of fruit. He said he knew it was for my friend and it wasn’t for me (I never ate while I worked) and he couldn’t do it. So I asked for a banana. He gave me one but he didn’t just hand it to me like I expected. He stopped what he was doing and peeled the banana, and quietly cut slices into a small to-go box. It was really cute, and I was really happy. I thanked him and brought it to my friend. I told her it was all I could do for her. She didn’t thank me.
She and I started to talk and I noticed a new tattoo on her arm. It was a cute and stupid little tattoo. I teased her and said “that’s such a stupid tattoo” because that’s the kind of rapport we had between each other. The next sentence out of my mouth was going to be “it’s so cute” but I didn’t get to say that because she was drunk and she slapped me in the face. It was 3am. I had a hard shift. I didn’t do anything in response. I took a deep breath and I sighed. Her friends didn’t know me, and didn’t know if I was the type of person to freak my shit on her. So they grabbed her and left really quickly. My coworkers saw the whole thing happen and got on my ass for not reacting. I think I reacted fine.
That night I had a panic attack. At 4am I was sitting in Texas Girl’s car crying my fucking eyes out and releasing everything I had felt in the past months of my life. Big time breakup, attempting, lack of love, lack of sleep, lack of direction, being over sexualized at work, and she just sat there and listened. I rarely cry and I don’t let a lot of people see me cry. She saw everything and heard everything. I told her about how I was tired and how I was manic, how I lost a bunch of weight since I started working, and how I impulsively got my tongue pierced. She didn’t judge me in a bad way and she didn’t try to offer me advice. She let me vent and just listened, and then she told me if I wanted to quit I should quit. I quit the next morning.
I left because my manager refused to make my 10 hour shifts 8 hours, and I had been getting my pay shorted for weeks. My checks ended up being as much as $200 short and it made me lose my mind. The night before I quit I did all the math on what I should have received, stayed up all night because I couldn't sleep, and I called the next morning and quit over the phone. I was in the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot drinking an iced coffee and I was listening to Damn. by Kendrick Lamar.
Asshole Alert
After Cr*ve I started dating a customer I had met towards the end of my time there. I got asked out by people like clockwork as a server, but I curved all of them. For some reason I decided I liked this guy enough. He made me laugh a lot when we first met and he strongly expressed wanting to take me out on a date. He talked about my Thundercat tattoo and we started following each other on Instagram and exchanged numbers. He asked me how old I was and I said I was 20 and he let me know he was 28. Before he left I was talking to a friend outside and he came over and spilled his drink in front of me and played it off by grabbing me and dancing with me. I loved it. I went on a date with him where he picked me up and took me to the movie theater. It was a nice date until he forced himself onto me in his car and asked me to go home with him. I did go home with him and when we had sex he put me in doggystyle and took off a condom mid- fucking. It fucking sucked and I pushed it down.
The next date he took me on was probably the best date I’ve ever been on. Fast and Furious 9 had just come out, and I had made a joke the first time we went to the theater that “you couldn’t pay me to watch that movie” or any other in the series. He responded that he could, and when he picked me up for date #2 we went out to eat. After our meal he handed me a 50 dollar bill and said, “Here’s the deal, I wanna see Fast and Furious 9, you’ll get another 50 after it’s done.” He kept his promise and I got 100 bucks to make jokes in his ear throughout the movie. I gave him “the best blowjob ever.”
A few dates later he confessed he was 32 years old and he lied to me. I went on a trip to New York with my family and he told me he slept with an ex and an escort while I was gone. He told me he loved me and I told him he was out of his mind. A few days later he confessed he wasn’t his original 28 or 32, and he was 37 years old (17 years older than me). I ran out very quickly. I blocked his number and he called me 56 times that day using *67. In the next months he left crazy voicemails on my phone and left flowers and candy on my car and my doorstep. It freaked me out. He still calls me.
I included the bit about him in this story because Cr*ve left me broken for a while. I couldn’t see red flags because I didn’t want to see them. It hurt working that job and giving no men who asked me out a chance on dating me. The one person I ended up casually dating was a manipulative piece of shit who made me run to the clinic to get a full panel STD test. It’s honestly my fault for dating someone who was comfortable eating at that fucking restaurant.
The Happy Ending
I am in a much better place now than I was a year ago. I’m happy I got this shit out of the way and I never have to deal with anything like it ever again. During it all, I was very grateful for “real life problems” like my job not paying me, instead of the little relationship problems I had with my big time ex boyfriend before the job.
I loved my job and I was good at it. The three main people I met are still important to me. I can laugh for a long time at these insane stories.
I got to package Stevie Wonder’s meal one night. The man picking up the order politely asked me if I could put sides of honey in with the chicken and waffles box for the order under ‘Steven.’ I said sure and then he told me it was for Stevie Wonder and showed me his passport. It was midnight and he was bringing it back to a recording studio. I geeked out with him. It’s a cool story I get to tell all the time.
The healing process after Cr*ve was a hard one. I didn’t get back into the workforce until after a 4 month break. It was MUCH needed. My Dad didn’t understand why I needed it but I wasn’t ready to talk about this. I kept my head down and it all worked out.
It’s been almost a year since I quit the job. I’ve had two other jobs since then and they ran a lot smoother. And I got paid more. Can you believe I was dealing with all of this shit for $15/hour ??? LOL. Regardless, I’m happy it happened. I have a better head on my shoulders, I have better boundaries, and I deal with a lot less bullshit. I also understand myself a lot more. I left the job scrambling for meds because I was sure that my bipolar was going to end up hurting me. I figured out how to help myself.
I love how “fuck that job” my generation is. I was a Cr*ve Slave for a second but as soon as the money started getting shorted I left. I could’ve left a lot earlier. That’s what I learned.
My advice would probably be “fuck that job” but definitely stick around for a good set of stories to tell. Once you have enough funny shit you can leave.
I know I will probably receive some “I’m sorry this happened to you” messages after I post this. I don’t care. Everything I wrote about is raw and uncomfortable and 100% true. The Cr*ve story is a hard one to tell, but it helped me a lot. I came out of it a smarter, stronger, sexier, more secure person. I don’t regret anything.
I dedicate this story to my friend Kimberly, who told me I should definitely blog this because “bitches love fast food gossip.”
The End :P
If you made it— thank you so much for fucking reading this !!!
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Love,
Sarah Jane Mandt