Reflections on working service jobs as a writer. On dignity, perception, and finding meaning in late-night shifts that leave you exhausted but still reaching for a pen at dawn.
It’s 5am and I haven’t slept yet.
I’m still wired from the near 12-hour shift, from 5pm to 4am. I’m showered, listening to the morning birds, trying to wind down.
It’s surreal. Working these hours, you get to see a world only few see. But the late night janitors and early morning flight attendants see them, the beginning of each new day. Together, we watched the dawn break on the Piccadilly line.
These past few weeks, I’ve thinking about perception, thinking about being witnessed. There’s a lot that is humbling about being seen working a service job. Your role, literally, is to serve. You’re answering people’s orders. A few friends and acquaintances have seen me behind the bar already, and I am overly happy, overtly cheerful, to see them. I take their hands over the brass counter, voice notching up an octave as I exclaim “how ARE you?!”
I know I’m compensating for something. That something is my fear that they’re perceiving me as something - less than, or rather, lessened by, my choice to be here.
I get humbled sometimes wearing this uniform.
By the thought of people seeing me in it. When I walk from the station to the club, I am self-conscious, feel real and imagined eyes on me. And then my back straightens and I get swing in my hips. If anyone looks at me, they’re sure as shit not going to see a faceless worker in a shirt.
I’m a working woman. I have my head held high. I’m making my own money and I work twelve hour days and I’m tired but I still come home and I keel over my bed and I write. I pray. No one can take the spirit I have in me. I have something that’s all my own. I want to remember that, and I do, and my mouth curls up at the corners. No one can take my light from me without my say so. Even when I walk out of the club at four in the morning, dawn breaking, no one around I walk with my head held high. I need to do it for me.
I won’t pretend this path, the one that I’m on, the one that I instinctively feel is right, doesn’t confuse me sometimes. I’ve had many moments over the past three weeks where I wonder what the fuck I am doing. But my gut tells me it’s right. I’m having experiences I never thought I would have. London feels truer to me now than it did when I worked in an office and had my own flat. I get home so late, I write in the dark. I write almost every day. This is what it means to be a writer. Somehow, this is more earned. More true.
I’m not trying to romanticize what is in all honesty a brutal job.
While bartenders and chefs might be trying to achieve culinary greatness, most of them are just trying to make a living. No one is doing this for glamour. A kitchen porter is not looking to win awards. But I do want to say out loud that while this is humble work, it is noble, too. Say what you want about the times you’ve been to a restaurant with subpar service, but think about what this is all for.
The kitchen porters and cleaners and bar backs are keeping the environment sanitised and making sure you don’t get sick. A waiter is trying to get you your food while it’s still hot and paying attention when you tell them your allergies so you don’t go into anaphylactic shock. A bartender wants you to enjoy your night, or at least forget your troubles, via the drinks that they make for you. A host is there to make you feel welcome. It’s all there to make you feel good.
I might be trying too hard to make something out of nothing. A cynic would be absolutely right to say yes, they want you to feel good so you spend your money, and more of it. At the same time, I am fortunate to know what it feels like to have an incredible meal in a comfortable place. It is one of life’s greatest pleasures, one of life’s greatest privileges, to be full, napkins on the tables, friends and family around you, making idle chatter over half-drained coffee cups, finishing the last of the wine, scraping the dessert plate clean. It’s kind of nice to be part of that, especially when the clientele are friendly and polite. It’s one of the most civilised exchanges you can have. And in those moments, it’s genuinely a pleasure to serve.
So yes, my body is wrecked.
My feet are sore, my legs ache. I am always tired. Every moment I spend pressed against the bed is precious. I bought peppermint lotion and press it into my grateful feet, drain the lactic acid from my legs. But in the early hours, my pen feels so good against paper. I am a cog in a machine. I am a bartender with a whole backstory. I am a woman with a life all my own. I’m a poet, I am a writer, and I am glad to be alive.
