Employees Only
Back in August of 2025, around our 82nd hosting, I wrote a . . . carefully . . . worded letter to several members of the board. The gist of the email was:
“We’ve been hosting for 2 years here, we don’t get any compensation for it,
we feel like employees rather than members, and it feels absurd that
the people profiting off of us are the people most visibly put out by us.”
To be 100% honest, I don’t really know what I was asking for . . . all I knew was, I was tired of feeling like a burden to the wait staff when I would ask for help with things beyond my control. Like that nagging 7:05 “check check check” into a microphone that should have been set up by someone else twenty five minutes ago before the first guest got there.
Cut to our 100th hosting . . . I emailed the woman who sends out the flier to bill it as “Our 100th Hosting!”. My husband brought balloons. We got to our seats and there was a fun strobe light disco ball thing. Some of our regulars had brought some nice gifts for us – flowers, books commemorating the past 100 nights of hosting. And yet, at 7:05, there I was, still trying to get that damn microphone to go through to the Grill Room.
By 7:45 we’re moving into picture round, right on schedule. “Alright, the picture round that was selected was Everyday Phrases Dingbats. I have to run upstairs and make copies and then I’ll hand it out, so just sit tight for 5 – 10 minutes and we’ll get right back to it”. I run upstairs to the copy machine. The door was locked.
Hrm.
It’s never been locked.
Not knowing what to do, I ask the bartender if he has keys. He comes upstairs and tries to find another office that might be open that can get us to the copier.
No luck.
He marches me right through the kitchen. My 4” stilettos clomping through the kitchen drew some attention, needless to say. So the chef got involved. And another server. The four of us standing in the kitchen, on the busiest night of the week, trying to devise a way to get me to any copy machine we could get our hands on.
At a loss, the server calls the manager and asks her to come back. The manager’s car was in the shop and she had actually Ubered home. The server insisted, and the manager agreed to come back. But, dissatisfied with how long the wait would have been . . .
Well . . .
Let’s just say the manager arrived greeted by three employees and one member coming out of the copy room, copies in hand. Between us, a busted door handle.
I don’t know if anyone ever got in trouble for the damage, but I will forever appreciate that blurred line between employee and member.
Want to stay up to date on our most recent post? Click here to view all blogs, or use the Blog link on the footer of any page!