Serving and Service: Lessons from a Life in Restaurants and Politics | Julian Cyr | TEDxProvincetown

[Music]

it's cape cod

august 2009

it must be 85 degrees the humidity is 95

i'm sweating buckets

i'm waiting on 11 tables all at once at

the height of the rush

evening rush at adrian's restaurant my

family's long time italian eatery on a

bluff overlooking provincetown where

i've spent every summer of my life

i have a deeply loving if colorful

family who i'm always pushing boundaries

with

julian

stop chatting with the customers come

and pick up your food it's getting cold

chef adrian yells from the open kitchen

stop being such a queen dad i

i bark back with an earshot of all of

our customers

picking up the tray of wood-fired oven

pieces and hoisting them away to table

55

it's been a busy night

i nearly forgot the aperitif for helen

and the diet coke for peter at table

four it was a thrill to wait on my

political hero robert reich

i gave extra attention to the handsome

gay couple until they were a bit rude

mrs merrell ordered the salmon again

and everyone three credit cards

emblazoned with american psychiatric

association it's august and toro

i am a talkative and precocious 23 year

old a favorite of the customers a

powerhouse of a waiter who can load up

on tables but also bossy and

entitled i'm the waiter who always

volunteers to take last hit the last

table of the night but somehow

like shirks the duties of side work at

the end of the night

my dad adrian is the eponymous chef my

mom annette runs the front of the house

my sister our cousins our friends all

work in the restaurant

carol our theatrical hostess with a limp

mostly gets in the way but she is plays

the best jazz standards and instigates

shift drink with my mom so we adore her

the beefcake serbian busboy shamelessly

flirts with the senior vice president of

a major insurance firm while his

clueless wife looks on

my sister and i bicker incessantly

ellery our jovial if perspiring

bartender and i plot the joint that we

plan to smoke at the end of the night

see the thing i've done most in my life

is work in my family's restaurant 14

seasons and that's not counting the ones

we were skirting child labor laws i was

born here on cape cod but my parents are

washer shores

they grew up in the same suburban

connecticut town and got out as soon as

they could in 1973 my dad moved to

provincetown at the age of 17. uh he

made silver jewelry shocked scallops got

a gig

uh

dishwashing at the red inn where he

stayed for 11 years my mom worked there

too

my parents caught the ambitious fever of

the 1980s they got married bought a

house opened a restaurant had two kids

in three and a half years

they had success especially in those

early years and when you work in a

seasonal business it means you have your

winters off

and most the fall in the spring too

i don't mean to paint a solely idyllic

picture here

some seasons were more profitable than

others it's tough to rely on a year's

worth of income in a short 10-week

season

as housing costs skyrocketed on cape cod

it got harder and harder for us to find

help especially in the back of the house

and if you've ever worked alongside your

family i think maybe some of you have um

you know it can be hard

very hard

and while i had a classic case of best

little gay boy in the world syndrome as

a child

by the time i was a young adult

i could be a complete terror

i attempted to quit the restaurant a

number of times i desperately wanted to

get away at least for my family's

restaurant

i longed to work

at uh some fancier eatery in the heart

of provincetown where i could make

bigger tips from a gayer clientele

by 2009 i had graduated from nyu with a

bachelor's degree in individualized

study very useful um i couldn't find

stable professional work more than

unpaid internships and i was

begrudgingly back at the family

restaurant wearing that old that old

waitron skirt

what i didn't appreciate at the time was

how i was honing the skills and

abilities that would become the greatest

asset in my professional career

real hard tangible skills the sort of

skills they don't teach you can't teach

you in college

teamwork the ability to prioritize and

triage in the heat of the moment and

most crucially the capacity to relate to

people from all walks of life to meet

people where they are

even

on my most summoned days

i was supremely proud of the family

business

i felt a real pride and responsibility

in being part of something that was

bigger than myself see

no one gets anything done on their own

in a restaurant you inevitably need the

prep cook to me everything for service

the bartender to make your drinks the

host to corral the customers the buster

to clear the table

and if the dishwasher calls in sick

you're screwed

you also have to figure out how to work

with people you might not like or don't

get along with

to put on a good face to the public

even if you're seething inside that

jackie johnson has sold the last term

you sue

you've got to have stamina both physical

and emotional

inevitably an order gets screwed up

someone is unhappy

you need to be able to pivot to think on

your feet to make a plausible excuse to

make someone happy to prioritize to

triage

and most crucially restaurant work

taught me how to deal with most anyone

you want me to listen attentively

to your life sure i'm there to feign

that i care how the rainy weekend ruined

your getaway absolutely to make a

playful yet biting joke that gently

reminds that obnoxious customer they've

gone too far far

yep absolutely

the restaurant taught me how to meet

people where they are

some customers want an intimate evening

where the waiter is seen and unheard

others and these are my customers

want your life story they want to hear

about your winter and where you traveled

and how the gnocchi is made they crave

that interpersonal connection at your

table and so through the restaurant i

got really good at service at the art of

serving people of making customers feel

welcome and attended to and seen to be

part of the reveling in their vacations

their favorite dish their traditions

restaurant work taught me how to relate

to other people

how to be invested in one another

to appreciate

how

complete strangers can become part

of the cadence of our own lives

to greet the regulars year after year

who watched me and my sister grow up

who later would help fuel

a quixotic run for public office

during these summers waiting on tables i

was increasingly drawn to the

possibility of politics and i was

especially inspired by the campaigns of

all patrick a barack obama

so i cajoled my parents to host a

fundraiser at the restaurant first for

the obama campaign in 2008 and later for

governor patrick and it was at the

restaurant and those political events

that ultimately led to my big break

getting hired as a field organizer on

governor patrick's re-election campaign

in 2010

and it was the tips from the restaurant

that made possible uh having a life

where i made 300 a week uh working on

that campaign

so

if you can attend to the needs of 11

tables amidst the din of a busy

restaurant you can organize democratic

activists you can uh juggle

constituencies

you can find a way to connect with that

fellow senator who you thought you had

nothing in common with

indeed

restaurant work is the ingredient that

has propelled my career

the seminal experience that taught me

the skills the work ethic the ability to

connect with people that made possible

for a 30 year old queer kid from the

smallest town in cape cod to run for

state senate and to win

surely the whole of my experience has

contributed to do has contributed to

what i do now and i don't mean to

diminish those experiences

the high school

choral program were that first ignited

my interest in community organizing the

health policy classes the lgbtq

leadership programs

getting the chance to work alongside

brilliant public servants at the

massachusetts department of public

health

yet when i reflect most on the skills i

rely on day to day those stem from

restaurant work

and when i'm asked what is it like

to be a state senator what is it like to

be a politician

well

it's like working in a restaurant

and it's taken me years to appreciate

these truths because our biases about

work are so embedded they're so strong

it's not the most prestigious items on

my resume that were most determinative

in the in my development as a

professional person yet it's those most

prestigious achievements

that get the lion's share of the credit

for my success

this has all made me think about the

work we value and the work we don't what

work is considered work with dignity

what work is valued and what work is

considered undesirable unfortunate what

were unfortunate and transitory

and i think as a society we've got it

wrong we don't see the restaurant work

we don't see the retail work we don't

see the service work

as valuable

if you're a lawyer or a doctor or an

investment banker or a senator

your work is considered important and

access income and prestige follow

yet

most restaurant work and its cousins in

the professional world are devalued

i'm saddened by how we don't value the

work

that so many people do the work that

sustained my family for decades

the work that sustained so many in this

town today

my parents are among the best managers

i've ever encountered hey they put up

with me for 14 seasons

the work so the work that i was doing in

2009 is just as worthy of praise and

validation

as what i do now and i think for those

of us how many people in the room have

worked in a restaurant i've worked in

service have worked in retail see

just think about that right but the

irony here right the iron is that in

covet 19

although restaurant jobs were deemed

essential but that still didn't refrain

our collective perspective our lens on

work and in provincetown the pandemic

gave those of us who could work remotely

a playground with record profits while

the waiters and bartenders in this town

wondered if they could make ends meet in

a dampened season

could they weather the july covett

outbreak or another shutdown

in 2012 we closed adrian's restaurant

after 28 seasons

even then it would have surprised me to

know that just four years later my name

would be on the ballot as a candidate

for public office

i've now been serving in the

massachusetts senate for six years

and in many ways my life still feels

like i'm working in the restaurant

i'm racing to a session or a committee

hearing i'm juggling tasks prioritizing

asks i'm forgetting to return calls and

a text

maybe there's some cutting words between

me and a colleague

i'm dealing with all sorts of people at

their best and at their worst

it's exhilarating

exhausting

a little dysfunctional

and tremendously rewarding

so i'm still serving and i'm still

sweating in front of people in public

so i'm julian sear this is my ted talk

on serving in service can i take your

order thank you