During this period, I did a few times of flexible work in the catering industry. The time wasn’t long, but as someone born into a bourgeois family and who has always been obsessed with luxury enjoyment and parasitism in the past, this work experience gave me many ideas. When I have time, I plan to organize my thoughts and talk about it in several parts.
The first time was during the peak closing time at Chef Fei’s restaurant. I chose this because I had previously worked as a summer service worker at a fast-food restaurant, so I was quite familiar with the closing work and thought “it’s just that,” plus I dislike entertaining and serving customers, so I chose to avoid the heavier tasks.
In the first half hour after starting, because it wasn’t yet peak time, I was in a storage room responsible for breaking apart a type of fungus plant. This room has a window connecting to the long kitchen space behind. At the front are two aunties washing dishes at the sink, and behind are several stove stations for stir-frying. The auntie who was breaking the pieces had been working here for a long time and left after finishing her task. There was also a girl there for greeting guests. While breaking the items, I chatted with her for a while, learning some local daily wage work experiences and the characteristics of different hiring companies. When a formal worker came into the room to pick up items, I still wanted to talk, but she told me not to chat when formal workers entered, saying that they are tired from work and seeing part-time workers sitting and chatting might cause resentment, and if reported to the supervisor, I could be blacklisted. The conflict between formal workers and daily wage workers isn’t just that. She said she had worked at McDonald’s four times and hated it—low wages and hard work. She mentioned that in the group chat of formal workers, the manager makes them hand over the hard, tiring tasks to daily wage workers.
She said she was unemployed from December last year until May, working part-time daily wages while looking for a job. She used to work in an “office” environment but found it too gloomy, so now she is looking for “office” jobs again—“who doesn’t want to work in an office?” She also mentioned her past luxury consumption, having spent over ten thousand on Identity V… Listening to her, I felt she was like a bankrupt petit bourgeois.
As more people arrived, the auntie called me to come out and clear tables. Because the restaurant was large, I and the auntie each had a cart for clearing tables. At first, I followed the logic from my summer job two years ago and blindly cleared tables, but I soon made mistakes. The auntie pointed out that the requirements for a big restaurant are very strict, with many details. For example, the cart has three layers, and each layer has different tableware: large bowls and plates on one, small bowls and plates on another, iron pots, and clay pots at the bottom. After clearing each table, I had to put a piece of alcohol on the small stove there, etc. When the cart was full, I had to go back to the room where I started, lift the basket through the window to the dishwashers, and wait until they took away the dishes before retrieving it. During peak hours, the restaurant is long and smelly, and with so many customers, clearing tables becomes especially tense. Due to my lack of experience, I often made mistakes, such as not sorting the bowls and chopsticks properly. The auntie kept criticizing me, which was justified. Improper placement not only affects the next dishwashing worker but also can cause the cart to become unstable if, for example, the clay pot isn’t placed at the bottom, risking the dishes falling and losing wages.
When I first reported, the supervisor said that clearing tables was a physical job. I couldn’t understand at first, thinking “I can handle it, no matter how tired,” but I quickly realized how exhausting it was. The most tiring part was lifting the heavy baskets full of plates and passing them through the window to the dishwashers. Customers were leaving everywhere, and tables needed to be cleared constantly. Bending over to collect dishes and dump leftover food made my waist ache terribly. Although I didn’t feel this work was a devastating blow after a long time away from labor, I was filled with exhaustion and kept thinking, “It’s not easy,” and it was completely different from the small restaurants I used to work in. When clearing tables, I always had to face the leftover food and drinks, dumping everything out, with red oil and juices often dripping onto my white uniform. While busy, customers nearby were leisurely enjoying their meals, which made me very irritable. If I had the chance to switch places, I would definitely drool over the dishes on the table, but when my fingers were covered in oil and water, and I had to struggle to pour leftover food into the trash, carry heavy kitchen waste in the safety corridor, I didn’t think about delicious food at all, only about the wastefulness of those customers.
At that time, I also had a rebellious, individualistic attitude. The more tables I cleared, the more annoyed I felt watching the diners enjoy themselves beside me. Isn’t today a weekday? Why are so many people packed into this restaurant at noon? It must be various bourgeois and worker elites. They kept ordering bottle after bottle of milk tea, which quickly filled my trash bin, forcing me to empty it repeatedly, which was very annoying. I even thought that if the economic crisis worsened, these petit bourgeois workers would all go bankrupt, and this commercial building would turn into a ghost town. These feelings were part of my anarchist mindset as a petty bourgeois participating in labor. On the other hand, I thought about how many people are busy behind the scenes serving these tables, dealing with leftover dishes in the safety corridors and cleaning rooms. Thinking about this made me feel that if I went to eat at such a restaurant again and had such people serve me, I would feel uneasy and have no conscience. So, while working, I kept telling myself in my mind that I would never eat at Chef Fei’s again, never.
I had never eaten at this restaurant before, but similar “high-end” chain restaurants like Xiang La La or other Shaanxi-style places, such as sour fish, often visited, and I always thought about the delicious food and fresh flavors there. I realized that I, like the petty bourgeois workers in the restaurant, was probably enjoying the surplus value of our materialized labor through parasitism or superficial differences in body and mind. I felt I shouldn’t have done that in the past, constantly telling myself never to eat at Chef Fei’s again. Actually, this mindset was something I used to joke about with colleagues during summer work at a small fast-food place back home, saying that after I finished working, I would go there to eat and have them serve me. But after I left, I never thought about eating there again, unable to accept being served by those who shared the same labor as me. But that was a small restaurant, and because of my bourgeois family background and frequent visits to high-end restaurants and luxury enjoyment, I lost those memories of that job.
Now, working in the service industry again made me reflect on my exploitative lifestyle as a member of the ruling class.
The auntie asked me twice if I was thirsty, then brought me a paper cup with ice water. Later, she told me to go eat after a few tables. I thought, as a daily wage worker, I probably didn’t get free meals. She said, “Never mind! You eat with me later.” I initially thought I had to finish all these tables after the peak hours to get paid manually. I also wondered if working slowly and delaying clock-in might earn me more wages. Later, she took over the work alone and told me to eat. Another daily wage worker brought me bowls and chopsticks. I ate their signature spicy stir-fried pork. That meal was really delicious, and I also thought it was stupid that those petty bourgeois workers paid dozens of yuan to eat a simple Hunan home-style dish, just for the “stir-fried” reputation! It was crazy! By the time I finished eating, only green peppers remained in the dish. I initially thought, well, I will eat the peppers too, and not waste like those people. But I realized it was probably my bourgeois legalistic mindset—thinking that as a daily wage worker, I could only have this bowl of rice and shouldn’t add anything.
Then I decided to get up and ask for more rice. As I stood up, a formal worker sitting nearby suddenly asked me what I was doing—“adding rice or filling vegetables?” I said I was adding rice, and she calmed down. I understood that the stir-fried peppers cost more than rice, so she didn’t want me to eat more. When she heard I was just adding rice, her expression became natural. When it was time to clock out, I saw a few tables outside hadn’t been cleared yet, all handed over to formal workers. I finally understood that I didn’t need to rush to finish everything; I could just leave when my shift ended. Because I wasn’t allowed to wear a watch, I only checked the time on my phone at the end, and it was very close to the original shift end time.