Getting togetherness while sitting around the bar with beloved team members “after hours” brought me back to the good old days when every single day was cause for celebration! Woof. How did we do it!?
On this day, following a sold out Easter Sunday brunch at our flagship restaurant, COBBLESTONES of Lowell (we smashed it!) it was as it were back then! Family members had pitched in–including a nephew who was then yet to be born, alongside his mother who was around his age when she first joined us, a first year cocktail waitress in the early days and on Easter, 2024 a smiling buffet server. Our end of the bar included her brother, our “John-of-all-trades”, a carver today and our wireless-technician-installer the next, back then a bartender and part time manager.
We were joined at the opposite end of the bar by a number of victorious and joyous full time staff members–even raucous at times! (Did you know the c-word can now be shouted as a compliment without offending? Us “older folk” did not…which led to a conversation about empowerment, then a debate, then an argument….then copious shouted compliments)
Celebrating each other as well as the days success, anybody who has ever worked in a restaurant understands that ultimate success is achieved as a team in a dance, working alongside, in front and “behind you,” having each other’s backs, an “I move, you move” harmony that when performed as we did on this day, covers all the bases and leaves the guests thrilled and the team with a feeling very much like having won the big game: A ‘popping corks’ warm and fuzzy buzz, pre alcohol!
As the night went on and with every manager’s prompt; “We really should get going,” shouts of “Just one more!” were abided, us collectively feeling the love, the camaraderie and fire of the room and the moment.
Toasts, chants, just the couple impassioned arguments, followed by lots of hugging, some dancing, a broken window and ultimately, as the night wound down, a bunch of happy-silly beautiful people serenading each other to one of the final songs of the evening’s soundtrack on the jukebox;
“Whennnn… theee… moon-hits-your-eye like-a big-pizza-pie….”
nn1jwn