Are Your Industry Friends Really In It For the Long Haul?
In the service industry, we’re all trained to put on a happy face, say all of the right things, and show everyone a good time once they walk through the door. We all have similar personalities in this business, so it only makes sense that we make instant connections with each other. We bond over the shitty nights and celebrate after the good ones. We spend more time with each other than our own families so naturally we become one big dysfunctional work family.
I worked in an industry where it was all about who you knew. The more people you knew, the easier it was to access venues, get vip treatment, or get free drinks. Since I was a manager, people asked for me often and eventually they became regulars. We got to know each other and over time formed a friendship, but it’s quite superficial in my opinion. It was made very easy to stay out after work with regulars as they would beg you to stay and offer to buy you dinner and free drinks all night. If you think about it, as a single female in a big city paying high rent, free drinks and dinner sounded much better than spending $45 on groceries and a bottle of wine to take home by yourself. This was a very easy habit to get sucked into. There was always someone there when you were about to finish work tempting you to stay out and I could always justify it as something I deserved after dealing with people all day/night.
The social aspect of drinking was always how I got sucked in. F.O.M.O. was a serious thing around our industry. We always saw everyone having fun and we wanted to do the same. I could always find someone who wanted to grab drinks and this usually always led us to an after party. Let me tell you from experience, you may think you’re bonding with that group of people surrounding a plate at the kitchen island, but this is not how you form real friendships. You may think you’re diving deep into someone’s life but all will be forgotten the following day.
People are always there for the fun times and any reason to celebrate. They’ll jump at the chance to gossip with one another or bitch about one of their tables at work. But the reality is, some of these people will leave as soon as the going gets tough. They can’t be bothered to deal with someone’s hard times, they only want the fun party side of your personality. This is the definition of a surface level friendship. This is the type of friend who wants to put zero effort in. If I had managed to get sober back when I was in the industry, I wonder how many of those industry friends would’ve stuck around?
I have been very lucky to make some of my closest and best friends within the restaurant industry. The kind of friends who are there through it all. The good, the bad, and the ugly. I am grateful for all of them and they know who they are.
It’s important that you discover who the real ones are. The ones you can trust, the ones who have your back, whose opinions you value, and who support you no matter what. Remember, it’s about quality not quantity.
