Abolish Restaurants Ft. Andrew

Andrew joins us to talk about our experience in the service industry, making food in a non-capitalist system, and the original zine Abolish Restaurants

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Take it away. Robert Evans, gosh, it could happen here.
I did it brilliant. Thank you, Yeah, I love I
love that really, thank you. You're Robert Evans. We also
have Christopher Long, Garrison Davis, and we have Andrew here
with us. We'll be leading this episode. Hi Andrew, Hello,

(00:25):
Hello everyone. Oh, it is the with in Portland. It
is cold. Everywhere else in the continental the United States
it is a boiling hell storm. Actually today today it's
only eighty four. But yeah, we we have three days
where it's merely in the eighties and then it goes
back to being like seven again. It's very very excited

(00:50):
temperature measurements. But Angeles, it's lovely today. We're lovely for
the next couple of days, and then we'll be burning
sixty six is It's going to be perfect here forever.
Climate change is over in northern Oregon. I have declared it.
Well have you declared it? It must be true exactly.

(01:13):
So today, once you have a bit of a discussion
and open discussion about my favorite kind of discourse, and
that is dead discourse. I wanted to talk about discussion
could and code that people have been having a couple

(01:34):
of weeks ago about restaurants restaurant discourse, whole idea that
people who had about five minutes ago and got super
are lap over and sparked to a bunch of like
drama because that's what social media and centervices. But I figured,
you know, we could have a nice round table discussion
here about code and code restaurant abolition and share our

(01:57):
thoughts on the idea is presented in the zine that
in spired it for those those who read it, Abolish
Restaurants by pro Lain Food. But first of all, I
wanted to share a bit about my experience in the
food industry. It was quite brief, and by brief, I
mean like four days I started working at this this

(02:19):
winery slash cafe that was um owned and run by
this trust fund baby, and it was very clear that
she had failed up for most of her life. UM.
It was very disorganized and very stressful experience. I quit
like a few days after I got it because instead

(02:41):
of you know, making coffees and preparing wines and stuff,
I got a job pushing paper in an office, which
is only marginally better. And I mean everyone want to
speak over like food serce people or anything because like
my experience is very limited. But in my own limited experience,
it sucked, I mean my blood too into water trying

(03:03):
to keep up with everything. It was one of those
kind of under the table jobs, so you don't have
a contract or a specific job description. It's just like
you're doing everything. So you're sorting and taking off recycling,
you're organized and start, you're making coffee, bus and tables
and cashion products. You're handling accounting for some reason, like lady,
I just got here, but I'm already doing accounting, um,

(03:23):
and so on and so forth. I didn't have an
official break either, and I wasn't allowed to sit at all. Um.
I mean, my boss said that I could stop for
lunch what I needed to, But because of this these
constant responsibility she was piling onto me, I bus, we
never got a chance to take a breather. The one
time I did take a lunch break, she rushed me

(03:46):
out to the lunch break because I was taken too long,
and she was busy taking care of her other real
estate and her only consistent customers with her friends. Yet somehow,
you know, she kept the doors open and the lights
on because you know, trust fund baby, but yeah, to reiterate,

(04:11):
it was a very sucky experience. Yeah, I worked at
a restaurant for starting when I was in high school,
I was fifteen and a half, for three or four
years part of college. It made me learn a lot
about how awful people are. But it was like, you

(04:34):
did learn how to work in a team and things
like that. Helpful skills there, but management was terrible. Ah,
not exactly easy work, not exactly fun work. Um. Yeah,
it was like, I honestly feel like a lot of

(04:56):
people should have to do some type of job like
that so that they learn, you know, how how to
treat people who work in that in that kind of position. Um,
because mostly my memories of it is terrible, horrible customers
who just treated people like scum. Yeah, but I needed
the job, so yeah. Yeah, My only experience in food

(05:21):
service was working at a sonic not for a crazy
long time, but it was terrible, um, and it left
me with an abiding like respect for people who have
to do that. And uh, you know, we can talk,
we'll talk more about the restaurant thing, but I certainly
don't think fast food restaurants are a thing that exists
in my ideal future because I don't know how you

(05:41):
could possibly operate those without a tremendous amount of human
suffering and wasted potential, because they're just they're bad things.
Now that said, any utopian society will have a way
to acquire Popeyes, but perhaps not at like midnight in
every city of the country. Whenever you wanted my utopian
society as a wool in which KFC has been abolished

(06:03):
and everything else too exist, Yes, yes, well again this
is it could happen here sponsored by I'm perfectly okay
with imperialism, but like I need someone. Yeah, and what
kind of like can I ask, like, what kind of restaurant?
I know? Robert said his fast food? Mine was very

(06:25):
like casual food. What what kind of restaurant did you
work at? Right? It wasn't It was like a winery
slash caffee and it also served food. It was like
a touched to a hotel. Oh yeah, and the hotel
part of it probably made it. Yeah, appearance in the
hotel and yeah, all right, yeah, I'm sorry, Yeah, kurs,

(06:50):
scare either of you rather work in the food fruit
food service industry at all? Yeah. I worked at a
bakery for like a year and a half mostly back
of the house. Um. But I mean, would you know,
would end up washing washing dishes and taking out recycling
and all that kind of stuff. But most of my
work was designing recipes because I was more on like
the food science angle. I don't know, yeah, I mean

(07:13):
it's I have a complicated uh feelings on like cafes specifically,
I mean I I love anarchist cafes and like the
idea of Chris Cafe. I would love to love to
like have one at some point. It's like operated by
the workers WoT quote owned by the workers, um, with
a shooting range out back. But obviously there's guns and buns.

(07:35):
We call it guns and buns. You can get a
Croissan and you can shoot funded by cafe by all
of me inside. You're right, guns and Buns is a
breakfast cafe, gun range, strip club and apparently as long

(07:57):
as as long as you fund it, you can have
whatever you want. Um, but the people will fund it. Garrison. Obviously,
the food service industry has just make it a cooperative
that everything sorry, police continue. Yeah, Like the food service
industry has a lot of problems. But if if I
were if I were able to go into a bakery,

(08:19):
like maybe like two or three times a week to
just bake food for people and that helps me live
the rest of the week. I would totally do that, right, So,
like it depends on a lot of factors, but it's
like there's ideas around, like an anarchist cafe, work around
a cafe that would be like totally chilled to work
to like be there a few days of the week
making food because I enjoy making food. I enjoy baking,

(08:40):
and I like food science. Um. But you know, when
you would start we start tying that into labor and
exploiting the labor practices and the notion of like having
to serve other people, then it gets a little bit
more tricky, um, and you know, less less less good.
That's yeah, exactly. You know, it was kind of funny

(09:00):
about it, Um, I would say, is like kind of
last mention of thought, Guada, let me just think for
a sect. Well, So, I mean one of the things
that I have noticed over the years, because I've had
a lot of friends work as bartenders, as waiters and waitresses,
there are there's a chunk of people who really like

(09:21):
the work. They usually don't like their employer. They often
have issues with like their manager or whatever, but like
they like their co workers and they enjoy the the
act of like doing restaurants stuff. Um I I and
I know that. Like, so one of the things that
I did recreationally for years is I was good. I
would go to these regional burning Man events. And one
of the rules there's like everyone pays the same thing

(09:43):
to get in. There's no like get there's no like talents,
so there's nobody who's like paid to be there as
an act, and there's no like exchange of currency lab
But there are restaurants. There are people who like bake
food and and and give out and like make and
give out coffee. There's there's multiple bars, and a number
of the people I knew who were like the most
who would spend the most of their time which is
again totally their own at these events volunteering as bartenders

(10:07):
were people who worked as bartenders. And we're like, look,
I like serving drinks. I hate a lot of what
goes along with being in a bar, but I enjoy
making and serving drinks. There was this one really cool
dude out in the middle of he was out because
it's a spread out over acres of Woodlands. There's just
this guy I found one night alone in the woods
at like a podium sized, little booth lit up bar

(10:27):
he'd made, and he was like, look, I am a
very good bartender. What I do not like is making
the same things every night for drunk people who don't
know anything about a good mixed drink. So you and
I are gonna have like a five minute conversation and
then I'm gonna tell you what I'm gonna make you
based on like yeah, and it would, but yeah, it
was really cool like that. More stuff like that, More
like restaurant pop ups that are like those types of

(10:49):
things are are just divorced from like this notion of like,
you know, being served by a lower class member of society.
Instead it's people like sharing actual interests that they have
and they're not obligated to be there or else they get,
you know, or else they're not able to pay their rent. Right,
There's lots of things like a utopian society or be like, yeah,
I would totally be down with doing some some kind

(11:10):
of you know, some kind of thing related to giving
food to other people are preparing food or you know,
drink like mixed strengths Uh, I like making coffee a
lot like espresso and the ship. Um, it's like, I
can totally see that, but right now, you know, it's
just a totally different field. Um, by and large for

(11:30):
most people in you know, the food service industry, and
it sucks work. By by and large, it really sucks
to work in the food service industry. Yeah, the food
service industry is one of the most explicitve industries in
the country. That said, the idea of gathering in public
to consume food and beverages is fundamental to human beings
and we're never not going to have that as society's

(11:53):
so there has to be ways in which to have
versions of that. And again probably not the every ten
minutes you get the same three has food restaurants that
are open all night. That probably that definitely does not
exist in an ideal society. But in any any better society,
human beings will gather to eat and drink around each
other because it's something we've done in every civilization that

(12:14):
has ever existed. So, Andrew, you do, do you want
to talk a bit more about the actual zine, because
I feel like a lot of people's course around the
zine is not about the zine itself. It's about what
the title of the Zene is, because people people should
read the actual zine. If you read it, makes very
reasonable arguments. Um. The titles just intentionally provocative. Um so yeah,

(12:36):
And what I've realized about intentionally provocative slogans is that
the people who who want to get it, you know,
they tend to be drawn into those kinds of things.
And then there's some people who see something provocative and
it kind of shuts them down. Yes. Yes, some people
see see something supervocative and see it's like I want
to learn more. And other people see it and they
have that kind of a gut reaction to It's like

(12:57):
it's like the backfire effect type thing. Yeah. So I
mean to get into the kind of the history of
it and just the idea of restaurants as as the
Zene Explorers. According to the discourse, a restaurant is just
a place to eat. If you sit down in the
middle of a desert with a table and a chair

(13:19):
and you eat something that's apparently a restaurant, that's not
a restaurant, and it's not a restaurant. But okay, the
definition of a restaurant is a place where people pay
to sit and eat meals that are cooked and served
on the premises. Commerce is a part of the definition

(13:40):
of a restaurant. Why do we universalize and naturalize things
that are neither That is my question. It's like what
people do with the state, or with capitalism, with police
or gender. Just like those things. The restaurant is an invention,
but it's been crystallized and induced into our mind as

(14:01):
something that is you know, that is natural, it is universal.
You know when when Kronk brought his buddy Brock a
piece of chicken, that was a restaurant. You know, it's
like we take we take these things that come from
very specific modern capitalist context and we stretched them out
over the entire human experience. If you look into the

(14:24):
history restaurants, the first restaurants began to pay in Paris
in the seventeen sixties, even as lads in the eighteen fifties,
majority of the restaurants the world be located in Paris.
And I mean, for those who know a little bit
about history, Paris is kind of an interesting place where
a lot of things happen, especially during that rough time period.

(14:46):
A lot of stuff going on there exactly. I mean
elsewhere on the world. Communal meals were quite common. People
cooked community in the eight community, and they were new
restaurants specifically before the invention of restaurants, and in Paris,
around Europe at least, where people had servants who cooked
for them, travelers had inns where their meal was included

(15:08):
with the price of the room, and they ate for
the innkeeper and his family, and peasants they ate their
meals at home, and of course they were also caterers
for events and special occasions. And there were taverns and
wineries and coffees and bakeries for certain foods and drinks.
Of course, later on all of those things, the taverns,
the wineries, the gig the caffees, and the bakeries. After

(15:31):
restaurants came about those other institutions to shape and bend
into this sort of the mold of the restaurant that
was established restaurant based on the name of it um
comes from this, this idea that they were meant to
restore health to sick people. Restaurant restaurant, all right, And

(15:53):
they used to sue these small meat stews. So by
by that by that metric, taco bell cannot be a restaurant.
I I would argue that it is the only restaurant.
It's well, it's gonna restore Bowel movement if you haven't
gonna block it that that that it will restore that.
But besides that, I cannot, I can do not think

(16:15):
it's going to restore. Yeah talk about it's probably something
like a laxatant. I don't know. But um yeah, So
why France, Why Paris? Why restaurants? It kind of occurred
after the food craft kills were abolished by the Revolution.
It was like this attempt to kind of democratize the

(16:37):
food industry. You know, Liberty got a horn, all that jazz,
so restaurants and it began spree enough because all these
former cooks of the now be headed king and aristocrats,
they wanted to work somewhere. Sure, so, you know, in
a restaurant, you get a meal at any time the
businesses open, anyone with money could get a meal. The

(16:58):
customers would come and they would eat an indivi vidual tables,
eat individual plates and bowls of food. They get to
choose from another option, a number of options, and they
grew in size and complexity as they went into They
got a fixed menu, and eventually one day we invented
the bacon eat. Yes, yeah, the end fact, the bacon.

(17:21):
It was the first booger I had when I went
to Neus. I would apologize, but this country has done
so much worse than that of fun facts about Andrew. Yeah,
you know, it's another thing to tune in and you
get a little new fact that you could I don't
know adds my Wikia page or something, but yeah, yeah,

(17:47):
it was, it was, It was. It was mid. Honestly,
my brother makes better boogers. But that's besides the point. Yeah,
nearly every burger that you can get at a fast
food restaurant is is mid. Yeah. T g I Friday's
had some good Friday. That is the place when you're

(18:10):
in a town you've never been before, that's where you
want to just show up and get absolutely ship house
drunk until two am with like a bunch of strangers
at the t g I Friday's Bar, which is the
Boulevard of broken dreams. Like it's only people who can't
hack it in a regular bar and weirdos traveling through town.
I love a T G I. A Friday's bark. I

(18:35):
was not aware of that stereod type. I mean it's
a t G I here in Trinidad, and I mean
last time I knew they had like some kind of
karaoke thing going on. Yeah, it's probably the vibe. I
haven't been too many times anyway, I think this is
enough product plast month for for one episode, like a

(19:01):
lot of different here's ads. Sure, why not? So the
growth of the restaurant came the growth of the market.

(19:23):
With the growth of the restaurant came the growth of
the market. Needs that will you know, fulfilled either through
a direct relationship of domination like between a lord or
a king and his silvants, or a private relationship like
within the family. They were now being fulfilled on the
open market. It was once a direct oppressive relationship now

(19:44):
became the relationship between bier and seller now became. It
didn't direct oppressive, exactly, a diffused oppressive relationship foremost because
no one post and I would say, you could really
carry the blame. A similar expansion to the market to
place over a century later with the rise of fast food,

(20:05):
because as the nineteen fifties, housewife was on her way out,
you know, being undermined, and as you know, women started
to move into the open labor market, many of the
tasks that were done by women traditionally were being transferred
onto the market. Not to say that women still don't
do the majority of care work in modern society, but
as women started moving into the office into the workplace,

(20:29):
things started to shift with regard to eating and eating patterns.
An important point to notice that, of course, you know,
the whole woman moving into the workplace thing is kind
of a white woman phenomenon, because you know, people of color,
women of color were in workplaces before then in large numbers. Yeah,

(20:51):
And and there's there's a thing I think it's important
to note here too, which is like part of what's
happening here is that like some of the care labor
the white women were doing gets transferred on to non
white women. And this is this is this has been
one of the things that like I think we talked
about this a long time ago and an interview I
did with it with a nurse. But like, like, for
for example, you see this with healthcare a lot where

(21:12):
like a lot of like union workers get these goods,
you know, they get really good healthcare plans from the unions,
but those healthcare plans are basically subsidized by not paying
women of color like ship and there's this whole sort
of like trend around this is sort of like like
you can, you know, if if you're witching, if you're
rich enough, you can escape housework. But you escape housework

(21:32):
by essentially thrusting it on somewhe on someone else who's
like further down the social ladder venue. Yeah, it's kind
of like a form of that um phenomenon. People have
been talking about the the idea of choice feminism, as
in any choice that it wouldn't speak that a woman
makes is parts of the feminist sort of movement. So
I saw some discoos happened recent Dude. People are talking about, um,

(21:56):
how oh one should have a right if she's a housewife,
that she should still be able to, you know, pursue
her interests, which is of course agreed, and the solution
being proposed so that was that the man, the breadwinner,
would pay for a domestic servants to come and work

(22:17):
for the woman so that she can pursue her other responsibilities,
her other interests and desires. And so it's just kind
of this perfect what a close to license exactly because
then this woman is working away from her family, and
then you know it's just like this is a the
massed up system. But yes, so, as fast food restaurants

(22:44):
began to grow rapidly, people began being paid wages for
what used to be housework. And of course, as we know,
capitalism couldn't exist without the billions of dollars of unpaid
labor that woman perform on a yearly basis. Modern restaurants

(23:06):
emerged in the nineteenth century under specific conditions. They had
to be businessmen with capital to invest in restaurants. They
had to be customers who are expected to satisfy their
need for food on the open market by buying it.
And they had to be workers with no way to
live but by working for someone else. As these conditions developed,

(23:28):
as capitalism developed, sorted restaurants, and so at the root
of this whole abolished restaurants discourse needs to be an
understanding of where restaurants came from their historical development. You
cannot take them in isolation and project them, like I said,
across all of humanity, because it's only through understanding, through

(23:50):
specific circumstances that we can transform it. As we transform
society as a whole, as we were saying, you know,
there's a lot of things that are health about restaurants,
the way that work comes in like weaves and rushes,
a lot of slow time in between. We either really
stressed out the really bored. I remember working they had

(24:11):
the winery and like for mostly day I just have
to be like shifting around bottles on the shelves. I
couldn't sit down and chill or be on my phone
or anything. I just had to busy myself until a
customer came. And Gus was never key because it was
a field business propped up only by her parents money.

(24:32):
But did you ever get told the phrase if you
can lean, you can clean, Not in not in those
exactly ways, Yes, in those exact words God, and every
fucking manager who says it to you thinks that like
it's their cool line. I was fucking anyway, yep. Yeah,

(24:58):
So you have to just you have this. This can
something of trying to look busy while having nothing to do,
while you're trying not to fall behind because they have
tendings to do. Everyone is always working harder and faster,
and of course the boss wants to squeeze as much
work out in the same number of people out as possible,
you know, like you're pushing people to these ridiculous extremes,

(25:20):
which is why it's a kind of stereotype now of
like restaurant workers all being on drugs. You know, there's
also this whole in humanity to like employees being paid
in tips. Now, as far as I know, nowhere is
that as severe as it is in the US um.

(25:42):
But of course around the world there are tipping cultures
of varying degrees. And so when you have that sort
of work where you're throughout your living, your subsistence is
so directly tired to like tips. Not only do you
have this sort of divide being created between the workers

(26:02):
between like, for example, the waiters who make the tips
and the cooks who don't make any tips, And it's
just the sort of had to compete against each other
because the way so it's trying to get as much
done as possible so they can make the tips quickly,
so they could have the you know, quick silveres, where
as the cooks they have no interesting motivation to push
themselves harder. It just becomes stress. I never got tips

(26:27):
from baking in the back of the house unless some
of the people in front of the house would like
share the tips at the end of the day by
their own like yeah, and I know folks who worked
in places where all tips were shared with the way
the kitchen staff, and it seemed to be a fifty
fifty breakdown of this is really good and everyone gets
paid fairly, and this is actually some scam by management

(26:48):
to deny people a bunch of tips by like pulling
them and a certain factory that gets done so Like
it's like any formulation of this inherently winds up being
pretty abusive. Yeah, and dividing. You know another interesting and
I mean, as you guys mentioned stressful components about you know,

(27:09):
this line of workers. Of course, the customers, which customer
service people in general turn to. You know, whether you're
working at a bar or you're working at a you know,
a restaurant, even working in like sales and some sort
of like retail, still their whole subrether is dedicated to

(27:30):
how terrible customers are two workers as that that sort
of dynamic of service, it it really changes people. I mean,
customers can just as easily be working class as the
people working in the restaurant, but there's still that dynamic

(27:51):
that's created when you are the one being seated and
served on the other person on their feet serving you.
Some of the worst customers in America at least are
working class and poorer folks who it's like their chance
to be above somebody, like when they go out to

(28:12):
a restaurant, so they can be extra shitty. Yeah, that
is a thing that happens. Surprising me that even like
restaurant weekers who treat restaurant workers fatly when they go
to a restaurant. Yeah, yeah, yes, it's like someone gets
the opportunity to be to exert the power and they're like,
do it in the short, short, short, short amount of time.

(28:32):
But although I will say, I'm sure those are also
the restaurant workers who treat people badly at the restaurant
they work at, including like some of the some of
the things that have ever been said to be by
customers at the restaurant job I had. Yeah, not surprising,
And I was like no, I was like I was

(28:54):
like in the high school. I was a kid, and
these are like grown ups being horrendous now, Like I
think I think it's like I don't know, like when
people talk about this, like when people talk about restaurants
like and in the discourses it's it's in a way
that's like it's incredibly abstract and doesn't like it isn't

(29:14):
it doesn't think about the fact that like the relationship
between the customer and the people who have to interact
with the customers, host, etcetera, like that that is a
social relation. It's a social relation that like that, like
like the the power dynamic inherent to it abscribes sort
of different kind of like it describes different kinds of

(29:35):
behavior to the people who are who are like on
either side of it, like it it controls like what
you have to do as a server, like what the
performances you have to give to like the smile you
have to put on, which is actually like that's the
original thing of what emotional labor is, right, is like
the labor you have to do to make the person
who you're serving, Like I think that you're like happy
and enjoying it, like having a good time. But then

(29:55):
you know, on on the customer's end too, it's like
you get this sort of you know, I was like, oh,
this is your one chance to to be on top
of a sort of power relation, and like that like
that like that specific thing is so fucking evil. It's
like that there there, there's there's a story I think
about a lot from run In Schwang. Originally was it
was about um like one of one of the last

(30:16):
emperors of the Tang dynasty, like his his concubine like
loved lechia and like, okay, I get it as lesia
that gets really good. But like leech has grown leaches
only grown in this in the south of China. You
can't really grow in the north. It doesn't like it's
too cold, too arid. And so in order to get
her leisha, like every morning, they would send like the
fastest writers like in China would like be sent by
horse like to southern China and then back so that

(30:40):
he get the lechia there in time like for for
it still to be like ripe and like edible. And
you know that that's the kind that's the kind of
power that used to only literally the Emperor of China
had this ability, right like the like the Emperor of
fucking China could get this commodity and like force everyone
in a change to go do something for them. And
now like everyone has that like literally one has the power,

(31:00):
Like every time you use Amazon, you have that power.
Every time you go to a rustaurant, you have the
power to do this, and it it turns people into
monsters because like that's you know, the Chinese emperors are
like these are some of the worst people who've ever lived. Now,
like everyone everyone like just like like the fundamental basis
of the society is there was a place where you
can go and you can become the emperor of fucking
China with the idea of instant gratification being reliant on

(31:24):
the exploitation of other people. Yeah, and and like that, yeah,
and that doesn't seem right, Garrison, Oh yeah, I think.
Don't worry now, watch me as I order next day
delivery on a dollar drone just to just to funk
around in my backyard. Like yes, it's it's everything is
fine in America. I I do. I am like of

(31:47):
the opinion that the grocery store is like the primary
artistic achievement of capitalism as a system. Um. They are
objectively marvels, um. And they're they're built on a river
of blow deeper and wider than is. It's like it's
a hyper object, right, It's like impossible to comprehend the
full scale of cruelty that goes into being able to like, well,

(32:10):
it is November. I'm gonna go get a fresh bag
of grapes that have been genetically modified to taste like
cotton candy, picked by people making sense an hour in Yes,
in the country that's on the other side of the world. Yes,
whose relatives are shot for attempting to scramble over the border. Yeah.
That the grapes passed through easily. Yes. And I think

(32:33):
like like that that points to another like I think
part of the dynamics infelic with restaurants that happens, which
is that like, okay, like cooking takes time, right, and
the less and less time that you have, the more
like the more reliant you become on like on these services.
And so you see this with like you know, like
China has like a like a particularly horrible like delivery culture.

(32:57):
Like you can like you can have someone to liver
food to you, like to the train like like a
sub Like a train will stop at a stop and
you can have someone run a bag of food to
you and then like leave and you just like you
go to the next stop and you get off, and
that happens because everyone's working nine nine six, and it's like, okay,
you're working seven You're working nine am the nine pm,

(33:18):
six six days a week, and you know you don't
you literally do not have time to cook because you're working.
You're working twelve hours a day, and like an example
of this is like restaurant people who work restaurants, like
line cooks and chefs, hardly ever cook for themselves. They
always get food from other restaurants because they're cooking eight
to ten hours a day. They're not going to go

(33:39):
home then cook for themselves. They It's like, yeah, it's
this system almost it makes it makes the things that
prop it up become necessary to keep the whole thing going.
It's all like balancings super like precariously on its own weight.
It's it's equivalent to like if you're in a criminal
sin to kit making, somebody you're working with tangentially shoot

(34:03):
a man in the back of the head so that
you both have blood on your hands. Like everyone is
everyone just by by virtue existing under it. Like if
you're working sixty hours a week is a fucking nurse
during COVID or as a fucking line cook dealing with
this surge of delivery ship and then on your way
home you just want to pick up some like sushi

(34:25):
from a fucking grocery store that requires ingredients from all
around the world and is made by people who are
not getting enough money to make it and is horrible
for the environment and the fisheries and all that kind
of ship um, and but like what are you supposed
to do? Like you you just you just finished like
a ten hour shift, Like do you not deserve like

(34:45):
one one nice thing at the end of the day.
Like like so it's if you people can't like either
you becomeing like a complete aesthetic right and and reject
and go kind of ted kay and live in a
shack in Montana and reject all of these these kind
of modern conveniences, or you accept that like you're going

(35:07):
to spend some time waiting into the river of blood
because otherwise the things you have to do to stay
alive in this society are completely emotionally unsustainable. Yeah, this
was this was the original, Like before it kind of
became this cop out for like just doing whatever you want.
Like this was the original. There's no ethical consumption. Dury
capitalism was about. This was about like this specific problem

(35:28):
that everything in the society, Like even even if you're
living in the woods and Montana, it's like yeah, like
where where where did where? Like where where did your
cabin come from? Like where did your nails come from?
Who made the hammers? Like everyone's like completely dependent for
everything on the exploitation of other people, and it is
it is a The one thing that gives me a
little bit of hope is when Andrew was explaining how

(35:49):
like restaurants came arise because of people who used to
work for kings and ship who then started working at
restaurants because they still want to make food. It's like
that evolution. Taking it to the next step is people
who work at restaurants now no longer having to work
under capitalist exploitation and realizing, hey, I know how to cook, Well,

(36:10):
I'll just set up like ways to feed the community
outside of this system of commerce. Right, that is the
next evolution. If you start with people cooking for the
king people, then cooking in places where you pay to
eat in this exploitative system, and then people cooking for
people so that there's food around into like a community setting. Right,
if you if you follow that trajectory that's actually kind

(36:31):
of hopeful. It's almost like we've i mean in some ways. Yeah,
like right, it's if if you just go back to
like beings, yeah, like communating. If there's places around different communities,
different towns, different like urban centers that have that have
the capacity to feed people who are not able to cook, cook,

(36:52):
cook for themselves that night or that day, that's something
that if if it's there's ways of setting that up
which I can see being so much better than how
restaurants work. You know, maybe maybe people wash their own
dishes afterwards, maybe people do something to help with like
prep or something. Right, like there's there's there's ways to
make this that gives you the parts of restaurants that

(37:14):
are actually really convenient, um without the exploitation. And so
that that type of like community cooking is something I mean,
you know that's even similar to like how like a
good dinner party operates, um, just that kind of extended
out across you know, more of like a pop up
setting and say hey, yeah, this this month, we're using
all of these ingredients that are grown in our general

(37:36):
local area. Right, We're not getting shipped, We're not getting
like strawberries in December ship from halfway around the world
will make stuff that is available um as it you know,
as it's grown, or we can pickle, we can store food,
right and yeah, and maybe we we've we've turned the
old defunct Walmart into a grows shelter. So once or
twice during the winter there are some strawberries and everybody

(37:58):
comes together and shares this marvel that the community came
like worked as a team to ensure would be available.
But you can't just go and buy four pounds of
strawberries that are produced with their like twice the weight
of the strawberries and pesticide in order to keep them
alive in fields that were never meant to grow straw Like,
maybe that's not available all year round. Like, yeah, let's

(38:29):
get back to the point being raised about about like,
because that's a really important point. The whole purpose of
that seeing has been mastardized, but it really is crucial
to have to do once and the signing of it.
What frustrates me is that it's been taka and then
it's been too it into this justification and that it's

(38:53):
okay that I buy from Sheen, It's okay that I
buy a three thousand dollar whole from Sheen, because no
ethical can sumption on the couple is on. Was like
with where somebody goes on, they engage in something that
is normal. That is, Andrew, you're talking around my two
and a half pound a day veal habit and I

(39:13):
don't appreciate. Yeah, that sounds like a problem. That's like
something Joe Rokanot sense like I need two and a
half pads of veal every day and that keeps my
brain running smoothly. The caveman, I mean exactly, it did
work for Georgie Peterson, he's doing great. Christ at the

(39:39):
mirror notion of Antifa, I would do an impression, but
hood my throat, so that's I would see. I would
say that as we were saying, you know that there

(40:01):
really is is potential. We see even under these conditions
that people find ways to survive. You know, they create
like these informal work groups that are not only able
to come together and push back against management, were able
to work together to create trust within each other. You know,

(40:25):
you have like for example, waiters who would try to
hand in the kitchen on a slow day, or a
cleaner or who might pick up a thing or two
a dishwasher, we're trying to move up to become like
a align cook. All these different workers, they they do
things certainly to try to undermine the unnatural divisions and

(40:48):
hierarchies and between these skill and unskilled um in the restaurants.
Certain of course it doesn't always work because there are
you know, settings were in the manager six as fully
created divisions. You know, whether it be the manager creating
a division between um teen different nationalities of immigrants, so

(41:12):
you know, playing upon someone's queer phobia against like queer staff,
or someone's biases against I don't know, I can't think
of a third example, but there are ways of managers
try to like sew these divisions between workers, and they

(41:35):
always at workers try to push back. They're also ways
at managers trying to do the opposite, to create a
community within the restaurant and includes themselves. So instead of
fostering isolation and prejudice, they create a community that especially
in small restaurants, that involves them, that talks about that

(41:59):
you know, the boss much shape with them, how difficult
it is working and organizing for the business to the restaurant,
and or they might create like a special kind of
restaurant focused on their identity. So they might create a
restaurant for for queer youth with all the staff a queer,
or you know, you have a restaurant for you know,

(42:22):
a black owned restaurant world workers a black and try
to create a community based on this identity. But it
kind of erases the unavoidable class interests between workers and management.
It's smooths over that dimension, so it becomes more difficult

(42:42):
to organize and to speak up for your rights because
you're you're aware that the managers are human and they
too are struggling, which kind of brings me to the
idea of restaurants with no managers and the idea of cooperatives.
The assus cooperative restaurants is that they basically have to

(43:04):
collectively take on the rule of managers managing themselves, creating
those pressures and pushing those pressures upon themselves. They enforced
the work on each other, and they have to work
longer in some cases and work hard in some cases
because the structure of a restaurant is designed to make money,

(43:27):
and if it is not making money, then everybody loses
their jobs. So due to this pressure, bosses in a
position where they have to pushed workers to get as
much out of the workers as possible. You raised the
boss on the occasion from the equation, but you keep
the rest of the concept of a restaurant, and line

(43:51):
between work and parts becomes blur to the extent where
it's almost like that image of a person with a
boot and hand pulling a boot on their head, where
this oppression there was one external becomes internalized because that

(44:11):
is how a restaurant survives through pressure, through exploitation. It's
kind of like with how self employed people are on
the capitalism. Yes, you're working for yourself and you have
some freedom that regard, but you're still restricted by the
broader system. You haven't escaped it. You've just had to

(44:31):
navigate it. And I have to make quarterly payments to
the I R S. Yeah, I mean, I say, I
think work for ourselves in some capacity have a certain
level of freedom and it um you still have those
pressures and it's just you have to inflict them on yourself.

(44:55):
You know, you don't have like a break that has
been man dated and so this in my case, I
don't say breaks because that's just how I am, you know,
you work longer hours, you push yourself harder and harder,
you work on days when you should be rested, and
it's just it illustrates the fact that liberation is not

(45:20):
to be found under this system, and it's something totally
new with a totally different metric of success, a totally
different metric of sustenance, totally different bare minimum, and totally
different motivation needs to be the foundation upon which society
is built because there's profiting awaken. Yeah, And I think

(45:46):
there's a like, I think the reason this debate happens
like this, this whole discourse happened in the first place,
which just that like like just like a lot of
it really was just a complete inability to imagine like
literally any other way of like even just like like
any other way of getting food that has not involved

(46:07):
you go into a place and telling someone to make
it for you and like that. I don't know, Like, yeah,
it's like the fact that there have already been sort
of seismic shifts in the way that like food production happens, right,

(46:29):
I think is evidence of like, no, we don't have
to do it like that, like we just we just
do not It wasn't like this for most of human history,
we could do something better than whatever they were doing
before it. Yeah, a lot of people might you know,
wish for like in this, So let's just shift over
into the abolition section of it, the restaurant abolition. A

(46:52):
lot of people look to, for example, a union as
a path by which in the short soon you know,
we make sit and gains and belong to we can
take over and radically transforming. The difficulty comes in how
unions have traditionally operated in the restaurants fair they tend

(47:13):
to be significantly less successful. I mean, restaurants usually have
very high turnover people in the last couple of months, um.
They often employed like a lot of young people who
are just looking for part time or temporary employment. Well,
people who do work, they're constantly looking to move on
to better things, and so it makes it difficult to

(47:35):
create a stable union with a stable membership that can
buckle down and really negotiate and push for the interests
of the people working, because people working and constantly change it.
I think one of the like, one of the really
great things has led to is that like like especially
when fast food took over, like the major unions that

(47:57):
even do exist which is like that we like we're
just not gonna bother even try and organizes people because
they just assumed it was impossible. And so like there
are there are very very few fast food unions. I mean,
like I think one of the only like even sort
of functional ones is the ww like organized Burgerville. But
that's that's been like it like the like the big unions,

(48:18):
when they've done campaigns for fast food workers, it's like
it will was clean like five or fifteen, but it's
like they're not actually trying to like form unions of
the freshmand workers, Like they don't they're not even trying.
They're just trying to They're they're using them for sort
of like a lot being an advocacy. Yeah, and difficulty

(48:39):
also commins when a union's established itself, you know, because
a union structurally it's not always by all the lucas.
You know, there's still sort of a hierarchy of bureaucracy
that we established itself and trying to maintain its even

(49:00):
if it starts off benignly. No, just for all of
the radical history that unions do have, quite a few
unions in the particularly United States, have also been conservative
bastions and bastions of different attitudes about like stuff like
white supremacy. You know, there's there's a lot of the
union movement is as much Blair Mountain as it is
trying to stop black people from being able to work

(49:20):
on trains. You know, like all of those things are
part of the history. Yeah, I mean, I'll speak briefly
on like the union situation in the Caribbean, particularly in Trenda.
The trade union movement was intrinsically inextricably tied with the
anti colonial movements in the movement for independence. You're subcating

(49:44):
that the unions became tied up with the political parties
that are rules after independence and well during the process
of independence. But I know happening with the unions was
that they end up being tied to deeply with the
political parties. So ended up being that the established unions,

(50:06):
you know, the higher ups in those established unions, they
have these relationships of favors and obligations with the politicians.
A lot of politicians come out to these union movements
and end up establishing their own political careers. And because
it's also tied up when you workers get into these
industries that do have union that have been unionized. There's

(50:31):
a very clear separation between the union and the workers
because while the union is able to you know, push
for the workers rights and you know, they're still separate
from the workers. The unions still exists as a new
negotiator between the workers and the management. And so you

(50:53):
have the workers which to go beyond just negotiating. The
union exists almost as a release valve for any sort
of class antagonists. So any kind of pressure, any kind
of real pressure against the start at school. I mean,
it's not just unique to turn that outlet to the Caribbean.

(51:16):
I means it's globally cross history. You've seen union struggles
kind of go over the same sort of dynamic. You know,
new generations of workers, they build love the movements, they
build up the unions, and the unions begin to change,
and perhaps new union leaders spring up to replace the
old union leaders, one put on the same position and

(51:39):
the same pressure as the reacting the same way as
the bureaucracy and being rejuvenated. Unions are reformed and they
end up going back to the same obays that they
had been before. And in some cases the fight to
reform the union takes the place of the fight against
the boss because of all the bureaucracy and system, of

(51:59):
all the ocations and just deeply rooted ideas about the
place of the union, because well, unionizing is a difficult process.
Union leaders do tend to enjoy certain benefits from their position,
and as we are aware of, you know, certain hierarchies

(52:23):
self justifying those are the top tend to want to perpetuated.
It's kind of like and so this idea that this
is kind of an unsettled thought of mind, but it's
kind of like the idea of you know, using the
state to establish workers power and then abolishing it afterwards,
you know, using union to get some ship workers po

(52:47):
But then it's expecting this union of a certain structure
that exists towards negotiating, ends to somehow pushing these sort
of more radical directions. There's a saying that but um,
but the zine um, the rights of the zine say,

(53:10):
it's like restaurant unions needed to be restaurants and we don't.
I think that sort of applies more broadly because when
we get into the whole idea of like work abolition,
it's just concept of workers are people outside of work,

(53:31):
but a workers union exists within the confines of work
as we understand it, so I think that's where the
difficulty lies. The Zne goes on to say later on
that every time we attack the system, but we don't
destroy it, it changes and in turn changes us and

(53:52):
the train of the next fight. Gains are turned against us,
and we are stuck back in the same situation at work.
The boss to try to keep us looking for individual
solutions or solutions within an individual workplace for an individual trade.
But the only way that we can free ourselves is
to broaden and deepen our fight. We involve workers from
other workplaces, other industries, and other regions. We attack more

(54:14):
and more fundamental things. The desire to destroy restaurants becomes
a desire to destroy the conditions that create restaurants. We
aren't just fighting for representation in or control over the
production process or fighters and against the act of chopping
vegetables and washing dishes, or poor and bear or even
serving foods other people. Is with the way all of

(54:37):
these acts are brought together in a restaurant, separated from
other acts, become part of the economy, and I used
to expand capital. The starting and ending point to this
process is a society of capitalists and people forced to
work for them. We want an end to this. We
want to destroy the production process or something outside and
against us. We're fighting for a world of productive activity

(54:58):
fulfills the need. There's an expression of our lives not
forced on us in exchange for a wage, a world
where produce for each other directly, and I don't order
to sell to each other. The struggle of restaurant workers
is ultimately for a world without restaurants or workers. And
I mean so, I think people are still going to
call some multigensives restaurants restaurants anyway, probably, But I hope

(55:26):
this discussion as cause equals kind of deepen the approach
to this