Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | T | Texas Monthly

The waiting game: working in a restaurant seemed like a good way to make some quick money--until I had to take the Pappasito's entrance exam.

Article Excerpt
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

It's not like I didn't want to work. I had applications out all over town. I was just waiting for the right place to call me back. By this point I'd gone several years without holding down a regular job. I'd lived off a small pile of savings from when I did work, then for awhile I'd gone back to school, and most recently I'd been sitting around, wondering what to do now that I was 37 years old and finally out of school and money.

It was Sylvia who came up with the idea of waiting tables. My older sister owns a Mexican food restaurant in Houston that specializes in the regional dishes of South Texas, based greatly on recipes passed down through our family. On the weekend there's usually a line out the door, and some nights her waiters pocket up to $120 in tips. She offered to let me work at her place, but I was living in San Antonio at the time and wanted to find a job in town.

"Just tell them you have experience working at your sister's restaurant," she said.

"But that was only one night," I said.

"That's experience."

"And I was only busing tables."

"Do you want a job or not?"

A few days later, when the phone still hadn't rung, I filled out an application at a Pappasito's Cantina, one of the more than ninety restaurants (including, among others, Pappadeaux and Pappas Bar-B-Q) in the chain started in 1976 by the Greek American Pappas family. The assistant manager I talked to seemed impressed with my experience and hired me on the spot. She handed me a thick binder that contained the extensive Pappasito's menu, a description of the required uniform (black pants, black shoes, crisp white long-sleeved shirt; the restaurant provided the black bow tie and apron), and the start date of my training schedule.

That night Sylvia called to see how the interview had gone. She was in the car...