Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: In our return to the Writers’ Day Jobs series, we feature Jenn Scott, another former CR contributor (here are links to our appreciations of her stories “Myths of the Body” and “Monsieur”) and Acre Books author. Just this week, Scott returned to her role as a server in the restaurant industry for the first time since March 2020. “It’s been the longest, strangest trip since that weirdo Saturday night in March last year when I left work and knew somehow I wouldn’t be back for a while,” she said in a social-media post upon her return. We’re glad she shared her experiences in the industry with us for the series!
How would you describe what you do for your day job?
I am a restaurant server. Or, as my boss once described it, I “talk to people and bring them things,” which was meant I think ironically, coming from a man with such a keen sense of hospitality. Service is more craft than people realize.
What do you enjoy about that job, and what are some of its detractions?
The list is actually pretty long! When I was a child, I played restaurant and took imaginary orders from imaginary people. Apparently I knew at a young age that I would like this job, and maybe I was already starting to work out what would become the chronic tension for me between art and work. Maybe I was actually playing at the artist’s struggle and not the restaurant part. Serving is a good job for me because I love eating and talking about wine and food, especially in California, where seasonality is key and the food we serve is constantly changing as we shift through the seasons. I also love the yang energy of working in a restaurant. I love loud music in the kitchen and working with witty people who do (and love) different things than I do. I love that we have thick skins. We make each other mad, but ultimately we get over it and have one another’s backs.
I love juggling nine thousand things at once and smoothing over potential catastrophes. I love making people happy and crafting an experience where I can worry about the stuff (the fork they just dropped) that lets them relax into a nice experience. I love that energy at work is very different than how I spend my time at home—quietly, and usually with cats. I had an office job one summer during college and that was the summer I wrote the least in my entire life. It was just too much sitting at a desk. Also, the office machinery jammed and frequently made me cry. Restaurants are really the only way I know to balance work and writing in a way that doesn’t feel like it’s killing me, and I get my most productive, favorite time of the day—morning—for writing. It’s the thing I do first every day.
Maybe that I don’t have enough interaction with other writers in a writerly way, although perhaps it’s unfair to blame my job on this, and it’s more a problem with my actual personality. Like, maybe I’ve grown insecure around other writers because I’m pouring their wine rather than having actual discussions about books. Also, sometimes you just feel burnt out from serving. It’s a lot of being constantly on and playacting a role, no matter what’s going on in your life.
How, if at all, does your day job inform—or relate to—your writing life?
I would say it doesn’t, but I’m realizing that I could be easily called a liar, or in denial about this, since my book of stories frequently involves restaurant work. I do prefer to keep them literally separate. Like, if I’m waiting on you I probably don’t want to talk to you about what I’m writing or what books I’ve read, because I don’t have the bandwidth for that conversation when there are six other tables to worry about. However, I will totally tell you what to eat and how to pair your wine with your food. Recently, though, I have been wondering what might happen if I had a job that didn’t polarize creativity and work so much. Like, if I move into a field that specifically engages other aspects of my creativity, how would that influence my writing?
What creative projects are you working on right now?
Well, I just finished a novel it feels like I spent a lifetime working on. And now, while I’m trying to muster the energy to start another, I’m focusing on short stories again. I think I’m working on a collection of stories set in Oakland, and I think they’ll be stories that explore the relationship between urban and natural environments, but the beauty is they could end up being about anything.
Jenn Scott has published stories in journals such as Cincinnati Review, Gettysburg Review, Gulf
Coast, Fiction, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Los Angeles Review. Her book of short
stories, Her Adult Life, was published by Acre Books.
