Everything I know about life, I learned from Mr. Steak

Recently, I joined the Facebook group, “I Worked at a Mr. Steak Restaurant!!!”

The three exclamation points are not mine. They are a part of the name of the official Facebook group and do not indicate my excitement at having worked six years at Mr. Steak in Casper, Wyoming.

This is not to say that I wasn’t or am not currently grateful for my employment with this Midwestern, mid-priced, mid-century-modern steak restaurant.

I am grateful. Indebted, in fact. Working for Mr. Steak from the age of 13 to 19 provided me with friendships, memories, life lessons, and a work-ethic that gave me a solid foundation on which to build my life.

My years at Mr. Steak taught me how to get along in this world.

My love affair with Mr. Steak began on my seventh birthday, which, coincidentally, was the day of my First Communion at Holy Rosary Church in Billings, Montana. It was a big day for me and as such, I was given the privilege of choosing the restaurant where my family and I would celebrate. 

I chose Mr. Steak.

On that celebratory afternoon in 1972, in my white ruffled dress, white tights and patent leather shoes, and basking in the glow of having just partaken in the Body and Blood of Christ for the first time, I ordered the Continental Burger, a hamburger stuffed with mushrooms and pasteurized processed swiss cheese and served on a slice of buttery rye toast.

I was in love.

I’ve always felt like I’ve lived a charmed life and one of the clearest examples of my fairytale existence came when, seven years after that family lunch in Billings and having moved to Casper, I applied for, was offered and accepted my first real, paying job.  At the age of 13, I was gainfully employed as the new dish washer at Mr. Steak, making $2.50 an hour before taxes.

For the next six years, I would hold almost every job that Mr. Steak had to offer, working my way up the steak house ladder.

My stint as a dish washer was short-lived. I’d like to think this is because management saw greater potential in my abilities, but it was likely due to an unfortunate incident involving toxic fumes and the need for the Casper fire department to clear the restaurant.

I can’t say it was my idea, but I was on the clock the afternoon someone in the dish room combined Lime-Away and bleach to cut through the stubborn grime on a broiler pan. It was a valuable lesson in reading warning labels. Following the chemistry-experiment-gone-wrong, a visit from the fire department and a full evacuation of the restaurant because of the chlorine gas we’d created, the dish room staff was reassigned. Or in my case, promoted. To prep cook.

I spent my days preparing huge vats of what I now know was the best blue cheese dressing in the world, thick with chunks of stinky cheese, sour cream, mayonnaise and Worcestershire.

I would prep a hundred heads of lettuce for the Friday night salad bar, banging each head on the worktable and twisting out the core. I learned that the lettuce needed to be torn into bite-size pieces with my hands rather than be chopped with a knife because the metal on the knife blade caused the edges of the lettuce to turn brown prematurely.

There were five-pound blocks of cheese to be grated, onions to be diced, coolers to be organized, bins to be labeled and dated. Each task was listed on a laminated poster on the wall, and as I completed each one, I got to put a check mark next to it with a black crayon. I loved all of it.

I survived the mandatory “busser” phase (which lasted way too long), donning the world’s ugliest uniform every night and working harder than I’d ever worked, clearing dishes, setting tables, hosing down floor mats and being yelled at by everyone from the guests to the dish washers to the servers.

Being a busser at Mr. Steak was a step you couldn’t skip. If you wanted to be anybody at this restaurant chain, you had to serve your time. For lots of employees, this was the end of the line. Clocking out at the end of every shift smelling as if you’d bathed in bleach and blue cheese dressing was too much.

It was a test: If you hung in there through the dirty silverware, the dirty tables, the disrespect from the diners, well, you were probably going to be up to your ears in all-things-food for the rest of your life.

And if you decided that it wasn’t for you, you left the restaurant business forever, finding a nice, tame job taking tickets at the Rialto or stacking boxes at Kinney Shoes.

For better or worse, I hung in there.

Eventually, I earned the coveted title of waitress, along with the cute brown polyester wrap-around skirt and button-down blouse with the Peter Pan collar. But not before I served as a line cook, salad bar girl and hostess. Every job taught me something new and every responsibility made me more ready for whatever was ahead.

Even today, I don’t walk through my house without something in my hands that needs to be put away. I still use the term “86” when we’re out of toilet paper and “I’m in the weeds” when I’m so busy I can hardly breath.

As the cashier, I learned to make and count back change the proper way. As a hostess at 15, I could size up an individual guest in a matter of seconds, determining their approximate age, marital status and general disposition. On slow days, I’d use this valuable information to create “love” matches, seating single people in individual booths or tables, but facing each other. Kind of like the original “Love Connection.” I like to think I made some successful matches over the years.

On Thursday evenings, our Mr. Steak had an all-you-can-eat rib night. One “regular,” a single man who loved his ribs, would get his waitress’s attention by whistling for her. After a few weeks of enduring this disrespect and no change in his behavior after asking him to stop, we banded together.

The next time he came in for ribs and whistled, we all ignored him. Not one employee in the restaurant would acknowledge his existence.

He stopped whistling, asked politely for another plate of ribs and the problem was solved.

Teamwork makes the dream work.

I paid for my first year of college with the tips I earned as a waitress at Mr. Steak, and I’m so grateful to continue to still call some of my co-workers “friends.”

I remember playing Frisbee in the parking lot all night after we learned that one of our colleagues had died suddenly. It was one of the saddest days in our young lives.

At its peak, Mr. Steak operated 278 restaurants across the United States. In 2009, according to Wikipedia, the last Mr. Steak closed its doors in St. Charles, Missouri. I’m sure the decline and eventual fall can be attributed to lots of things: Changing times, challenges with franchising, changes to the menu.

But for certain, nobody can blame the employees who bussed the tables, grilled the steaks, stocked the salad bars, seated the guests and delivered the food. To this day, I can’t tell you what made my experience, and the experiences of thousands of other employees, so very special. There must have been a set of values that guided the hiring and managing of employees that I couldn’t appreciate back then. But I appreciate it today. And so do thousands of former Mr. Steak employees.

One of my favorite shifts at Mr. Steak was on my 18^th birthday. After my coworkers and I closed out our tickets, reset out tables and finished our side work, we gathered in a big booth where everybody sang Happy Birthday to me and cheered as I drank my first legal beer. 

It was every bit as memorable as my birthday 11 years earlier.