How I Learned more working in a restaurant than I did in college

(WIL FULTON, Thrillist)From the ages of 16 to 20, I spent the majority of my summers under the Jersey sun, slinging overpriced burgers and undersized lobster rolls atop a barnacled deck between the Atlantic ocean and Navesink River. It was the warm-weather-only, open-air appendage of an upscale eatery in Sea Bright, NJ, where the air smelled like salt and our patrons were Bennies — “paying for the view, not for the food,” as one of my managers confided. I lived and died on tips and discarded calamari.

My jobs consisted of cleaning up after, then eventually serving (I guess that’s what it’s called?) semi-affluent day tourists and fake-smiling at their Sopranos jokes. Halfway through my tenure, I started college.

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