A first-person YouTube monologue by Donald Burns in which he recounts a turning-point drunken arrest (‘drunk tank’) around age 21 that forced him into sobriety and deeper involvement in the restaurant business. He describes being a waiter for six–seven years, then learning the kitchen and running/‘firing our ship’ after getting sober. He also ties a later existential business challenge during COVID—talks of possibly selling the house and keeping staff employed—to operational tightening that ultimately improved the business and led to a positive outcome.
Chapters
I was bad, man. I had accepted the fact that I wasn't gonna live to be 30, I probably wouldn't have made 25. I was 21 at the time. So getting that look, you know, obviously I ended up in drunk tank one night. Again, one of the best things that ever happened. It looked like the worst at the time. Best thing now because it got me clean and sober, firing our ship. Opening night again seemed like, oh, man, what are we going to do? You know, I'm doing. And it forced me to get back into the kitchen and learn the business from that. I was just a waiter for six or seven years before that. So, you know, it's one of those things that, you know, Covid looked like, you know, this existential crisis to us. And, you know, I had conversations with my kids and my wife, you know, I'm. I don't know. We have to sell the house. You know, those restaurants may close. We're moving to a park. We're doing whatever we can, whatever we need to do to keep these things open, keep the people working. And that thing, as bad as it was, you know, made us tighten up, made us work more efficiently, effectively, and actually ultimately led us to you, and we got better. So. Yeah. The worst things in life aren't always the worst things in life, taken in the whole picture. That's true. Sometimes the things that we think are setbacks are set ups for a great comeback.
