Hi there. Welcome to my interview project. My
name is Doug Vincey and I'm interviewing Sean Brown.
This interview is gonna consist of about 15 questions.
I'm gonna ask Sean over the next 35 minutes or
so. Um It's gonna focus on some areas of
what consists of his job title, his job responsibilities,
he has um, how he feels about living
on a sort of a paycheck to paycheck um in
that sort of class in life right now. And
we're gonna start with the first question. All right
what's going on? I'm doing pretty good.
How you doing? I'm doing well. I'm doing
well. Um of course I work with Sean at
Buffalo Wild Wings, where he bartends with me um on
weekends and nights. And, um, we have a
pretty good relationship, so I'd like to include that
in the interview. Um, and uh we'll go ahead,
well, let's see. Will you please state
your name, your job title and the name of
the organization that you work for? My name is
Sean Brown. I work for Buffalo Wild Wings in Blacksburg and I'm
a bartender. All right. Um, where are you originally
from? And what did your parents do for a
living? I was born in Ellsworth Air force Base
because my, both, my parents were in the
Air Force, but I've moved from Utah to South
Carolina, North Carolina, Texas, Maryland and then we resided
in Virginia when they wanted to retire. Okay,
what did they do? Was it mostly military? Yeah,
mostly military, they, my mom actually
just had a desk job. She was a sergeant and
she just had a desk job. And my dad was
um a marksman, I can't remember where he was,
but he was a marksman. He's been to Saudi Arabia and
stuff like that. It was pretty crazy when he
left. Did you ever think about going into military
yourself? Yes. Yes I did. But um
I got in trouble, trouble with the law, and I'll go ahead
and say it, uh I had five misdemeanors, you know I had
a high ranking based, what what is it called?
What's the test called? The uh. Well anyways
on that test I had scored a 67 which was
great and I could have chosen the job they had.
The ASVAB. Yes the ASVAB. I had six misdemeanors which weighed heavy, the
cutoff was five and I tried to get a waiver,
but I couldn't get in. Okay. Alright,
okay. Well then, so how long have
you worked at Buffalo Wild Wings? Almost, about around
two years. I'm working on the month, year
and eight months. And not all as a bartender?
No, no, no! I started as a cook left. I started to
cook in Gebruary of 06, worked till December, left
to go work for UPS in Roanoke. That
didn't work out and then I came back up here
last year and now I'm working now. Most people
view 40 hours as a full time job. Do
you find that you have to work more than 40
hours to make ends meet? To me. No,
but most people, yes. Um the way the economy
has been, and the way things are going to be.
Yeah, you gotta work more than 40 hours
to make ends meet with the gas prices going up,
uh everything's going up, grocery prices going up.
So yeah, you have to work, especially
have kids. I don't have kids, but I
work 40 hours a week, three weeks out of
the month, maybe. That's not because I want to
make ends meet, I just want to live comfortably.
So you do have disposable income? Yes.
Yes, I have. When, when my bank account
hits $500 I'm broke because you never know
what's gonna happen if your'll need money. So
like one week you know you're out sick. Okay
I got this to fall back on, have a
little bit of cushion. At Buffalo Wild Wings
you make money based on tips. Do you find
that you can support yourself on the tips that you
make? Yes because as a bartender you have to
be personable and you know personally I like this person
on the tip tip them more. You know when you're
not as personal as a bartender or server. Right,
so what was her problem? Now we're gonna
short, give them a larger tip and it goes
back to being nice to people so you're nice and you're
serving people want to make them feel welcome, feel
comfortable. So then they'll tip you more, get
more bigger tips, more money then yeah you can,
you can live comfortable. You said that as
a bartender that you get tips based on how friendly
and how hard you work. Um you have always
been a bartender, Buffalo Wild Wings when you were hired,
you were hired as a cook. Um My
question is, and this is something I actually did
a paper on for class and I did it based
on you and I had spoken with you in that
in that regard. Um they didn't really give you
the option of being in front of the house.
No, not at all. Why do you think that is? Um,
for me, I I had a perception that maybe
and I've seen this a lot in restaurants when I
look, you see a lot of female employees in
the front of house, in the front of house
is your typical waitresses, your wait staff and your
your bar staff and you'll see young white males.
And then if you look at the back of the
kitchen, you'll see that it looks completely different than
the front. And I noticed this that Buffalo Wild
Wings and I was really glad to see that Sean
was able to work his way from being a cook
to bartender, which is a promotion. But the
question that I do have for you is that do
you find that um there was outside influences holding you
back from being able to pursue a front house job
if you want. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
My regional manager Mark Puckett did not want to
see me move up. Did that bother me at
all? Now tell, tell me I can't do something,
tell me I can't work my way up when
I know I can do the responsibilities of the job
and do them well become one of the best.
Go ahead and tell me I can't do it because
I'm gonna show you wrong. I don't care if
it's outside influences I'm gonna overcome. But do you
feel worthy outside? What do you feel? Were
the motives behind Mark Puckett not wanting you to move
up? And why do you think that you weren't
initially even offered in front of the house job when
you applied a lot of times? The way I
dress the way I am may come across like an uneducated black man.
And I hate to say it like that, but
racism still exists today. And some people don't want
minorities serving them. Now some people still
have problems. Some people still think we live back
way back in the day. We weren't bad people
. There were not bad people now don't, don't
put everybody as a whole. You know, I'm
saying everybody else should see people as individuals as I
do. Don't see me as yes, I am
black. I understand that. I'm like, man
, I'm a black individual. So racism is alive
and well in 2008, oh yeah, racism.
We hating people who are really doing nothing to us
. Why? Why we all right? Why were
you over there? You know what I'm saying?
I understand they have to work themselves out and I
don't I don't want to get into it. I'd
love to see my boys come home. But people
stopped paying. It's always gonna be high. I
don't know. I know it's fun. Uh with
regards to your political views. Uh you're talking about
the war. You're talking about having people come home
, our troops come home. We have you you
are a military brat. So, um the military
career was always something that you actually would have pursued
. So you have a lot of empathy for the
soldiers that are in Iraq. Are you voting Obama
or you're voting became really, I don't think any
of them gonna bring truth back. Big issue.
But as far as the economy and McCain is talking
about, we don't have the right four years.
No, for years. Obama said it was real
. He said it could take 10, 12 years
. Be real with people. Let them know.
We're gonna we're gonna be in struggle. But we
gonna make it are you gonna vote for Obama?
Because he's black? What do you like best about
your job? The people I get to meet every
day. I get to meet new people every single
day. Like meet new people new knowledge because everybody
got wired. You never and plus you never know
when you make some of the day. I'm a
very spiritual person. I like people like to make
people feel good. So you're not sucking serve them
. I can feel good for at least 2030 minutes
of the day. That's how some people get by
. What do you like least about your job the
people and the co workers, co workers. I
don't understand if you didn't pay to do a job
. Why complain? I mean yeah you can complain
about some types of things that you know need to
be done. Like the branches little cups of ranches
for people to dip wings in, has to be
done. Get paid for it, you get paid
the server table, my complaint. I want more
tables. Why complain? It's not all you're gonna
do it one way or another you're gonna do it
. We get fired to walk out then where how
do you think Virginia texas affects the business that you
have good good effect because people like to come out
and this time like to come out and have fun
, do crazy things. We like to have fun
and you know come out big groups, watch football
games, you mean cool exciting people when they come
out as big groups everybody just wants to have fun
on the night. But then also in the nights
you have people that do get drunk and they start
acting dumb but as far as them affecting, we
get paid good money and on our tips on those
good nights but then you do have those people who
do like to cause trouble like to use fake I
. D. S. And such come in because
that could, we could get fired for that.
There's no, you know, it's funny that you
mentioned UPS in my class that we were studying this
book called gig and long story short did little interviews
kind of like this which is this project is based
off on a day in the life or just description
the person's job. And the person from UPS was
really negative about his job there. Um but he
sounded kind of like a slack or anything. But
what was your description of your job? Like you
guess? Well when I started we had to be
there at two in the morning to unload trucks which
had to be had to have a certain rate 1800
boxes per minute. It's a lot of boxes constantly
grabbing, putting down. It's good work. You're
not leaving person 18 boxes per minute, 1800,
per minute. Because you know, you know how
big gps is and what did you get paid to
do that? I got paid$13 an hour.
$13. How many hours worked? It was only
like five maybe that was your, that was it
only the only source. Only source right there,
$90. No, it was$90. And and
then I started because this is when I had moved
back in with my mother when I was incarcerated then
I moved up. I was doing that now also
help on the truck because when I had my license
, I was going to be a UPS driver before
I even came back to beat ups. Okay.
Did the need for more hours force you to go
back to, could you have gotten more hours of
UPS? No, not, not the way they
were doing it. Not at the time because the
only time they're really, really busy and they need
all the extra help is uh, december. It
runs from christmas. Did you want to get,
but did you want to become a full time employee
there? Yeah, Yeah. Was it for the
benefit? Was it our pay benefits higher pay,
comfortable living. Um, I was talking with the
GPS drivers. That's why we're good friends at work
Fedex drivers because I know what they've been through because
everybody said everybody starts down where I started from,
They don't, they don't hire outside the company moved
within a, I like that about that They stay
in the house. Um, but as far as
me wanting to get good benefits, comfortable living the
hours weren't bad works, not bad because I'm not
lazy. So I'll be active moving around all day
. Okay. So I'm gonna ask you a few
questions about buffalo wild wings right now. The first
question I'd like to ask you is to describe a
typical day of buffalo for you for me. I
walked, I walked in about 10-5 walk straight to
the bar, Say hello, set up my bar
and no one really bothers me in the morning because
they have because I'm not fully white. Uh set
up the bar. Colonel TVs uncover the liquor liquor
, feel the ice, put chairs down, put
the menus out. Stop beer free. You're ready
. You're ready for the day. That's it.
Okay, describe to me the worst experience you've had
at Buffalo. The worst one was, oh man
, what was a football game about a month ago
? Once a month and a half ago I was
bar serving. I think you may have been working
that night where food for some reason food was not
coming out like food had an hour wait on everything
. Everybody's food had to wait of an hour,
at least an hour and I don't know what was
taking so long. But the worst type of people
when your bar is hungry drunk people because I keep
demanding where's my food? My food start getting mad
. I had a way to come up belligerently drunk
. Ah keep asking where's my food with my food
? I suck at my job. You know,
and I'm normally a calm person. But they just
kept bugging me and bugging me and I've been there
for 13 hours at that point I'm tired, I
want to deal with that. You know, you
should treat people at a restaurant when you don't know
how long they've been there. They're serving your food
. They're serving. You have a little have a
little bit of patience, Just have a little bit
of patience. You don't know what they've been through
that time. Just treat people with humility. Be
trying to pay for. I try to be kind
people every day in my life. But times like
that that's when it's a bad day when people aren't
respectful to other people. You get that. Mhm
. Because I show respect everybody. I mean if
but there have been times where I haven't shown respect
, mentioned you worked 13 hours shift. Um Do
you find that you work a lot of weeks,
40 hours or more? Yeah a lot of weeks
. 40 hours or more. Um is that because
you need to to make your bills. Do you
find that working the minimum of 40 hours which is
a full uh full work week for most people.
Doeses't cut it. No not today lifestyle not today's
lifestyle. So I know a whole lot of people
working at least four hours. Okay. Um Why
is that? Do you have a lot of debt
or credit cards or? No I don't have.
I know a lot of debt. No I really
don't. Um I get bored. I'm a workaholic