Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time, and annoys the pig.
Back in the dark ages, I spent a miserable year working in the kitchen at Bennigan's Tavern in Amarillo, Texas. The $4.50 an hour I made as a fry/salad/app line cook was substantially higher than the $3.35 Federal minimum wage in 1983, but the work was crushing. Bennigan's Tavern (we all just called it Bennigan's, which frustrated our managers who were attempting to carry out the full branded experience) was a "theme restaurant," with the theme of the Irish pub conveyed through a tone-deaf corporate palette of shamrocks and green polo shirts and brass bar rails and walls covered with jaunty faux-memorabilia more reminiscent of 1920s Princeton than 1890s Derry. It's as though the Irish, when they arrived in America, had been welcomed as long-lost brothers by their English predecessors and greeted with gift baskets from Ralph Lauren and L.L.Bean.
Our work at Bennigan's was largely in defrosting five-pound sleeves of chili mix, dividing huge boxes of frozen mozzarella sticks into bags of ten for quick tosses into a Fryolator basket, and placing plates of nachos under infrared broilers. And if you're wondering what role chili, mozzarella and nachos had in the traditional Irish diet, then you're several steps ahead of the corporate office. Bennigan's Tavern was a subsidiary of Steak and Ale, which was a subsidiary of Burger King, which was a subsidiary of Pillsbury, and that's all the logic you need to follow. (Pillsbury is now owned by General Mills, so there you go. Pretty soon, everything you want to eat or watch or wear will be owned by either Microsoft, ExxonMobil, or Philip Morris. It's already true of congressmen...)
I say with no little embarrassment that I was suffused with schadenfreude at hearing the news that Bennigan's Tavern had gone bankrupt several years back. But, like kudzu or tuberculosis, they're back, now just called Bennigan's, with outlets in half a dozen US states along with one in Bahrain and another in Qatar. They promise "the welcoming, friendly and festive spirit of Irish Hospitality," but really, it's just a new awning on the same old Applebee's. (And any bar that brags about "a bountiful selection of ice cold beers" has clearly tipped its hand. If the best thing you have to say about your beer is that the refrigerator works, you've made a pretty light claim upon quality.)
I'm taken on this afternoon's reverie because Nora and I had another of our ongoing conversations about "what's next," and I was suddenly taken with the idea that "a job" might be the misleading concept in our search. Anybody who teaches like Nora teaches, anybody who teaches like I teach, is going to be misfit in a world of accredited, course-numbered disciplinary sequences, the theme restaurants of the intellectual world. We do too much that violates the paint-by-numbers goals of the accrediting agencies and disciplinary societies. The same is true for the positions we have held as administrators. We can't just thaw out another ingredient in the corporate menu. Our work may have served the institutions well, but hasn't used very many of our talents.
Innovative chefs like Thomas Keller and Cindy Pawlcyn and Charlie Trotter didn't apply for jobs in theme restaurant kitchens; it would waste their time and annoy the pig. They found backers who understood the quality of their unique training and vision, and founded small independent experiences that are sought out by people who have outgrown Bennigan's.
Time to reimagine the business plan.
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