Restaurant Manager Career Information - Restaurant manager pros & cons

Hi, my name is Kristen Worth, and I work as a general manager for the Roaring Fork Restaurant, in Austin, Texas, and some likes and dislikes of my job. First of all, one of the likes, is the pace of the job. I don't sit behind a desk that often. I may be two hours out of the day, and other than that, I'm usually running around, and speaking with the guests, which I love to do, because you're meeting different people, and especially in Austin. Like right now, we have a lot of celebrities in town, so you get to do a lot of that. Shaking hands and kissing babies, is what we say, and I love the lifestyle of the people. People in restaurants are unlike any other group, you're going to find in a profession. They're very usually outgoing. Everybody loves the finer things in life. Everybody loves their food, and everybody loves their wine, so I absolutely love the fact, that I get to kind of host a big party everyday, and that's kind of how we try to look at it here. We try to make it fun. Some of the downsides to it, is going to be the weekends. You don't usually have the same schedule that everybody else has, that's not in the industry, so you may not be able to go skiing on Saturday, especially if you're an assistant GM, or an assistant manager. Then you're usually here the later hours, and on the weekends, and things like that, so, and also the holidays can be an issue, when you're first starting out in the restaurant management business. You don't always get to go home for Christmas. Some places are closed, but not all owners like to close on the holidays, so that's definitely a downside. And if you don't like to run around a lot, then that definitely would not be something that you're going to enjoy. So you have to, I think of it as exercise every time I"m sprinting across the dining room, but some people, they get worn out, so I think that's probably the major pros and cons of the position.