Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 3, 1994 TAG: 9407020011
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Matt Chittum
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
After walking the floor in seven different restaurants since February 1990, they are starting to rebel.
"My feet cry at night. They moan. They wail, 'Get off of me!'" he says.
Goad, 31, is a waiter at Mr. Su's Chinese and Vietnamese Restaurant in downtown Roanoke. He has been in food service off and on since 1981, first as a bartender, and later as a waiter, but he hopes to get out soon.
"There comes a point when you realize you've been saying, 'I'm just doing this for now,' year after year after year," he says.
Goad completed his teaching certification at Radford University in May, and hopes to land a job teaching kindergarten or first grade by fall.
In the meantime, there's always another table to wait on.
Goad started in the restaurant business as a bartender at Oakwood Country Club in Lynchburg when he was attending Lynchburg College. After graduating in 1985, he tended bar at Hotel Roanoke until it closed. After a year in architectural school at Virginia Tech and a year working as a draftsman, he found himself in 1990 back in a restaurant, waiting tables at the now closed Fesquet's Restaurant in Crossroads Mall.
Since then he's done stints at the Marriott, Carlos', the Jefferson Club, Alexander's Restaurant, Buck Mountain Grille and finally Mr. Su's.
He quit working while he was student teaching, and then took a counter job at Mill Mountain Coffee & Tea on the Roanoke City Market. But when the credit card bills from the few months he wasn't working started rolling in, he took a second job, waiting tables at Mr. Su's.
"When your minimum payments due on your credit cards exceed your income, it's definitely tip time again," Goad says.
Goad enjoys working at Mr. Su's. He says it's one of the last restaurants in town where the staff still sits down for a meal at the owner's expense after a shift.
He still relishes the good parts of being waiter, like getting to know people and what they do.
"I would never have met [Roanoke Symphony conductor] Victoria Bond or [actor] Bill Murray if I wasn't a waiter," he says.
Goad is still very service-oriented. "If I can find a table that will appreciate me," he says, "I will focus on pleasing them."
And for the moment, having a genuine career direction makes his job easier, he says.
"I can do this one more day because it's only temporary," he says he tells himself.
Goad is optimistic about landing a teaching job, but can't shake one haunting realization: "I could still be waiting tables forever."
by CNB