Ordinary.

Restaurants are filled with friendship—but this restaurateur longs for ordinary pleasures that the cooking life lacks.

We work long hours trying to give people a joyful experience, and afterward we want to relax and unwind. But it's 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, and the only people still up with energy are our co-workers. We dissect the night over a couple bottles of wine in the restaurant or in another bar. We argue about the weirdo at table 53, discuss whether or not the kitchen could have timed things better, and fret about what we could have done differently.

This sense of closeness is rarely sustainable once you leave the restaurant. But often within the group, people become close and wind up socializing together both after work and on their off days. Over the years I've been close friends with people in a work environment, and then as soon as I changed jobs (or they did), we found it impossible to spend any time with each other at all. All the same, most of my closest friends today are people I have met through restaurant work.

Read the rest at The Atlantic.