Washington DC

A Loaded Red Hat

/ rickeydobbs / 6 Comments

High school boys in 2019 wear “Make America Great Again” hats for the same reason high school boys in 1992 wore Slayer t-shirts: contrarianism and attention seeking. Well, it’s almost the same, except the members of Slayer are actually good at their jobs and worthy of fandom.

It’s the reason we saw University of South Carolina baseball caps around the University of Houston during my tenure. South Carolina is a thousand miles from Houston, and most of us had never been there. But you see, Carolina’s mascot is the gamecock, and their 90’s era hats said “COCKS” across the front. To quote myself and every dude I knew circa 1998 (and 2019, to be fair), “Uh…huh huh…huh huh…he said cocks.” “Cocks” has a much more je ne sais quai than “Cougars,” no?

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Come Join My Wild Pigeon Chase

/ rickeydobbs / 11 Comments

I own a restaurant in Washington, DC. We’re situated near the Smithsonian museums, the FBI headquarters, and lots of other federal office buildings. As you might imagine, we’ve been a little slower than ideal lately.

Why is it slower than usual?

I told my team that neither their service nor their food was at fault for the slowdown. It’s not competition from other restaurants or food trucks. It can’t be the weather, nearby construction, or the homeless people who ask our customers for money at the front door. While any and all of those issues would be worth an in-depth, intellectual investigation, I told my team that none of those are important.

We’re only slower than normal because of pigeons.

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Go Play Golf, We Got This.

/ rickeydobbs / 2 Comments

I own a restaurant in Washington, DC, about four blocks from the speaker’s stage for March For Our Lives. It’s called Merzi, look us up!

I had a front row seat to the Women’s March in 2017, and saw hundreds of thousands of people engaging in their First Amendment rights to assemble, speak, and petition the government. It was awe-inspiring and emotionally moving. Continue reading →

Thankfully, not everyone is like me.

/ rickeydobbs / 4 Comments

I am the only white male that works at my restaurant. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

It wasn’t a conscious choice, nor is the particular makeup of my crew the “best” or “right” way to be. But it’s how the chips landed when I placed hiring the best people as my target. In Washington, D.C., in the restaurant business, if I went into the hiring process with even a slight preference toward my own gender, national origin, or race, I’d do my business a great disservice. Continue reading →