A Top LA Sommelier Is Finally Making His Mental Health a Priority

Working in restaurants can be a tough endeavor: Lower pay, physical and mental exertion, and long hours are the norm. Studies have found that tipped workers are at greater risk of depression, insomnia, and stress and that the restaurant industry ranks high for drug use and heavy alcohol consumption. These factors, compounded by ongoing economic pressures to turn a profit as well as the rarity of health insurance, paid time off, and sick leave, have led to food service being cited as one of the worst industries for mental health. Over 1 million workers have left the industry since the pandemic began, with over 60 percent of those remaining saying they are leaving in due time.

In this special edition of Service Check, Eater examines the sustainability of Los Angeles restaurants through the lens of hospitality workers.

Michael Scribner took a job waiting tables as a means to an end. As a 21-year-old professional ballet dancer in Salt Lake City, Utah, he had a steady and flexible gig at a mediocre Italian restaurant that paid the bills and freed him to pursue his art. But somewhere between transitioning from waiting tables to tending bar, learning how to make proper drinks under an accomplished mixologist, and undergoing a serious knee surgery, Scribner’s form of creative expression shifted from dance to hospitality. He thrived working in a fast-paced restaurant environment; it was “intoxicating,” he says.

“The restaurant floor is the best stage there is because you have a completely captive audience,” says Scribner. “You have an incredibly diverse medium of communication, performance, engagement, and experience.”

While family and friends in Scribner’s hometown of Paso Robles, California, prodded him with questions about his dance career, he was already moving toward his next chapter. Scribner landed in Los Angeles in 2015 to pursue hospitality. After an unglamorous stint at an on-campus USC sports bar, he landed at the now-closed Pop Champagne Bar in Pasadena, which expanded his professional lens into wine.

“I bought a bottle of 2013 Louis Jadot Macon-Villages, which was $12 at Vons, and for some reason, it spoke to me; it just transported me to a sense of place,” he says. “I’ve never been to France, but I just imagined myself in The Sound of Music staring at the French Alps, sipping this delicious bottle of simple chardonnay.” The experience motivated him to learn as much as he could about wine — reading every book he could get his hands on — and sharing it with anyone who cared to listen. With support from the owner of Pop Champagne Bar, Scribner furthered his wine education through the Court of Master Sommeliers and became a certified sommelier in 2017.

Scribner scored his first sommelier job at the Waldorf Astoria in Beverly Hills, where chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten ran two restaurants that attracted a well-to-do clientele who could afford the world’s most exclusive pours. “It’s the high-time feelings of Monday night — you start talking to a table, and you sell a $3,000 bottle — it’s so exciting,” Scribner says. “Or you talk to a table and you sell them the coolest $150 bottle of their life.”

While progressing to fine dining restaurants seemed like the natural next move to grow in his career, it proved to be a double-edged sword. With Scribner’s creative expression deeply enmeshed with his professional responsibilities, his sense of self fell by the wayside. The burnout he experienced at the Waldorf Astoria temporarily subsided when he started his next job at Jordan Kahn’s two-Michelin-starred Vespertine, but it eventually reared its head again even stronger than before. “It’s hard to stabilize between the highs [that] are so high in restaurants, and the lows can be really low, when you are just tired, drained, people are not happy, you’re not happy, nothing’s good enough, and it’s just work — the basest, cruelest sense of the word.”

Scribner is now the beverage director at the Downtown LA Proper hotel, and was halfway through a nine-week mental health leave when Eater spoke with him for this report. “I’ve been having panic attacks,” he says. “I’m escaping from it to recover, to recuperate, to remind myself why I love restaurants but also to develop emotional regulation. Most people do not have the emotional tension in their daily lives and jobs as you do consistently in restaurants.” Seeing a therapist specializing in dialectical behavioral therapy is helping Scribner prioritize his needs and let go of shouldering unnecessary responsibilities on the job. “It’s okay to resent your job and still want to do well at it,” he says.

Eater sat down with Scribner to hear more about how he’s finding rest, maintaining his passion for hospitality, and his hopes for the future.

Lille Allen

Eater: What would you identify as a significant problem to change in the industry that would make working within it feel more sustainable?

Scribner: It’s empathy from the business and it’s empathy from the public. In my career and experience, a lot of mental health and emotional struggles come from the lack of empathy internally and externally — it is a two-way street. You cannot be empathetic to your guests and be cruel or demanding to your employees. You can’t be empathetic to your employees, but a little spiteful to guests. Also, quality leadership or support directly translates to a well-running business. A well-running business takes care of its employees and has the resources for its employees. A business that runs with well-resourced employees provides a great product. It’s just hard to get that resource to start.

How do you find a balance between your interests, family life, and your work?

No idea — that is something that I am working on. I think that’s been one of my greatest struggles in restaurants. I know that tons of people find a balance, but I don’t know how. I work long hours, I work 10-hour days a lot of times, so working a longer day takes time out of the day to do other things. Life becomes pushed so far back that it begins to then restrict you to certain social aspects. If you work a 9-to-5 job, you can go out and do something with people but not everybody is down to go do something at 10 p.m. It limits how many people you can do things with because there’s no overlap of free time, and I think that also contributes to this sort of overwhelming burnout because there is no severance and separation. There’s no turning it off, there’s always this sort of framing of, “Well, the world really does not operate in the ways that I operate.”

What are some ways you find rest?

I’m trying to do a lot more reading recently. It’s very mindful and pulls you out of reality, but not as an escape. It’s providing a lot of rest for me, especially if I don’t have the physical energy to do things. I’ve started reading A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. I’m not a big self-help book person, but reading deep, spiritual philosophy is very interesting. I love the way that it helps me reshape myself, which allows me to reshape my environment. And then on the other side, I’m also reading The Book of Merlyn, which is a little fun fantasy read.

What are the things you find most fulfilling in your work?

It’s this exponential effect of joy and excitement. To be excited about a cocktail, a spirit, or a glass of wine and to hand that to a guest — that’s really incredible. I’ve loved that for most of my career, but then being a director and overseeing multiple restaurants and multiple people, it is incredible to watch yourself pass that excitement on to a bartender or a server, and watch them then flourish and pass it on to more people. Or when you watch the barback want to step up or the busser engage in wine tastings more than your servers. It’s incredible to see people expand and flourish in parts of themselves when you give them a little bit of you.

In restaurants, what do good days look like and what do hard days look like?

Good days are full of excitement — they’re full of passing on something good. It’s when you can feel and tangibly see what your efforts have given to others and what they’ve given in return. There are good days at the restaurant where it’s super busy, but you watch the entire team just pick up the pace, lean into it, and just have a great time even though you’re running around like chickens with your heads cut off. The thrill of service can be incredible when it merits a quality return.

Bad days are when you are struggling for things and there is no return. Where no matter how hard you try, things don’t go well. Or when you just get caught up in meetings and then you’ve done nothing and it just feels like the world is just piling up.

Tell me about how stress manifests for you. How does it impact your work?

It’s noise. When what’s in front of you begins to dissolve with the amount of noise around and you can’t focus. When you’ve got deliveries coming in, and you’ve also got distributors on the line because you need to pay them. Then one of the bartenders calls out and the managers aren’t sure what to do, and you’re out of a product. And then all of a sudden it’s just noise and you can’t just attack one noise at a time or prioritize what’s important. It is difficult for you to not feel like it’s your responsibility to do everything. Stress manifests when you take on too much, when you can’t choose which things to just let fall away and which things are truly necessary and important.

Tell me about support systems that you have in place, whether it’s family, friends, colleagues, or care providers.

Vulnerability with my partner and with my family. I also have my boss — he’s a support system in many ways because there are certain stressors that you can’t place upon or share with the people who may be underneath you in the chain of command. I have a therapist and a primary care physician. There’s always support in being in community because we can always be vulnerable with each other, we can always meet each other and know what each other is going through because we’re all human. Being open and vulnerable with others and allowing others to be open and vulnerable with you doesn’t necessarily put their stress on you. It just allows them to let steam out.

The difficulty with a lot of support systems is that it’s not just about receiving support, it’s about accountability. We have to allow those who we are vulnerable and close to encourage us and keep us accountable to do something we’re struggling with instead of just marinating in it and then becoming burned out by it.

Have you considered pursuing a different field? What makes you stay?

Many times. What makes me stay is threefold: the fear of the unknown, I don’t know how else to make money, and I’m really good at this. I love doing what I do and there are times when I hate it, but I come back to it because, at the heart of it, I love that sense of wonder. I love that sense of excitement. There’s something so rewarding, fulfilling, and inspirational to know, feel, and see something good and hand it to somebody else and be like, “Don’t you want to have something good too? This is awesome. I would love to give that gift to you.”

How do you grow and maintain your passion for food, wine, and restaurants?

It’s that stepping away. You have to find rest first — if your mind isn’t rested, you can’t fill it with anything else. I believe that when you take care of your needs, the excitement will begin to nurture itself. You can go to all the wine tastings you want and it’s still just work. But if I take some time away and don’t go to those wine tastings, I begin to see which ones I really want to go to, what’s actually sparking my interest. Rest leaves you the opportunity to allow inspiration to just show up organically.

Is there anything you want diners or generally people not within the industry to understand about working in restaurants as it relates to mental health?

Whether you see the high side of a restaurant or whether you see the low side of a restaurant, it’s like an iceberg; you’re seeing 10 percent of what success or struggle is going on. So be kind. It’s so hard. It’s so expensive to dine out, but it is also hard to deliver on [diners’] expectations. It is the responsibility of a restaurant to manage the expectations of its diners, but I think what would help is if diners were more responsible in managing their emotional responses and expectations, because nobody wants to give you a shitty experience. No one. No server wants to lose out on a tip. No restaurant wants to lose a customer. No restaurant wants to comp a meal. What we want is for you to be happy. You gotta help us help you.

What are you hopeful about for the future?

Change can always come and things don’t have to be how they’ve always been. Empathy, understanding, awareness, and acceptance are constantly growing. We have the opportunity to change that as an industry, as a society, and for ourselves. Every day there’s hope because every day, there’s a choice.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.