A reflective account of how dishwashing and line cook experience in a restaurant taught invaluable business lessons about humility, teamwork, and the interconnectedness of every role in hospitality.
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Julia Cameron's "morning pages" changed how I processed information and organized my day, helping me move forward with more confidence and clarity.
Tracy D’Anneo · In Her Own Words
Her Story
About Tracy
Tracy D’Anneo is a writer and editor based in California, with a diverse creative background spanning memoir, children's and young adult fiction, feature films and publishing related work. Her professional journey began at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dramatic Writing. Her education was a good foundation for employment across film, television, and publishing, where her professional experience included jobs in film editing, market research, advertising sales and consumer marketing.
Later, she earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe, with a focus on books for children and young adults. Her career reflects an entrepreneurial approach to writing, recognizing that a creative degree does not always open doors to traditional publication or academic jobs. She also has experience in the restaurant industry as a chef.
D’Anneo attributes her professional development to her family's work ethic, and the many hard lessons learned along the way. She believes it's okay to begin work before feeling completely ready, and encourages emerging women writers to collaborate on projects, and avoid gatekeeping the good opportunities. Her approach to creative projects and professional relationships is grounded in integrity, honesty, ambition, and intelligence.
She continues with everyone to navigate the evolving technologies, marketing strategies, and other assorted challenges facing writers today.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Tracy
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute much of my success to the strong work ethic I inherited from my family. I attribute my growth to trial and error, and facing challenges head on. Each experience helped shape how I approach the next steps in my career.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I've heard is to start before feeling completely ready. Waiting until everything is perfect just blocks my progress. Taking the initiative and learning along the way is an important part of confidence building. It's okay to fail.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I encourage young women in the writing and creative industries to collaborate and include each other in professional opportunities rather than gatekeeping them. It's important to have a positive outlook. Try to develop an active network, even if that network is relatively small. Having people you support and who will support you makes a big difference in your career.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
There is some overwhelm for creative people when it comes to marketing strategies, particularly when it comes to selling their own work and figuring out where to effectively market it in ways that feel true to them as artists. Whether traditional or self publishing, it will always be a tough nut to crack. Another challenge, for writers who are just beginning, is the presence of AI as it takes over copy editing, generating ideas and giving feedback on drafts - things that humans were previously hired and paid to do.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
The values that are most important to me are integrity, honesty, ambition, and intelligence. I believe these qualities are important both in making great creative projects and also in building authentic relationships with peers.
Her Content Hub
Articles by Tracy
What starting as a dishwasher taught me about the restaurant business and about being a chef.
How humble beginnings in the kitchen taught me invaluable lessons about work, dignity, and interconnection that shaped my career.
What Working in the Dish Pit Taught Me That No Job Description Ever Could
What working in the dish pit taught me that no job description ever could is that there really is no bottom in the restaurant business. The whole room is connected, from the kitchen line to the bar to the diner's experience at the table. Everyone is a moving part in the same machine.
I didn't always know how to manage daily dining and bar operations. At the beginning, I was standing in front of three deep sinks, squeezing green soap from a bottle of Kirkland dish detergent into blazing-hot water at a local favorite pub-and-grub-type establishment.
Culinary school is a great investment in your skills, your ability to network, and your ability to land amazing jobs. I'm still considering it myself, so by no means is this story meant to persuade anyone not to go to culinary school. Please invest in your education early and often.
That said, I had just graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, and I hadn't landed a dream job-or any job. So, I took to Craigslist and found a position working as a line cook in a local dive.
Why does everyone want to start at the top when starting at the bottom offers such rich business lessons?
My very first job as a line cook taught me that if I didn't wash the dinner dishes, they weren't going to wash themselves.
If you have the resources and patience to start with low pay and backbreaking work, here's what the dish pit can teach you: It's okay to have pride in your work, even if you think the work is menial and you feel undervalued.
That's right. It's okay to have pride, even if all you do is wash a giant mountain of dishes every minute during the hour-long dinner rush.
Remember when I said that the whole room is connected?
Chefs aren't the only superstars.
And dishwashers aren't the only ones in the kitchen who wash dishes. Sometimes, line cooks step in, too. They run the machines that clean all the silverware, plates, bowls, mugs, and glassware. They wash, dry, and organize everything with the same speed and precision that chefs use when they plate their amazing steaks, pasta, salmon, or smash burgers.
My journey from dishwasher to line cook taught me that food safety is just as important as clean dishes when it comes to the diner's experience.
Sure, I've made mistakes, as everyone does. But the biggest mistake I never made was belittling staff who washed dishes, mopped floors, or cleaned toilets-because, reader, that person was me.
Although I might like to go back in time and change parts of my job experience, I can't. What all those mistakes-and all those less-than-desirable kitchens-taught me was to approach every job with an open mind and to never forget the importance of starting at the bottom.
Sometimes, the lessons we need most are found in the places we never expected to be.
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