Perhaps you’ll cringe when your busser sticks their fingers in a stack of glasses as they carry them away. You could find your table wet from a fast wipe down or a chair littered with crumbs. Maybe you’ll be left too long with an empty glass or a pile of empty sugar packets in front of you. You might watch as the rushed worker clinks plates together as they snatched up the dishes like playing cards.

You may see an overflowing bus tub filled with dirty dishes hiding in a corner or see a busser cut in front of a guest on their way to clear a table at the end of their meal. Go to an average restaurant and you may see some tell tale signs of a neglected bussing team. But great bussing is a complicated job that requires experience, training, and passion for the work. Maybe it’s a pervasive mentality that bussing is a simple job that anyone can figure out. Perhaps it’s because business owners think guests don’t pay attention to the little things like how a table is cleared or when a water glass is topped off. Kennedy was pronounced dead at a hospital hours later at age 42.Bussing may be the most important aspect of service that is overlooked by restaurant owners and managers. “I felt my hand making a fist to join in,” Romero said. Romero turned and saw a group of men punching the gunman. Kennedy’s wife Ethel - at the time pregnant with their 11th child - ran to her injured husband and pushed Romero away. “Everything will be OK,” Kennedy said before losing consciousness. News photographers captured pictures of Romero next to the bloodied Kennedy - images that would be seen all over the world.

Voters went to the polls the next day and that night Kennedy thanked supporters in the hotel’s Embassy Room and then departed, going through the kitchen where a gunman opened fire. “He wasn’t looking at my skin, he wasn’t looking at my age … he was looking at me as an American.” “I will never forget the handshake and the look … looking right at you with those piercing eyes that said, ‘I’m one of you. Kennedy grabbed Romero’s hand with both hands and said, “thank you.” For a moment, there was silence. “All I remember was that I kept staring at him with my mouth open,” Romero said. Kennedy put down the phone and waved Romero to come forward. He saw Kennedy toward the back - one hand held a curtain and the other gripped a phone. Romero was on duty and came into the room with a group of other busboys.

Romero met Kennedy the day before the California primary, when the senator and his aides ordered room service at the Ambassador Hotel. Instead, Romero got a job at the Ambassador Hotel as a dishwasher and later a busboy. The family lived in poor East Los Angeles and he attended Roosevelt High School the year that Chicano students started organizing walkouts to protest discrimination against Mexican-American students.īut Romero’s stepfather “ruled with an iron hand,” and the teen feared he’d face trouble at home if he took part. “I still have the fire burning inside of me,” Romero told The Associated Press earlier this year.īorn in the small town of Mazatan in the Mexican state of Sonora, Romero moved to Baja California until his family received permission to bring him to the U.S. Romero rarely granted interviews but recently made himself available for the Netflix documentary “Bobby Kennedy for President,” Stor圜orps and others to talk about the hope Kennedy inspired that remained with him 50 years later. Romero often asked himself what would have happened if Kennedy had not stopped for the handshake.īut decades later, Romero said he no longer felt the same guilt, thanks in part to the support of Kennedy fans who say the former busboy was an example of the type of people Kennedy sought to help in making racial equality and civil rights a cornerstone of his life’s work. The moment captured on film haunted Romero because Kennedy stopped to shake Romero’s hand and was shot seconds after that.įor many years, Romero blamed himself for Kennedy’s death - wondering if he could have done something to prevent Kennedy from being shot. Kennedy, as he lies on the floor of the Ambassador hotel in Los Angeles moments after he was shot in 1968. Richard Drew/Pasadena Star News File photo: Hotel busboy Juan Romero, right, comes to the aid of Senator Robert F. Romero held the mortally wounded Kennedy as he lay on the ground, struggling to keep the senator’s bleeding head from hitting the floor. Romero was a teenage busboy in June 1968 when Kennedy walked through the Ambassador Hotel kitchen after his victory in the California presidential primary and an assassin shot him in the head.

Busboy 101