Unpopular opinion but if you're applying to a 9-to-5 office job, listing your weekend brunch shift might be doing more harm than good. I'm not saying service work is lesser, but a lot of resume screeners are skimming for focus. When they see "Brunch Server, Saturdays and Sundays" next to an office internship, the first question is usually not "great, they work hard" — it's "are they going to be tired Monday morning or ask for weekends off?"

If you have a gap without it, maybe include it. But if you already have office-adjacent experience, I'd leave it off or bury it in one line at the bottom. Curious if anyone here has actually gotten positive feedback for keeping a side gig on a corporate resume.

Wait, this is stressing me out. I literally just sent out like eight applications with my cafe job in the Experience section because it's the main thing I've done for the last two years. I thought it showed I was reliable and could handle money and rude people.

Do I need to redo my resume before I apply to more places? Should I remove it for follow-ups or is that weird?

You don't necessarily need to redo everything, firstbodega, but I would reframe it depending on the job. I've hired for admin and coordinator roles in the city, and a service job is not automatically a negative. The problem is when it reads like a list of shift duties that don't connect to the office role.

For most NYC office jobs, I'd put it under a separate section like Additional Experience and keep it brief. For example:

• Weekend Brunch Server, [Cafe Name] — handled high-volume counter service, managed cash and card transactions, resolved customer issues before they escalated.

That's different from listing a full bullet about cleaning stations or restocking milk. Hiring managers in New York are used to side gigs, especially now, but they want to see that you understand which parts of your experience are relevant.

One caveat: if you're applying to a very formal finance or law firm role and the rest of your resume is internships or temp work, I'd reduce the service job to one line or leave it off entirely. For nonprofits and smaller offices, it often helps because it shows you can deal with people.

Nah, keep it. Half this city is doing some side thing just to make rent. Anybody who's actually managed people in NYC knows a brunch shift is basically a crash course in dealing with chaos. The only time it hurts is if you're applying to one of those stiff places that still thinks employees shouldn't have lives.

Do what astoria_arch said: put it at the bottom, one line, no full menu description. Don't make it the centerpiece.

YES, this is the resume formatting conversation I love!! Have you tried a Selected Experience section instead of strict chronological? You can put the brunch job under a heading like "Customer-Facing Experience" and give it two quick bullets about upselling, handling peak volume, or de-escalating a problem table.

People always forget that cash handling and POS systems are real skills! If you're applying to an office admin job, the fact that you can balance a drawer or handle a line of 30 people is genuinely useful. Just don't call it "slinging plates." Call it what it is: managing a high-volume service line under pressure!

I get the transferable skills argument, but I'd push back on one thing: a raw list of service duties can still read as filler if the rest of the resume is thin. The question isn't whether brunch work is respectable — it obviously is. It's whether those bullets are doing the same job as office experience would.

If you're applying for something like an admin assistant role, then yes, customer de-escalation and POS accuracy matter. But if you're applying for a job that wants spreadsheet work, calendar management, or writing samples, the brunch shift might be taking up space better used on those skills. I'd only include it if you can make it genuinely results-focused, not just "handled busy shifts."

I left my barista job off the first time I applied to office jobs, then got asked in an interview what I was doing for those six months. Felt dumb trying to explain it away. Next time I put one line at the bottom: "Barista, part-time, [shop]" with no bullets. Got the job.

So yeah, don't turn it into a whole block. One line, maybe two if you learned something directly relevant. Otherwise it's just a filler that makes someone ask about your availability.

Thanks for the advice, everyone. I just tried something sort of similar. I made a separate section called Work Outside Office and put my weekend host job there with one bullet about managing reservations and answering phone calls. Sent it out yesterday and already got a callback for a front desk spot.

Not sure if that section did it, but I felt less weird about having it on there. Now I'm just hoping they don't ask me to work every Saturday forever.

That's a good outcome, firstwinter. For the original question, the main risk isn't the side gig itself — it's burying the office-relevant story under a list of shifts. A separate Additional Experience or Other Work section solves that.

The general rule I'd give: one line if the job is unrelated to the role, full bullets only if it demonstrates something specific like supervising, revenue handling, customer retention, or scheduling. And if you have a gap, keep it there so the gap doesn't become the conversation. Smaller NYC firms tend to care less about formality, but they still care about whether you can make the leap to an office setting. Show them that you already know how.