Lessons From the Golden Corral: An Exclusive Excerpt From the New Book by Roy Wood Jr.

In his upcoming book "The Man of Many Fathers," comedian Roy Wood Jr. explains how a stint at a family style restaurant turned into a buffet of life lessons.

Excerpted from the book THE MAN OF MANY FATHERS: Life Lessons Disguised as a Memoir by Roy Wood Jr. Copyright © 2025 by Roy Wood Jr. Reprinted with permission of Penguin Random House and Roy Wood Jr. All rights reserved.

I’ve had a lot of jobs in my life, but serving at Golden Corral was the most important job I’ve ever had.

In the wake of my legal troubles, I desperately needed a lifeline. It showed up in the form of Golden Corral, a large family buffet–style restaurant with a big staff, decent hours, and a need for young workers. I started working there in 1998, about a month after my Thanksgiving-week arrest. I figured Golden Corral would just be a quick cash grab to pay rent and keep my life afloat while I traveled around doing open-mic comedy in the South. It ended up being so much more.

From the start, I loved the range of people I met there. Our educations and backgrounds were as diverse as our ages. Some of us were college educated, and some of us were dropouts. Some of us were there because we wanted a career in hospitality, and some of us were just transient.

We all answered to Miss Darlene. She was the senior shift leader and one of the most respected people in the building. She ran the front of the house and generally kept order, which wasn’t an easy job. Every restaurant is split into two factions, the front of the house and the back of the house, and each side thinks the other one is keeping them from doing their job.

The back of the house would always complain that the servers were giving people too many plates, causing them to get too much food that they weren’t eating, thus wasting the food, thus requiring the back of the house to cook more food. Meanwhile, the servers would argue that there was never enough of the food people wanted, so they had to get them some plates to stock up on food for their tables when that food actually appeared on the hot bar.

Or sometimes food orders would be in the window too long, which would make the back of the house annoyed because the food was getting cold, and if the food was cold, the first thing the customer was going to do would be to send it back and then you’d have a recook. There was nothing the back of the house hated more than a recook, especially if chef Mike Lou was on the grill.

Mike Lou didn’t play with people. “What do you mean they don’t like the steak?” he would snap at us. “I cooked the steak exactly the way that bitch wanted it cooked. I tell you what, next time I’m going to go out there and talk to that bitch and see what the fuck the problem is.” Mike Lou was an artist. And if a customer sent a steak back to be recooked, he took it as an insult to his artistry. He had to know exactly what was wrong with his art. It could be a table full of Little Leaguers or a table full of U.S. marshals. Either way, Mike Lou was going to get to the bottom of it. He was a bold man. If only he were as smart as he was bold.

Mike Lou once threw a fish fry at his house and invited everyone from work. At one point, he went to the freezer to get more fish to keep the party going. He was so drunk that he completely forgot that the fish he was serving everyone was fish he’d stolen from Golden Corral. Suddenly, he was walking through a party full of Golden Corral employees holding a box that blatantly said “Golden Corral catfish” on the side. Even so, I don’t think he was fired for this, maybe just suspended or forced to pay for the product. If you’re good at what you do, the rules don’t apply.

It was just a bunch of merry men at Golden Corral. RJ was always charming and funny. He was important to the front of the house because he was the one server who had the respect of everyone in the back of the house. If there was ever any tension between the two, his charm and humor could defuse it.

There was Simon. He was from Africa. I can’t remember which country, but it was for sure one of those African nations where you feel comfortable talking down to Americans. He didn’t crack a lot of jokes or hang with us that much; Simon just wanted to get his money and go home. However, he would turn into a fucking psychopath if he felt that you did not tip him well. A bad tipper would usually wait until the server went to the dish room and use that as an opportunity to sneak out of the restaurant. Simon would get the vibes that someone was going to stiff him on his tip, so he would lay a trap.

Simon would act like he was going to the dish room, then double back to the dessert bar and hide behind the ice cream machine, secretly looking at the customers and waiting for them to leave. When the customers got up, he would swing past the table. If he didn’t like the tip, he would politely follow the customer to the parking lot and demand to be told to his face what exactly was wrong with his service. I don’t know what made him think that this type of behavior was acceptable, especially in an open-carry state like Florida, but he did it on a regular basis.

The rest of the servers would gather at the window and watch the conflict unfold. Our jaws would drop when Simon not only was not shot but was given more money by the people he confronted.

There wasn’t a single person in that Golden Corral who did not take their job seriously. It’s also the only job I’ve worked where no one was nervous when the owner came, because we all knew we had our shit together. You weren’t going to come in there and slack, because if you didn’t pull your weight it would reflect on other people. This team would’ve taken Cocaine Mike out back and beaten the shit out of him for playing basketball on the clock and Mike Lou would’ve snorted his cocaine.

There was Mr. Willie. Mr. Willie was a retiree who worked only on Saturdays and Sundays to make omelets when we had a breakfast bar. During the breakfast bar, the person making the omelets was the single most important person in the building. He was like the lead singer of the group. And Mr. Willie knew he was the star.

He was charismatic and cracked jokes with people, he dressed good and smelled good, he took pride in his work. He didn’t do food prep, he didn’t wash dishes, he literally would walk in and start working. I don’t even think he ever clocked in. Like a surgeon arriving in the operating room to work on his patient, he had all of the tools that made him great at his disposal and waiting for him upon his arrival to the omelet station. Mr. Willie was a military veteran who spoke about war in ways so horrific that it made me very content in my choice to abandon the army ROTC scholarship I had been offered coming out of high school. You could tell he was someone who woke up every day and made the choice to enjoy life, and you could see it on his face.

And then there was Adolfo. Adolfo was meticulously groomed. His uniform was spotless and damn near tailored. The cuffs of his never-faded black work pants fell perfectly, gently brushing the top of his shoelaces. His work shirt was always freshly pressed. He even had the foresight to roll up the sleeves on his work shirt to accentuate his muscular biceps. The collar was stiff, and you could tell it had just a splash of starch or some collar stays inserted. His hair was always moisturized and he had a perfectly lined up mini-Afro.

If you were a woman, he seemed like the kind of guy who wouldn’t try to have sex with you on the first date. And if you were a guy, he seemed like the kind of dude that if he took all your money in a poker game, he’d still give you a little bit of it back to get a tank of gas. He was kind and suave, but not in a flirtatious way. It’s just who he was. It was like if Will Smith’s Mike Lowrey character from the Bad Boys franchise was a suave waiter instead of a police officer.

Marlon and Shod ran the back of the house. Shod had the most jokes and was also the resident DJ for the store after the customers left. Shod would crank the rap music so loud you felt like you were working in the dining room of a strip club in Miami. We cracked jokes and talked about life and love, but, most important, everybody fucking worked.

There was Eugene. He was a new father. He operated with a different sense of responsibility than all of us. He definitely loved his kid, and his girlfriend would bring his son by often to see Daddy at work. Between tables, Eugene would sit and talk with his son. There’s something great about a child seeing their father make an honest day’s living. I think it’s an underrated part of child rearing.

Dads, retirees, playboys, angry immigrants, war vets, and me. Of course, droves of women worked there and made sure the store was a well-run machine, but socially I tended to gravitate toward the men. They provided me something I had not had up until that point in my life: a sense of morality and values.

Everywhere I turned at Golden Corral, there was a man offering me wisdom. But the boys in the dish room were the stars of the show, especially one boy we’ll call Big Mixx. Big Mixx was either a young-looking thirty-five or a rough-looking twenty-five. Hard to tell. He was a classic Florida boy, gold teeth, some dreadlocks. He didn’t laugh a lot, didn’t talk a lot. He was a man moving with purpose.

No matter how fast you moved, you weren’t bringing Mixx “his dishes” fast enough. He’d jam you up in the dish room like a high school football coach taking a private moment with a player who was underperforming on the field. “Hey, little motherfucker, you better bring me my goddamn dishes. I see you out here talking and flirting with these hoes. You need to be going around here bringing me my goddamn dishes. If you do the work, the pussy gon’ come to you.”

On a slow day Mixx would prowl the dining room looking for dirty dishes on tables. He contended that the servers were being lazy and not bringing the dishes fast enough, so he would do it him-fucking-self, he said. He would snake through the tables like a linebacker looking for a wide receiver to hit. As soon as a customer laid down a dish, Mixx would pounce.

Imagine you have someone as smooth as Adolfo serving you, and then you look up at a man with gold teeth, dreadlocks, five gold chains, and a shirt drenched in sweat from the heat of the dish room asking you, “You done with that chicken wing?” And before you can answer, he snatches the plate away from you and disappears back into the darkness. It was hilarious to see in action.

I had worked so many food service jobs where everyone did the bare minimum. No one at Golden Corral seemed to behave that way, and at the top of the food chain in this work ethic was Big Mixx. I asked Mixx one day why he was so hyperfocused on doing his job correctly.

He simply said, “’Cuz I ain’t going back to jail. Man, these crackers ain’t gonna have a reason to fire me. You gonna fire me, goddamn it, you gonna have to make up a reason, but it ain’t gon’ be ’cuz I ain’t do the job. I ain’t going back to jail.”

One day, my probation officer told me he had to visit Golden Corral to verify my employment. I’d been dreading this day because I’d lied on the application and never told Golden Corral I’d been arrested. I hoped that I’d be able to charm them with my work ethic over the first few months, and that then when they found out the truth they’d be able to judge me on my body of work.

I came in that morning and confessed my secret to my manager, Mr. Galloway.

“Hey, man, a dude is going to come by here today who just needs to verify my work for some stuff,” I said. I never used the word probation or officer, but Mr. Galloway knew what was up.

“Oh, no problem,” he said. “Let me know when he’s here, and I’ll show him around.”

Later that afternoon, my probation officer came into the building. Khaki pants tighter than Adolfo’s, a gun on his hip, a shimmering gold badge next to it, and one of those tight two-button polo shirts with an embroidered badge on his chest.

Big Mixx had a radar for stuff like this. He peeped him right away.

“Goddamn, that motherfucker got two badges on, one on his hip and one on his chest. You know somebody about to go to jail.”

My probation officer walked around the restaurant, making sure that I was actually an integrated part of the team and not just there in a Golden Corral uniform pretending to have a job.

A law enforcement officer walking around the store, not eating, got the undivided attention of the back of the house. Panic spread. They figured he was there to arrest somebody for a probation violation.

“Shit! I know it ain’t me!” Big Mixx screamed over the hum of a loud industrial dishwasher. “I told y’all, man, I ain’t going back to jail!”

We all laughed at him, but the more my probation officer walked around, the more antsy the back of the house became.

All of a sudden Big Mixx was no longer interested in stalking the dining room for dirty dishes. Mike Lou quietly and contentedly recooked any food you brought out there without seeking feedback from the customers. God forbid they get spotted by this law enforcement officer if it turned out they were the one he was looking for.

When you are working in the front of the house, it’s tough to keep up with the conversations happening in the back of the house because you only hear them in fragments, but every trip back to the dish room, the conversation was becoming more and more panicked.

“Well, I don’t know who he is.”
“Well, motherfucker, if he’s not your police, and he ain’t my police, then who the fuck police is he?”
“Well, go ask him.”
“If he here, he here to arrest somebody. Did you piss dirty?”
“Hell no. My piss been clean for the last four or five months. I keep telling you, man, these crackers ain’t gonna catch me slipping. I’m not fucking up no more.”

My manager came out and talked to the probation officer, and they shook hands. Everybody in the restaurant looked on frantically. And then they saw my probation officer come over and shake my hand, and the cat was out the bag. Everyone there knew my secret. I was on probation.

After my probation officer left, my first trip was to Mr. Galloway’s office for what I assumed was me being fired. But not only was Mr. Galloway understanding, he was excited. It turned out the state of Florida gave employment tax credit breaks to businesses that hired convicted felons. Mr. Galloway was starting to go through my paperwork so he could claim the tax credits that he would receive for the six months I’d been working there so far.

As it turned out, this Golden Corral location took pride in giving second chances to people who had made mistakes, and the owner welcomed people like me with open arms. I couldn’t have picked a better place to work.

I almost cried for joy in the office. I wasn’t more than two steps out of Mr. Galloway’s office before I was swamped by people in the back of the house wanting to know all the details of my probation.

“Man, I thought you was a schoolboy. What you did, murder? Dope? Ain’t no way in hell your little ass on probation.”

As I shared the details of my arrest, they in turn shared theirs. It was like an odd Felons Anonymous meeting. Everybody there who had done—or was currently on—some form of supervised release pulled me aside and told me their story, what they had been dealing with, and what their life was like. It was some of the most uplifting conversation I had ever had.

That day was the first day I ever truly felt that forgiveness was possible or even a real thing. It was the first day that gave me hope that my life wouldn’t just be the sum of my mistakes.

Roy Wood Jr. is a two-time Emmy-nominated writer and producer known for his stand-up comedy, his work as a correspondent on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” and hosting CNN’s “Have I Got News for You.”

The Man of Many Fathers is available for preorder and can be purchased wherever books are sold on October 28th, 2025.