The job that almost wasn't

So, I left Stonebridge at the end of June. Since then, I applied a number of places, including several taverns, hospitals, and assisted living centers, but I never heard anything from anyone. Except one.

The first place where I actually spoke to someone about a job was Palmer’s Tavern / George’s Pizza here in town. The guy in charge of the kitchen, Keith, said that yes he was looking for help. He had been working straight out for 10 months with very little time off because all his workers are teens that can’t be left unsupervised. The one kitchen serves both the pizza place and the tavern (most of the actual business comes from the tavern side.) While I can’t say working in a pizza kitchen was high on my list of choices, I filed it away as a possibility.

One month later, and none of the places I applied had even returned a phone call or an e-mail. This is, I suppose, how people handle resumes now – if they aren’t interested, they simply ignore you. You have no way of knowing whether they even got your resume, because they will never call you back. Keith at Palmer’s was the only one I had actually spoken to, in person or otherwise. As time went by I decided, okay, even if it’s only temporary I need to pursue the job at Palmer’s. I stopped in a few times to talk to Keith, who was very interested in getting me in there. He needed someone with maturity and experience to run the kitchen when he wasn’t there – as it was, he couldn’t take any time off. The hurtle seemed to be convincing the owners to bring someone in and pay them what they were worth. He was not about to insult me by offering me $7/hour.

Finally one week he says come in Tuesday at 8pm so he could show me how things are run. Well, right as I was about to leave the house, he calls and says never mind, there’s no business and he can’t justify bringing someone else in when he had a full staff working. He says he’d get back to me that weekend, but he never did. I stopped in and he said he’d call me Tuesday. No call. I went in, found out his father had died so he was out for a week. Some young girl named Michelle was sort of running things in his absence.

Finally, I went in later in the week and caught up with him. I got to talk to him and one of the owners, and made it clear that I was ready to work, but I needed to know what was going on. What happened was, the owners saw Michelle running the kitchen, and decided it wasn’t fair to bring me in when she was already working there. While this is a respectable thing to promote from within, the fact was that Michelle did not want the job. She was a bartender, and was looking for another job so she could get more hours. She did not want to work in a kitchen. Keith spent two days getting that point across to the owners, then finally on Monday morning he called me and said “be here at 4.”

Now, again I have to think about this. I spent 5 months in Vermont attending one of the finest culinary schools in America, costing me $600 a month in rent and $30,000 in tuition. Is this really what my education gets me? A job as a supervisor in a pizza / tavern kitchen? Well… it sounds like a waste until you factor in what I was doing at Stonebridge. I made sandwiches, fries, burgers, seafood, salads, and helped cater buffets and weddings. At Palmer’s, I make sandwiches, fries, burgers, seafood, salads, and pizza. At first blush working at a Four Star country club is impressive sounding, but peel away that initial ooh-ahh layer and peek underneath at what I actually DID – I was a glorified short order cook. Nothing more. I may have had the potential to learn the behind-the-scenes stuff, but I lost that opportunity when I stepped down from the sous-chef position. So who is to say that working in a tavern making subs and pizzas is any less of a job? Sure it pays a dollar less an hour, but it’s also a minute away from my house. I won’t be spending nearly as much on gas going to and from work (in fact I rode my bicycle today.) There’s also no “hierarchy,” as in, “you can’t do that because you’re just a line cook.” We’re all just workers. Granted Keith is the boss, but he’s no Chef, and will not be called one. He worked his way to where he is, but he shows that you don’t need fancy titles to get a job done.

Is this a step backwards, or downwards, from where I thought I was going? I am honestly not sure. I don’t know where I was heading anymore. I sometimes wonder if I wasted time and money going to NECI, but then I have to remember that no one would even talk to me coming out of 20 years of tech. Having that year behind me seems to have opened some doors for me, and if it got me in one of those doors, I guess it was worth it. Besides, ya gotta start somewhere – I never graduated, so I can’t expect to automatically end up in some high-brow $100 a plate establishment. Besides, there’s something cool about working in a tavern right in your own town.