My “retirement” from the Food Service Industry

(The first post in what will soon be a blog that will be separate from this one)

Friday I gave my two weeks notice from a job I have held for the better part of 9 and a half years to embark upon something else, something entirely different than the jobs I have been doing since the time I was 18.
Food service, I say to you, it’s been fun…

In 1994 I moved to Maryland from my parents' home and started upon a long “career” of sorts in the food service industry. This was after spending 2 years at a fairly cushy high school job (the public library) but then needing the freedom and independence and even more desperately needing to get out of my hometown and find a better life.

And that led me to fall into the quick and easy gainful employment (whatever that means) of the service industry, with the jobs that are easy to get, but oh so painful and unrewarding.

But I was lucky. After a false start at a bakery at the tourist-y Inner Harbor in Baltimore (personal note: beware of any new occupation that requires you to buy tan pants) where I was asked, quite seriously, “Where’s your smile???”, I found a job at a deli downtown. (Okay, actually, the bakery let me go, which might technically be the one and only time I was ever “let go”--like a turd--from a job…I believe my manager’s exact words were “I think you might be better off looking for another job.” I can probably talk about this later. Anyway…)

I walked into a little deli and asked if they were looking for “counter help.” They were, and though it was a tough job with a fairly demanding boss and initially low pay, I survived an early push to sack me (I’m a slow learner and up to that point had very little food service experience.) I wound up thriving in an environment that turned out to be very nurturing and comfortable. The boss who wanted to fire me wound up looking at me as a surrogate son…admittedly, this is not a relationship I am entirely comfortable with, but it allowed her to be more forgiving of my shortcomings. I stayed there an astonishing 6 years before I jumped on an offer to work at my favorite drinking hole, the Irish Pub. After 6 years, I left the deli, free of what had at times been a very trying experience, but one that I was happy to have had. I said “I’m never going to do that again,” meaning I would never stay so long at a job like that.

9 and a half years later...

Oh, I love the pub. I have worked there through the entire Bush Administration. I was there on 9/11. I watched Super Bowls, worked St. Patty’s Days, made many friends, watched more than 40 servers come and go, cooked many hundreds of burgers, cleaned the toilets many hundreds of times, and washed countless dishes…but almost more importantly, The Pub has been a constant in my life. When I started, I was single. At the end, I am married. I went through girlfriends, rental properties, cars, friends, acquaintances, people I never want to see ever again, and all the while the Pub was still there, a constant presence in my life. It is an anomaly in a business that is by nature volatile and uncertain: a restaurant that has been open and under the same ownership for almost 30 years. It is not run by some crazy iron-fisted autocratic despot, like you are used to seeing on the Food Network or in big restaurants. It is instead run simply by Bill, who could never be called autocratic. Hard work and the luck of the Irish have been with Bill and his wonderful family, and he somehow makes it work. I have been there for the Pub, and it has been there for me.

And now, after all this time, almost 16 years in the food service industry (some jobs I have yet to mention that may have fallen through the cracks: Produce clerk, Pizza delivery man, I was a prep cook for three days at a job I was ill-suited for both in skills and mentally, I washed dishes at a crazy busy breakfast place) I am proud to yell from the mountaintops the one thing I have wanted to say for years:

I am retiring from the Food Service industry!

Oh, okay…don’t burn your bridges, never say never, yeah, I get it. But I’m 34 years old, and for various reasons I will explore shortly, I need this part of my life to end. And now, thanks to a fortuitous series of events, I am about to embark on a career change, one that takes me hopefully quite far from the reality of the kitchen/deli counter/dish room/what have you.

Meet the new me. Davey G: Ramp Agent for Southwest Airlines.
Stand by…