I’ve been thinking about Haley a great
deal these last couple of days. Haley, just Haley. There are only two
thing I remember about her: she was six foot four and she was named
Haley because she was born in 1986 when Haley’s Comet came around. Of
course, in 1986, I was a teenager and living in the cold war suburbs
of Denver. My friend David Reid and I spent our weekends awake all
night star gazing, and I remember Haley’s Comet very well. Perhaps
that is a story for another time.
I met Haley when she came into
Marlowe’s, the restaurant where I worked at the time. She had never
been a server before, and although it was not required to get the
job, there just aren’t many people who walk into a restaurant without
experience and get a serving job. I was taken with her immediately.
She was 22 years old at the time, and she had just graduated from
college, Hawaii, I think, with a degree in Marine Biology. Marlowe’s
in Denver seemed like a very far distance from marine biology save
for the fish we cooked and served nightly.
“Why do you want to work here?” I
asked. It was a legitimate question.
“I just graduated,” she said. I
knew this already by looking at her resume. “I just want to spent a
year as a server. I want this experience.”
“Trying to drum up money for grad
school?” I asked. Also, a legitimate question. I was just finishing
grad school myself.
She got the job. She was a good server.
She was a popular staff member. She made many friends. And I know she
partied, only because I knew the crowd she ran with. I also know she
made a good deal of money.
When she put in her notice, I asked:
“Why are you quitting?” I was good at the legitimate questions.
After all, she was making good money, living a fun lifestyle and she
had a lot of friends.
“Going to grad school. My year is
up.”
What I was impressed with, really, was
that she said she was going to work for a year as a server because
she wanted that experience. And when the year was up, she quit. The
last I heard of her, she was in Hawaii being a marine biologist.
I think about her now, all these years
later because I am about to separate from my restaurant job. I have
had a number of restaurant jobs over the years. Perhaps too many jobs
to consider. The bigger ones: St. Marks/Thinman, Marlowe’s, Portland
City Grill, and Martinis Bistro. There have been smaller places too:
The Monkey Box, Starbucks, Peaberry Coffee, Atticus and The
Greenbriar Inn. I didn’t last long at any of the smaller ones because
I moved, they were temporary positions or I got laid off. I didn’t choose to leave any of the smaller places. But I did quit the
bigger ones.
And tomorrow, February 10, 2022, I will
not only leave Martinis Bistro, I will leave the service industry.
And so help me, I hope I never set foot into a restaurant ever again.
I will be leaving this profession exactly 21 years to the day from
when I entered it. I started on February 10, 2001. It has been a very
long time.