First Course

Here’s the beginning of the story of Restaurant Gal.

I was in the writing/editing biz for 20+ years—some years as a freelancer, others as a staff person. My latest stint was managing editor of a trade magazine. I know, I know. Boring. Ugh. That’s not “real” journalism. But it was a travel magazine. Okay, we covered group travel, but it was travel writing in its way. (Go ahead, ask me anything about Omaha, Branson, or the latest trends in dinner theater and IMAX offerings.)

Anyway, you know it’s time to move on from a job when you can’t watch “The Office”—either the British or American version—because it’s so close to your own reality that it’s simply not funny. Not funny at all. No use boring you with the bad-boss stories. Mine are a cliché. But, in an interesting twist of karma, everyone was fired a month after I quit. The magazine was later outsourced and that was that.

Meanwhile, I was papering the pavement of this major metropolitan area with my resume and clips, talking myself out the door of interviews because I just couldn’t stomach taking another office job.

So, with two kids in college, a husband in the second year of an emerging tech start-up without paying himself a salary, I decided it was time to try something totally and completely different. Something fun. Something that would pay less than two-thirds of what I made at the magazine.

I became a restaurant maitre’d.

That’s right. I chose the restaurant industry, the hospitality realm—the world of pagers, surly customers, 20-something bosses, double shifts, sore feet, no meals or breaks, and a full appreciation of a libation or two or twenty at the end of the day.

And, I love almost every minute of it.

Almost.

But give the restaurant that hired me some credit. They hired me on a whim, I think, and probably figured if I lasted more than a week, I was trainable. If I lasted more than a month, maybe I was not too terrible in this new role. If I lasted two months, maybe I had potential and hopefully wasn’t a drunk or a thief. And if I lasted three—well, it’s been four and I haven’t called out yet!