Category: Beloved Co-workers
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Oranges for the Giving
Word of advice: Do not stop at a Florida Turnpike service center if you are hungry and thirsty and a fresh fruit stand is set up to resemble a pleasant farmers’ market–complete with samples of the sweetest oranges on the planet. If you do, you will end up with a cute netted bag of petit…
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Snow, Snow, Snow!
It’s snowing here in Colorado. Everyone is excited. Snow means skiing in the nearby mountains. Snow means it’s really the holiday season. A rainbow palate of lights dangle from town square evergreens and hang from the eaves and rooftops of neighborhood homes that are frosted just so. A glittering snowscape comes to life after dark,…
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It’s Only Work
Remember the first time you were fired? How it wasn’t really your fault until the boss decided it was? How it felt so very, very personal, and you felt completely worthless and wondered if you would ever work again? How much it sucked? Good thing I live 2,000 miles away from RG Daughter. Because a…
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Will You Marry Me?
A great guy asked me to marry him today. Too bad I didn’t know him. He is one of our sort-of regulars at lunch. I say sort-of, because he only comes in when he is part of a large corporate luncheon that happens every so often at my restaurant. Actually, I didn’t really remember him…
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20 Questions
From the day shift host the minute I walked in, regarding the completely fried and clearly dead Open Table computer: “Do you know how to turn it back on? I don’t know if it’s broken, but it looks like water spilled all over it last night.” I got the real scoop on whose drink spilled…
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Like Mother…God Help Her
“I forgot about restaurant feet.” This from RG Daughter after her first night at work at a new eatery that has just opened in her college town. Actually “first night” is a misnomer. She had just put in an 18-hour double that encompassed a morning, an afternoon, an evening, and the wee hours of the…
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Better on the B-Side
Back in the day, when I saved up my allowance to buy 45 rpms of the latest music, I always found myself drawn to the B-side song–that tune on the other side, the side that took up space simply to support the hit song. Sometimes these B-side songs were instrumental versions of the hits. Sometimes…
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Top 23
In an effort to help a friend wade through the 569 posts I have written over two-and-a-half years, I told him I would scroll back and come up with my favorites. It proved to be an interesting exercise. Some of what I have written is deeply personal and heartfelt. Sometimes that equates to good writing.…
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Time Always Tells
When you return “home” after packing up a lifetime, and the Sunday shift is going well until one of the bartenders gets quite suddenly and unexpectedly trashed, and you are left having to pick up the pieces as you attempt to explain it all to your boss on the phone, you are apt to wonder…
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Life is Short
I had only been to this funky, strictly local place twice, both times with my crazy friend who is no longer my friend like she used to be. Within seconds of meeting the bartender who’d worked there for 25-plus years, he told me, “Forgetting the blond hair, you have got to be Ginger from Gilligan’s…