Tales from the Restaurant

Tales from the Restaurant
Where you'll find all the restaurant dirt you'll ever need.

Thursday, August 27, 2015

Having left the business; A Requiem

Many of you might know that I left the restaurant business back in November of 2014. I had scooped up a regular sales gig, and the weekend/mid-week evening shifts were getting to be too much. The exhaustion was really getting to me, and I didn't have enough water for all the plants in my time garden.

So I wrote an emotional resignation letter.

Breaking up with the restaurant business was a hard thing to do. I knew that people in my restaurant grew to depend on me, and some of them I suspect started to kinda like me. My letter was filled with semi-professional Shakesperian-sounding tirades ("I would that I had the hours in my week, nay, the energy to continue to serve and prosper within these four walls), and it was overflowing with gratitude for the opportunity.

I felt weird about it, because restaurants are not places that people leave graciously. It's always a "good riddance" type of mentality that follows you out the door like a personal storm cloud. Certainly, that's how you feel after any given shift, but it wasn't the end of a shift; it was the end of four and a half years of service. It was the end of a chapter of my life.

None of this is to say that I wouldn't go back if I had to. To quote Ashton Kutcher, "I've never in my life had a job that I was better than."

If circumstances in my life permitted, I would absolutely go back, and I would rock it. But it's been over a year and a half, and I'm doing well in another area. So I end this blog for the time being, and take with me all of these experiences that I've had over the years, and will always keep them in my thoughts as I go out to eat in other restaurants.

Order up!