Pregled posta

Marketing

I am extremely blessed to have a life in New York that I can leave and come back to with relative ease. Not many Americans can take a two month vacation and come back to jobs that welcome them back.

I started working at Florent the day after Halloween in 2000. This is my seventh year there and I have achieved the status of one of those few people that can probably always have a job if I need one. I have left twice for long periods of time (9 months and one year) and slid back into place when I returned to the city. There will always be someone there that needs the night off.

The last time I left New York for a long stretch, and Florent by extension, The Ex and I went on one year of endless summer. We left New York at the end of the summer, moved to Key West and worked through the fall and winter. We took the money we saved during the high season and lived in Thailand for three months. When we returned to New York it was the beginning of a new summer here.

When I left Florent, I had been working primarily as a daytime waiter. I worked brunches and lunches and became familiar with the lovely, non-drunk West Village regulars that eat at the restaurant every day of the week and order the same thing. Some of them have become very good friends of mine. They give me gifts on my birthday, invite me to their gallery openings, ask me about my life and remember things that are important to me. They are the people who can walk into the restaurant, sit down and get what they want without having to order it from anyone. They are the ones we usher in when there is a line out the door. The ones whose wine glasses stay full.

It is a wonderful world in many ways, but it is not idyllic. It can be painful and frustrating and exhausting. Serving people, even people I truly enjoy, can drain you of all your mental and emotional resources, never mind the physical demands. You are constantly anticipating other people's needs, adjusting yourself to other's neuroses.

And when you are not doing such exhaustively social work, you have to do repetitive drone work that is necessary for the consistent running of the machine. A machine that never stops pumping out frites and boudin noir and creme caramel.

I remember, the last time I left Florent, I was marrying ketchup bottles and grinning gleefully. One of my regulars asked me what I was so damn happy about.

"This is the last time I will be pouring ketchup out of a 10-can Heinz for a very long time. . ." I exclaimed.

". . .maybe forever. . ." I whispered longingly.

He laughed. Some dreams are small.

One week later, I was wearing khaki shorts, flip-flops and a tank top with the image of a dolphin and the words "Ernest's Cafe" emblazoned on my chest. I had returned to Key West and had a job within two hours of being back on the island. Four years previously, I spent a season at the southernmost point in the U.S. to make enough money to move back to New York. One of the many jobs I held down was to make frozen drinks for passersby on the porch of the cafe next to the Hemingway house. The owners of Ernest's were more than happy to have me back for another stint.

My first day back, they asked me to help out on the floor so they could give their regular waitress a much needed day off. I of course obliged.

My first task?

Refilling the ketchup bottles.

The universe has a fucked up sense of humor.

All the wiring for the water pump unplugs. The hoses unscrew so it's quite simpler to remove. Just three screws in the floor (which with my floor did nothing).