The restaurant business can be something of a beat-down. I got my start shortly after totaling my parent’s car. It was 1985 and I was driving my parent's Volkswagen Dasher on a side street in Fair Haven, NJ. I came upon a four way intersection with no stop sign in any direction and plowed into a family in a station wagon. I careened into a tree and knocked the rear view mirror off with my head. I remember thinking, "God, the stereo is loud". They blamed the poor guy that I hit. I'm pretty sure that was discriminatory, as they were black family. My concept of social justice hadn’t quite formed by then and I was happy to get out of it without a ticket.
Immediately following the crash, I was instructed to get a job to pay for the car I had destroyed. My first job was on a bridge over the Navesink River. What a job it was. In the summer, they brought in seasonal help because of the increased demand on the bridge. My job was to sit in a chair for most of an 8 hour shift. As often as two times an hour, my job shifted to manually closing two gates on the bridge and locking them into place prior to the bridge opening. When the bridge closed, I opened the gates. Yep, that was the whole job.
I then got a job at a restaurant that quickly burned down. It was a big, beautiful restaurant with several bars in Sea Bright called the Peninsula House. I was a busboy and I hated going to work. I was never questioned in the fire and that's all I have to say about that.
My career began when I took a job at the Hobrauhaus in Atlantic Highlands. This was the beginning of it all - however inauspicious. I hated this job, too. Actually, I hated this job more than the other one. It was Oktoberfest and people piled in by the hundreds. When you are really new to a job and an industry, everything moves at a hundred miles an hour and you can't imagine that you are going to be able to keep up. Well, this was my experience. The owners yelled, the kitchen was loud and the waitresses and bartenders were older and career people. When you screwed up, you got chewed out. It was get better or get gone and I knew it immediately.
Fortunately (or unfortunately) I was great. Within weeks I was getting side tips and servers were fighting over the right to have me bussing their stations. (It was a much bigger deal back then, I know). Inside of a year I was promoted to waiter, even though I was only 17 and legally needed to be 18. Hilda, the owner, told me just to tell anyone that asked that I was her son. Sure.
My moment of truth came that summer. I was in LBI with my friends for a weekend at the beach. It was our senior year in high school and our paths were about to move away from each other. Although I was going to school locally at Seton Hall, my friends were going to South Carolina and Western Pennsylvania and the like. So this was it. My plan was to call out for Saturday night and claim sickness. I had been working there almost a year and had never called out. It was the summer and that was the slow season. So I got to a pay phone (yes, a pay phone) and called.
Me: Mrs. Lesbirel? It's Tim.
Her: Yes?
Me: Umm.... I'm sick and I can't come in to work tonight.
Her: I need you to come in to work tonight. If you don't, I'm afraid you don't have a job.
Me: Umm.... Ok. I guess I'll be in.
I got off the phone and told my friends that I had to go in. They were like, "blow it off". "Come on, it’s a waitering job, just get another one when you get back".
Anyway, I went back. The worst part is that they had to drive me a good chunk of the way to the train station. At that moment, sadly, two things occurred and have followed me in my life since. One is arguably a good thing. I am extremely hard working and dedicated to my job. I can count on one hand how many times I've called out of work since then and never for a bogus reason. The other - and related - thing is not so good. I choose work over everything. I choose it over relationships and that often includes family. That part about me sucks.
Usually when you read about people's defining moments they're inspiring. Mine isn't. But I've never forgotten that day. I've never forgotten that phone call and I've never looked back. Twenty-five years later and I'm metaphorically leaving LBI for work all the time. Only now it’s my kids who have that look in their eyes as if to say, "Seriously, dad? You're going back to work?"
I can't change the decision I made that day, but there are many more such decisions coming my way in the future. The pay phone has turned into a Blackberry and my friends are all gone and replaced with a family. They have gotten used to having a dad that works 6 days a week and Christmas and Thanksgiving (and often their birthdays.) Each time I pick up that phone, I'll bet their rooting for me the way my friends did back in 1985. "Stick to your guns, dad. Tell them you're not coming in....."
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