Turns out it was never ‘just a job’

I never thought that I’d spend eleven years in the restaurant industry.

In fact, I had planned to leave it almost immediately. When I was closing in on finishing my Masters degree, I acquired the habit of taking home glassware we’d otherwise recycle from the restaurant I’d been working at for three years. I thought they would be fun relics of my time working in a restaurant.

But in January 2012 I got promoted to the bar and everything changed. In an effort to earn more money for my very real student debt, I stumbled onto something life-altering. I found a job that I loved, something that I was good at and something that I could make money with. When I graduated that May I was faced with the decision to stay where I was professionally or to pursue teaching at a collegiate level: my goal when I’d first started graduate school, first started at the restaurant. I looked at my friends working as adjunct professors: overworked and underpaid, all on MassHealth while I was ineligible. I made 300% more than the minimum requirement.

I stayed behind the bar.

I wanted to give it time, I wanted to put a dent in my loans and have fun at work until it was time to ‘grow up’. (Because if work is fun, is it work?) But I never stopped loving the job, and I never stopped excelling which is why I realized: it wasn’t a question of ‘growing up’, it was a question of how I wanted to grow. And I wanted to grow in a restaurant.