“As far as Kiva could tell, whenever selfish humans encountered a wrenching, life-altering crisis, they embarked on a journey of five distinct stages: Denial. Denial. Denial. Fucking Denial. Oh, shit everything is terrible grab what you can and run.”
― The Last Emperox
This past weekend, riding in the car with my 10-year old son, I was regaling him with tales of my origins in the hospitality industry. Not quite, “I walked 10 miles to school every day, both ways uphill” stories, but not too far off either.
I started working at the Summit Resort when I was 15 years old. I was a dishwasher, and it sucked.
The Summit was your classic Pocono Mountain honeymoon resort, complete with champagne glass-shaped hot tubs in the rooms. Serving three meals a day meant plenty of dishes to wash and don’t even get me started on pots. You haven’t lived till you have taken a piece of steel wool to 75 metal baking sheets encrusted with bacon grease and remnants,
This was at a time when the restaurant business wasn’t exactly a friendly place to be. Employers really didn’t care what you thought, nor did they see a need to pretend otherwise. The owner of the place used to like to pop in behind the dish machine and tell us tales, that he must have thought were inspirational, about his 7 decades of experience in the industry, “I was your age when I started, doing the same job you are. I worked hard and paid attention. Look at me now. All of this could be yours someday.”
We would try to hold back our smirks and say, “Thank you, Mr. Farda!” Only to break into laughter CONTINUE READING: THE LONG AND THE SHORT OF IT – Dad Gone Wild
