I’d like to speak to the manager!!!

There are 2 things I knew as a child. 

1. I would go to college.  
2. I would get a job as soon as I could so that I could buy things for myself, that my parents wouldn’t.  

Full disclosure, it really wasn’t–wouldn’t, it was more a couldn’t.  They didn’t have the money to buy the things I wanted.  

It’s funny, looking back at what I spent my first paycheck on.  I bought clothes.  That were in style.  That weren’t from K-mart.  For my friends in Kentucky, I spent my $83 (I remember this) on clothes from McAlpin’s.  My family thought I was deranged.  That’s another story.  

I turned 16 on Sunday, April 12, 1981.  I just learned that on that day, the first NASA Shuttle was launched.  

Two weeks later, I started my first job.  

I was hired to be a dishwasher, at the Day’s Inn Restaurant on Delaplain Road, in Georgetown, Kentucky. Making $3.35 an hour.  

I was fucking stoked. 

I’ll have to post a photo if I can find one.  

I wore white uniform pants, a white uniform shirt, tennis shoes, with a brass name tag.  I was Robert, because they didn’t have a Jeff.  

My shift on the first day started at 4:00.  

I was nervous as fuck. 

And didn’t have a clue what I was doing.

I’d gotten the job, because my Aunt Debbie worked there as a cook, and my parents knew the husband/wife team that managed the hotel and the restaurant.  

I punched the clock.  

And I was off.  

The restaurant closed at 9:00 that night.

At 11:00 I was still washing dishes.  

My parents sat in the dining room, with the manager and my aunt, smoking, while I meticulously, scrubbed every dish spotless.  

I think I finished up around 11:30 that night.  

My parents had been told I was the slowest dishwasher they’d ever hired.  They were going to give me two weeks to figure it out.  And if I didn’t speed up, then I’d need to look for a new job.  

And speed up I did.  

Within six weeks, I was FAST.  

In six months, I was cooking.

In 12 months, I was waiting tables.  

And just shy of 2 years I was fired but these are all stories for another day.

The only thing that matters today, is that I went from the slowest dishwasher to the fastest dishwasher and cemented my career path in hospitality.