(54 Weeks)
Last week marked a career milestone. April 24th was the day I started at The Record 35 years ago. I wrote about the significance of that in When we were friend to the people we served (November 2018). As significant as that was, the work experience that paved my career started many, many years earlier.
The Blue Bird Inn and accompanying gift shops, aside from being my parents’ business, also provided me with my first work experiences.
I started in the kitchen of the restaurant. Some of the earliest responsibilities I remember being given were washing pots in the deep sink – eventually working my way up to filling in for the dishwasher – salad making and running orange peels through a meat grinder to make an orange marmalade they served with the rolls.
Those tasks helped me learn how great it feels to accomplish something and see the fruits of my labor.
Eventually when I was a little older, I helped the hostesses on some busy Sundays and holidays. I wasn’t allowed to actually seat anyone – I was probably 8 or 9 at the time – but I would be asked to find the party who was next on the list to be seated and bring them to the hostess.
Being “front of the house” like that gave me customer service skills and taught me to have grace under pressure.
There were times when my school friends would come in to eat with their families. I remember feeling very important. Their waitress would find me and ask me to go out into the dining room to say hello, I felt like a famous Chef. Although the one thing I never really learned to do at the restaurant was cook.
Back in those days, I thought I was destined for the restaurant business figuring I would just carry on the family business. My parents had other plans. The restaurant business is hard work and at the end of 1974, after 20 years, they had had enough.
By spring of 1975, the house on Circle Avenue that I had lived in for last 7 years had been sold. We moved into the Victorian home that had previously housed the gift shop; the house with the two-bedroom apartment upstairs where we lived when I first arrived from Ireland. Back in my original bedroom, the rest of the house was converted to a simple one-family home.
The restaurant was converted to all retail. This provided more work experiences. I learned how to properly wrap gifts (a skill I’m still proficient at today). I managed inventory, changed out displays, and as a young teen got my first taste of sales commissions. I doubt anyone who officially worked there was paid on commission, but after complaining about not getting a raise after years of “child labor” my dad offered me the commission option.
I’m sure he and mom talked about it. “Six of one, half dozen of the other,” I can hear my mom saying to support the argument that it really didn’t matter; that the cost of a straight-up raise or the commission would come out of my parents’ pocket at about the same rate.
What they didn’t expect, was that I would, in my first weekend on commission, sell a $1000+ piece of furniture. My dad honored the 10% commission, but made me deposit it in the bank immediately, and after that I saw a huge reduction in my hours.
Lots of lessons learned there, too.
Did you really think this wasn’t going to include a fundraiser? It’s me. Of course it is! Over the course of these 60 weeks, I am hoping to raise $6000 for the children of Mercy Home for Boys & Girls (that’s just $100 a week!). To learn more about Mercy Home and my why, please visit my fundraising page. Thank you.
