How It All Began

 I had grown up in the restaurant business and toiled away in many kitchens around the New York area for a few years.  Anyone that has ever had a job in that industry knows how ridiculously tough it is. It isn’t just the hours that hurt, it is the lifestyle that you get sucked into. Lets face it, when you get off work at midnight, where are you going to go?  To the gym?  No, you go to a bar and drink until the sun comes up.  At least back then you could because the bars closed at 4 am and there were after hours clubs. Then you go home and get about 3 hours of sleep to do it all again.  It was a miserable life but one that gets comfortable.  Obviously, my thought was to open a restaurant at some point. So that was

the direction I was headed.One day, while I was working in the kitchen of a high volume NY restaurant in Central Park, the manager pulled me aside and told me that there was a job opportunity across the river in NJ if I wanted it.  It wasn’t a restaurant job, but a job in a supermarket.  He was king to take a job developing European style food halls inside food retailer.  I thought “What the heck, is he crazy?” But I went to check it out and was surprised and interested at the concept.  I took the job and we immediately hit a road block.

It seems that in the supermarket world in NY, workers are unionized into different unions.  Well Chefs didn’t fit into any of the job codes, so we didn’t need to join the union, which was fine.  However, we had to work under the union and business constraints, which meant we worked 40 hours a week and if we worked more, we were paid overtime.  Unfortunately, there was no overtime.  So we were getting paid about the same as we did in the restaurant business, but only working about half the hours.  Suddenly, I had a lot of free time.

Well, when you are young, making decent money and you have a lot of free time on your hands, there is only one thing to do…..get into trouble.  Well, for me anyway.  I began going to visit my friends who were working in restaurants on my way home from work.  One drink leads to 2 and the next thing you know you are back in the old habits.  I couldn’t go on this way for very long.  And then, I had a revelation……….. (next Post)