A Changing Job Description
Mark K September 7th, 2011
We received word this summer that our restaurant was going to need major repairs – Leaky pipes under the floor. We’d have to close for two weeks – haul all of the equipment to the parking lot, jackhammer the floors, dig up and replace the faulty pipes, install a new floor and put it all back together.
Meanwhile, our bookkeeper had planned a two-week cruise to the Mediterranean and I would have to fill in for her and prepare the payroll while she was gone.
I hunkered down in her office with construction dust on the floor, pounding and roaring outside the door, along with the smell of paint fumes. I poured over her detailed notes and entered and reentered the payroll numbers, spending an entire morning on it until I realized that I was doing it all wrong and had to start over again.
Meanwhile, my nephew Max had volunteered to remove some ivy that had encroached on the roof. He worked gamely on it all day even though he had a fear of heights and spiders and fair skin that was getting redder as the day progressed.
I was making progress on the payroll in the afternoon but my lack of number keyboard skills was holding me back. The regular bookkeeper could whip through the entries, punching the 10-key pad without looking. I had to hunt-and-peck and then check the numbers over and over until they balanced. It was taking me four days to do what Cindy could do in one.
In the afternoon, Max came down from the roof and most of the construction workers called it a day. Billy, the subcontractor remained, working on the dining room floor. His radio was tuned to a pop station. I heard Adele’s “Someone Like You” for the sixth time.
Doing a task that you’re not very familiar with can be so frustrating that it makes you question whether you have the necessary make-up for the job. I felt like I had a set of handicaps that could match Max’s up on the roof but instead of battling spiders, height and the sun I was up against multi-tasking, math-phobia and an uncooperative keyboard. There was a spider hiding for me in each new set of numbers.
Billy finished with the floor but left the radio on because it was on the other side of the wet cement. Payday was the next day – it would just be Adele and me until I finished. Like Max, the main thing I had going for me was dogged determination.
It was good to keep busy, though – in the back of my mind was another deadline. My second, and last, child would be leaving for college in a week and my wife and I would be facing an empty nest. I had been preparing for this with plans for volunteering and a hike across Spain -I wasn’t sure how to fill the void after 20 years of parenting. But then life made other plans.
The plumbing fell apart. The bookkeeper left for Europe. There were major personnel changes at the restaurant. My wife and I decided that we needed to take more control and that I would be needed more at work.
I felt like George Bailey, the Jimmy Stewart character from It’s a Wonderful Life. Every time he thought he was finally going to escape Bedford Falls and pursue his dreams, he is reeled back in to take care of the latest crisis at the family Savings and Loan.
I thought that I had just about figured out my job description – that I would morph from a teacher/father/husband/restaurant support person into something slightly different with emphasis on the teaching with a side of world travel, visits to my parents and getting reacquainted with my wife. I hadn’t bargained on a full-time restaurant job.
But why not? By eleven, the checks were ready to be printed. Payroll took forever, but turned out well, if I do say so myself. I had begun taking notes on a philosophical statement about what our restaurant is all about. I was starting to form my new job description.
I had to keep busy – my daughter leaves for college in four days.
