It's Time For The Final Step

byGabeTheNaabe

186 followers

6 years ago

The picture you see above was taken in Jerseydale, California. Jerseydale is a 20-30 minute drive from the small town of Mariposa, which in turn is a 40 minute drive from Oakhurst. And Oakhurst, of course, is one of the three gates to Yosemite Valley National Park, one of the 7 natural wonders of the world.

Why is this important?

Because it's the entire reason why I'm here!

Let's rewind 4 years to find me at a small restaurant in Oakhurst, my hometown. (Throughout this post I'm going to post fake names of my formor coworkers because most of them wish to remain anonymous.) The owner of said restaurant was looking over my completely blank resume to see if there was anything that he could find - a reference, a previous job, a skill - anything. But since I was just entering the work force I had nothing to show, and that became apparent to him pretty darn quick when he finished scanning the paper.

He put my "resume" down and began to think. He thought long and hard as I waited in anticipation for what he was about to say, although I somehow knew that he was a good man who really loved to take care of himself, his family, and the team that he had built around him. He looked me over, once, twice, then said, "Well Gabriel how would you like a spot on our team?" My eyebrows raised since I wasn't expecting him to say something like that, and he continued by saying, "You'll be starting as a dishwasher, and you'll be required to stay until the job is done. You'll probably have to stay very late most nights. Are you ok with that?" Of course I was - I stood up, shook his hand, and the game was on.

I saw a great many things from this man in the next six months - he knew how to be diligent yet graceful, productive yet positive, stressed yet understanding, firm but fair - he was truly one of a kind and he was loved by all of us because he helped us feel like a family when we punched the clock, even if we were just working to maintain a small restaurant in a small town.

In the midst of this I was learning some things about myself as well. While I loved the environment I was in I knew that I was more of a free spirit - I wanted to travel, I wanted to be free from the confines of a physical workspace, I wanted to meet new people and see new things and generally make a life for myself; a life that I truly wanted to live.

So when the owner announced his resignation we were all shocked - him, of all people, leaving his business and selling out?! If someone told us he was going to do that even 2 months prior we would have laughed and shook our heads in disdain. But here it was, happening right in front of our eyes, and we all knew that things would never be the same.

The new management that bought the restaurant already had a fully established restaurant running in Mariposa. Since a lot of us quit right off of the bat (including our main chef who had been with us for 16 years) the owners became quite found of sending their staff down to our restaurant so that things could operate as smoothly as possible. This meant that we got some good eggs... And we got some bad eggs.

Meet Mark. Mark was the new executive chef from Mariposa, and he was (still is, really, we're still friends to this day) the chillest guy you could ever hope an executive chef to be - he was funny and laid back, yet willing to throw the hammer down when it needed to come down. Two others - Luke and Larry - also showed up to help us out. Luke was one of their "built from the ground up" cooks and Larry was an excellent server who always did above and beyond what was required of him. We would go to Mark's house on our off days and just have an absolute blast with whatever we decided to do that weekend. We got along very well and, even through difficult times, managed to pull through - until mangement began to take a turn for the worse.

Introducing Bobby. Bobby had spent 18+ years in the industry working in every kind of food service from here to timbuktu and had run everything from small kitchens to large kitchens to catering services and beyond. You can imagine my suprise when Mark told me with a sad face that Bobby would be coming to work with us.

"Why is that such a terrible thing? What's so bad about him," I asked to try and lighten his mood.

"Gabe, you don't understand... He's coming here because he's blacklisted, he can't work there anymore. That's why they're sending him here."

"So they banned him from CS and they're sending him here instead?! What kind of management does that?!"

"I don't know, Gabe... They've always been like this. Why do you think I'm here instead of them?"

As soon as I heard this I began to panic (internally, of course). Everything had been working very well with the team we had, but now I was beginning to understand the kind of ownership we really had, and I realized that we were going to close our doors at some point or another if they kept making decisions like this.

Bobby came and worked with us for a while, and he was a very... Shall we say... Pretentious sort of character. He was a talker, but not a doer. Bark and no bite. He tried to do the bare minimum that he had to, and sometimes he would simply leave things that had to get done for somebody else to do the next day. He would use all of our equipment for preparing extra catering events that could have waited until we made our prep for the day. He was extremely frustrating to work with, but most of all he disrupted the family-like/productive environment that existed within our little restaurant simply by being there, and this sentiment was shared by most of my fellow coworkers.

Remember when I mentioned that I wanted to be free from the confines of a typical job? That was when the first owner of the restaurant was still around, and his era was one of legendary status - now, with Bobby as the second-in-command, we felt like we had to struggle through each day just so that we could barely meet our supply quota, and it felt more like a hostile environment than anything else - this is when we began to "take sides" with eachother. "You better not be on Bobby's side" was a popular phrase that floated around as we did our duties and I was personally losing grip of my mental health and my desire to escape was very strong indeed.

The winter of 2018 proved to be a difficult winter for us, and this was mostly because the "new" owners made one last decision that would prove damning for all of us - they hired another executive chief. Given the circumstances at the time (it being winter in a small town) we knew that hiring another executive chef (especially since he would be on salary) would put them in the red, and it would put them wayyyy in the red. He was a creative chef - he created new dishes every week in the hopes of attracting new customers to our neck of the woods, he improved the quality of our menu, and he did everything in his power to make as many sales as he could - but the sales simply weren't outperforming the (generous) salary that was being given to him every month, and we could hardly say that it was his fault.

We closed our doors on Feb of 2018. Two years of happiness, sadness, blood, sweat, and tears, and none of us had anything to show for it except for the bond (and in some cases, infamous reputation) that we shared with eachother.

Skipping ahead a little bit and I find myself in Austin, TX running for a delivery service called "Favor." I enjoyed the work for a long time (ever since June of 2018) because I was an independant contractor. I set my own schedule, I picked my own gigs, and the money I made was based off of how much effort I put into it. Most importantly, however, it's given me a very precious insight into the corporate world - I delivered to all kinds of work places, such as corporate, small, family-owned, individual, and so forth. The pattern is the same - these places are always focused on making money as their prime objective, and the employees are always bound to serve these workspaces for as long as they remain on their payroll. In other words, reallity set in; I could not and would not support a system that didn't have the wellbeing of the people in mind.

So I decided to be different. I decided to create a blog that centers around mental wellbeing, spirituality, philosophy, and more in order to be a light for people like me that want to expand their mind past the material and glimpse what is beyond this world. However, as I work on this blog reality is setting in once again; if I can make a passive income through the internet then I will be able to develop this blog without having to worry about whether or not I have enough money in the bank. I'll also be able to travel, see my friends and family in California without having to worry about "my job," and I'll be able to learn new things and meet new people, just like I've always wanted to do.

And so here I stand (well, sit) at Wealthy Affilliate. You guys are one of the best online communities I've ever had the pleasure of meeting, period, and you're certainly the best online community that's centered around finance and success! I'm very excited to create my own affilliate success story, and I'm happy to say that my final step (that is, my final job, or my final financial step) will be taken here with the websites I build with WA.

Thank you so much for reading!

-Gabe