Goodbye Cubicle, Hello Fadinna
Hello, fair readers. I know I know, I haven’t posted in a month. You;ve been asking yourselves what I ate for far too long now. Suffice it say, lots of noodles, pan-asian cuisine (!) and fresh summer veggies from the farm share.
It’s unfortunate that I haven’t blogged more, since today is my last day working for the Union and the temp agency. Starting on Monday I will embark on a yet-to-be-determined new job in NYC’s enormous, cutthroat, and legendary food service industry. I probably won’t have much time in front of a computer, but I will have excellent Fadinna fodder based on my many future culinary adventures.
There are plenty of good reasons why I wanted to get out of the restaurant world for a while, try the 9-5 office thing, and I have found many more reasons why I never ever want to sit at a desk in an office again. Unless, of course, I can actually work on saving the world from said desk. Since that isn’t really happening, I’m gonna jump back into a big pile of food and try to make some goddamn money.
Though I applied for a range of jobs- from preschool teacher to nanny to high school teacher to editorial assistant to barista to fine restaurant manager, the only ones that bit were restaurants and cafes. This is perhaps serindipitous. As some of you know my dream is to open my own coffeeshop/music venue/hangout spot someday and while the life of a service employee is far from glamorous, low-fat or easy, I feel that developing my experience will benefit me in the long run when/if I try to make my own place work.
The offers so far have been from a chocolate shop/cafe, which was totally cute but basically would not earn me enough money to live on, from a vegetarian/organic cafe in the Seaport area where I would love to work but again, pays very little, and from a swanky Norwegian restaurant in the W Village. The latter is offering the most money and would also arguably be the most stressful, since I’d be a manager and have very little fine dining table service experience. I’d probably need to go get a bunch of fancy black clothes, start wearing makeup and maybe even deodorant again, and perhaps even <gasp>shave my legs. Ultimately, this position is good and promises excellent weekday hours (M-F 9-5!) a lot of cold hard cash but would require me to pretty much sell out. But nevertheless I think it would be pretty cool, eating Scandanavian food and lookin fancy. My name will even fit right in with the Scandanavian theme.
Why am I dallying on my decision, you may wonder? Because I won’t find out if I’ve gotten my ultimate dream job that I interviewed for until Thursday. That’s tomorrow. So for now I have accepted two positions as Plans B and C, but if this amazing social enterprise coffeeshop-inside -ookstore calls me back to be their manager I will cry tears of joy. Even though it means I will not earn very much. I won’t be able to save and I probably won’t get a raise for a while. But I’ll be learning how to manage several small cafes and be helping an amazing charity/social reform organization and fighting the good fight for accessible public space, one latte at a time. Ha.
Anyway, dear readers, I am signing off for now but am about to meet a crew of antifolkers for lunch in midtown, as a final farewell to the largely overpriced and mediocre eateries of the neighborhood. I’ll fill you in if it’s interesting.
