Work you love: 1 year, a retrospective

The reason I started working at Pho Sho was simple: I couldn't stand the last place I worked at, Coffee Connection Cafe. It wasn't that I didn't like to work hard or that the money wasn't good, it was that it became an abusive relationship, the type in which you have so much invested, your paycheck, your lively-hood, that leaving seems more painful than staying.

That all changed when I met Island and Chris, my current employers. They didn't care at first why I wanted a change. They saw me for who I was, firstly as a person, secondly as a good fit, and thirdly as a person who knows what panccetta is ("an italian bacon?"). It wasn't like that before. Before, I was an exploitable, not-to-be-trusted body that wasn't expected to know anything. Despite my education and honesty, my willingness to cover shifts and give up entire weekends, my former employers treated me and my co-workers with open hostility, brought people to tears, and seemed as though they didn't even trust each other. Finally, as my last college finals were approaching, I made a very scary change which has turned out to be the best professional decision I have made to date. I took another job.

I wasn't perfect before. I showed up hung-over, I became a mean person to line cooks and bussers, but I had no reason to want to be better, or even good. My natural affinity to relate to strangers and to endorse Walla Walla brought my only joy. 

My theory on love is that it is a quality that brings the desire to create more love, that it inspires beauty and a strong passion for self improvement. When you love what you do, you want to be the best at it, you want to bring your truest self.

In my current position, I am also not perfect. I sometimes grumble when challenges seem insurmountable, and I am indignant, although privately, when I give better service than my tips reflect. I have taken it fully upon myself, in love, that I can and will be the only person to improve this. In any case the rewards are abundant. I get to develop rich relationships with everyone there, from dishwashers to owners; I feel the type of love and support I miss still from the family I left behind in Colorado. No paycheck could reflect that kind of security. I can continue to build an affinity with diners and share a love for food, sometimes wine and sake, and always the joy of living in or visiting a real community.

A year hasn't been very long. It has really been quite short. The arrival of this anniversary has actually been a surprise, but so much has happened. I graduated from college. I surprised my family for Christmas. A relationship began and ended. I was in a wedding. I left a church. It's great that some things stay the same, like this job I love.