I took a $32,000 per year pay cut to get my first management job. Then later, moved to Nantucket and started waiting tables again, only to get another pay cut when I moved to a different job with better possibilities career wise. I was promoted twice with in 6 months, so my gamble paid off for me, both career wise and financially. But I have watched people make some ridiculous mistakes in the 10 years.
My first gig was in a little place in where I grew up in Georgia. I worked alot, and rarely got paid with checks that cleared the bank on the first try. I was a dishwasher and the bartender would make a bourbon and Coke in a 44 oz cup and give it to me halfway thru my shift. [I later fell in love with him, then back out after I moved 500 miles south to live together.] I was given a battlefield promotion (read: a waitress got too drunk to show up or call and I was given her job). I later bartendered, barista'd, hosted and sort of managed. It was one of the shadiest places you have ever seen. It was open from 6 am- 2 am, and the owner had the worst ear, nose and throat problem [read: cocaine] you could imagine. For the record, this restaurant no longer exists, thanks to those kind folks at the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
I moved down to south Florida with the aforementioned bartender, who was an artist of sorts [read: unemployed] and stumbled into the hottest restaurant on the island. Literally, I was trying to find one place for an interview and accidentally walked into a different place and got hired. The hiring manager later confided in me that, while my experience certainly wasn't where it should have been for the position, I was a shoe-in with my Southern accent [Sweeney, I will never forget this, as that Southern accent has gotten me out of more tricky situations than I care to count]. She essentially took an able body and molded a capable, knowledgeable server out of it. I stayed there for just over 3 years. I had medical, dental, 401K...all the bells and whistles. They couldn't beat us with bats and make us quit our jobs. The money was great, the food was terrific, and we were slow in the summers and had ample vacation time. After realizing that I shouldn't be supporting a 35 year old drug addict when I was 22, I packed my stuff, and moved out on my official "own". With in 1 week of moving out of said boyfriends, I met a new beau at a bar and we have been together for 5 years and counting. My apartment was 300 yards from the beach, which I visited frequently with my best friends Catie & Katie (swear to God...I can't make this up). Life, was in turn, good.
Ambition got the best of me, and I longed to get away from the heat and humidity of South Florida. I moved to Charlotte NC to work for a new restaurant group, essentially committing corporate espionage according to the Human Resources division with my previous company. After giving Charlotte 6 months to work out, Tuck and I decided to move to Nantucket, as the season in PB was closing on it's end and Charlotte was proving to be a large city with a highway system that couldn't support it's ever-growing number of residents.After my management stint in CLT, I decided that I wanted money, and lots of it. I landed a job at Nantucket's only beach front restaurant, which was only open from May 15th to October 1st. This suited me just fine, and gave me a nice long winter to read, study and drink wine [this is know as R&D].
After 2 sweet years staring at the sunsets and north shore of Nantucket, I became restless again and outsourced a new job, as the part time sommelier at the White Elephant hotel on the harbor. After the season ended, my mentor and boss left and moved to some undisclosed location in Western Mass, and left me his job.
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