My first day

It’s been nearly four years since I started a new job at a newspaper company, but today I had my first day at the Patriot-Ledger in Quincy. I wouldn’t say my beginnings at the Sandusky Register or the Naples Daily News were necessarily reflective of my entire time there, but today did not go well.

First, after driving all the way to Quincy, I realized I’ll have to fill up the new van at least twice each week just to make the commute. That’s a solid $90 expenditure when I’ll only make about $300 in a given week. Upon arrival, I was introduced around the newsroom as the new “intern” and immediately asked which college I was still attending. I had naturally assumed this already about the job, but it was nice to finally confirm I was performing a job typically reserved for those fresh out of high school.

After sitting awhile by my desk — trying not to fall asleep — I soon discovered some of my important duties. 1. I must be the secretary of the newsroom and answer the phone whenever it rings. 2. I must clear all the junk e-mail out of the newsroom e-mail inbox. I wasn’t given a coverage area, a breakdown of the newspaper’s editorial policies or really anything remotely to do with journalism (except for one assignment, which I’ll touch on in a minute). It’s safe to say that about 90 percent of this first day at the Patriot-Ledger had nothing to do with journalism. Of course, they could have been just easing me in; my new boss seems to have a solid head on his shoulders, so maybe today was just the orientation process.

Still, today, for the first time since moving to Massachusetts, I wished I was back working at the Naples Daily News. When I left there nearly a year ago, I was so glad to be gone from that downtrodden atmosphere that I couldn’t have imagined anything worse. Even after everything that’s happened since I left — the financial insecurity of the freelance lifestyle; the cold, long winter; losing my relationship with the Boston Globe; having to work as a waiter — I never once thought for a second that I’d be better off back in Florida. Now, I’m not saying that my experience at the Ledger will be worse than NDN (today was only one day after all), but for a long time today I was missing my old job in Bonita and all the perks that came with it.

But,  you know what? I still think I made the right decision. If nothing else, I had eight months were I got to work from home, see my little girl grow and help my wife with our pregnancy. Despite everything that’s happened since the end of March, it was all worth it just for those eight months. I wouldn’t give them back for anything. When I left NDN, I knew I might have to get a non-journalism job, or even start back from the beginning with another newspaper. What I’m doing now is exactly what I reasoned with myself that I would do if circumstances made it that way.

Despite all the gloominess from today, there was a little sunshine on an otherwise long eight hours. I was given a story assignment. Sure, it was a weather story, which I typically loathe, but it was nice to get back in the swing of things at a newspaper, interviewing people and talking about things I knew would matter to people in the paper. It may have been 30 minutes of joy surrounded by 7.5 hours of demoralizing boredom, but at least it was something.

Back in the fray

To be honest with you, the interview at Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly did not go well (see my Glimmer of Hope posting). I was late; couldn’t find a place to park; and off my game the entire interview. I’d be beyond shocked if I got hired there. I’ve never done very well on the interviews that last only 45-60 minutes (as opposed to the one- or two-day interview), but this was just bad.

But, by the grace of God and my own indecisive mind, I’m getting back into journalism full-time. This Monday I will start a six-month temp position with the Patriot-Ledger out of Quincy, which is just south of Boston. Now, I’m eternally grateful to the good folks at the Ledger for offering what feels like one of only a half dozen open journalism jobs in all of Massachusetts, but this is not my ideal return to journalism. It’s the 12-8 Sunday thru Thrusday shift (read: lackey), which means I’m starting below what I was doing when I first got out of college for the Sandusky Register. Also, the pay is terrible; as in so terrible I can make more money working at McDonalds; not as a McDonalds manager, but as the regular dude who cooks fries and slathers special sauce on Big Macs. This means, that I still have to keep one of my waitering jobs just to make ends meet for my young family (yea! working six and a half days per week!) It also means I’ll have to do the type of stories I couldn’t stand when I was with Sandusky Register and Naples Daily News, like doing a write up on the best fishing spot in Southern Massachusetts. My wife and I moved our family to Massachusetts so I could spend more time at home and write the stories I was passionate about; instead I’ll be gone all the time (it’s a one hour commute each way) and write what I’m told to write.

But, you know what? I’m glad to be taking this job. Sure, the hours are terrible and the money is worse, but when I’m back in the groove of doing journalism and writing full-time, I won’t worry about any of that. I want to freelance from home and I want to be my own boss, but that just not possible right now. Instead, I’ll take what I can get, and this is what I can get right now.

On this blog, I haven’t done a very good job of chronicling our life since I switched from freelancing full-time to working as a waiter. Now, I’m grateful to the folks at Picadilly Pub for helping me out of a tight financial situation when I needed it, but I couldn’t stand that place. The worst part every day for me was the shift board. In the kitchen (by the dishwasher and the ice machine), there’s a bulletin board where servers list all the shifts they need picked up for vacations, birthdays, weekend trips, whatever. When I first started in April, I hesitated to pick up anyone’s shifts because I always reasoned with myself that there was no way I’d still be working at Picadilly Pub in late May or June or July. Yet, the weeks would keep rolling by, and I’d grow more and more discontent that I was at that job longer than I thought I should have been.

The day of Enlightenment for me came about two weeks ago when I was still mulling over taking the job at the Patriot-Ledger because the pay and the hours were so bad. It was a Tuesday, and it was slow (as it always is at the Picadilly Pub) and I was roaming between groups of servers who were chewing the fat to take up the time. All the conversations were just so whiny and awful and unbearable that I had to go sit by myself in a corner. I ended up in front of the shift board, saw all those dates that I never signed up for two months ago, saw all those dates that were coming up two months in the future, and decided I needed to do something different. Then and there, I decided to take the job at the Ledger. If I stick with journalism, chances are something with come of it; if I stick with waitering, in 10 years I’ll still be making the same rate, hoping for 20 percent tip and having whiny, awful, unbearable conversations with other waiters. The choice was clear. The best few seconds I’ve ever had at the Picadilly Pub where when I gave my notice to my boss, we exchanged mutual appreciation for each other, he wished me luck in my new position, and I walked away. It felt great.

Patience is a virtue; and it is a virtue that is very important in life. It’s also a virtue that I’ve never had. I was ready to leave the Sandusky Register after six months and reached my breaking point after two years.  With the Naples Daily News, I was ready to out and out quit journalism just to get away from the place after three years. Yet, with a little patience, things might have turned out differently. My boss at the Sandusky Register was ready to promote me to city editor after just two years at the paper, a position which was one small step from leading the entire newsroom, and still I left. At the Naples Daily News, my boss — the enigmatic Tom Hanson — wrote in my last evaluation that I could be a great newsman if I just had the patience to wait out a promotion. I was close to being a section editor after less than three years at that job and would have been promoted soon enough had a waited around. Hell, I might have had a chance at being managing editor within 10-15 years, which would have been significant considering I would have been less than 40 years old when I got the job. Unfortunately, my complete lack of patience took me away from all of that.

I still consider my moves away from Sandusky and Naples to be good things. Regardless of what I should have learned, I still believe I made the right decision at the time. Moving forward, though, I wonder if I shouldn’t take a different approach to this Patriot-Ledger job. Maybe starting at the bottom, again, and proving myself over a longer period of time will reap greater rewards. Maybe I can lead the charge that will make journalism a great profession once again. Maybe it will crash and burn just.

Either way, I’m glad to be back in the fray.

A Glimmer of Hope

It’s been a rough week in the waitering biz. Financially, it has probably been the best Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday since I started as a waiter, but I reached my breaking point mentally at both my serving jobs on Tuesday and Wednesday.

First, at Stephen Anthony’s, the owner repeatedly dogged me about wasting food at the restaurant. As a small, specialty restaurant, the place only has a limited amount of food, and the owner is understandably concerned about making sure everything that is prepared goes to a customer and is paid for. However, in verbally attacking me for wasting food on Tuesday, the owner wasn’t actually talking about food that had been prepared because of me, he was talking about food that was “almost” wasted because of me. This “almost” apparently happens whenever the cooks have a question about one of my orders. In the case on Tuesday, it was whether a piece of salmon should be made well done or blackened, and the matter was settled before any food was wasted. In the five weeks since I was hired, the amount of food that was actually wasted because of me (prepared food that was sent back because it was wrong) totals about $11, which is for a side of breakfast ham, a Western omlette and a sandwich. If you add the one beer and two glasses of wine from my first two days of training, I figure I’ve wasted about $30 total in menu value, which is not a small amount but not above average compared to other servers over the course of five weeks. Now, I genuinely feel bad about all the mistakes I’ve made and wouldn’t mind if the owner spoke to me in a professional fashion about needing to shore up my work. Instead, though, he scolds me using the same manner and tone of voice I use when I yell at the dogs for peeing on the carpet. He also uses the terms “all the time” and “on every shift” when he talks about me wasting food, even though he only happened on three separate shifts out of the 25 or so I’ve worked. And Tuesday was just the culmination of everything, in general, he uses the same demeanor (see, again, like yelling at dogs peeing on the carpet) whenever he is addressing the wait staff.

If Tuesday at Stephen Anthony’s drained me mentally, then Wednesday was a marathon taking me to the breaking point. First, both my waitering jobs had been pressing me to take an Alcohol Awareness class so I know how to spot a fake ID and when to cut someone off from the drink. On Wednesday I finally went to a class that was 25 minutes away. The class, of course, started an hour late (making me an hour late for my night shift at the Picadilly Pub; good-bye tips), and the entire session consisted of an old lady talking to herself for three hours in several different character voices, often pretending she was drunk. She did, of course, take the time to repeatedly insult the three Japanese waitresses who didn’t speak English very well, and verbally assault another waitress who had to leave early because of the late start. Then, at Piccadilly Pub, I had to stay late because one of the older waitresses refused to do any of her side work and had the manager force me to do it for her. The older waitress then used her free time to hang by the host stand, steal customers from the rest of us; and then, at the end of the night, sit on her fat butt and eat popcorn that is meant for customers. To top off my day, the manager also made me wait an extra 30 minutes to leave because she couldn’t figure out that the $10 gift card she rang up for one of my guests was the same $10 gift card charge that was on my report at the end of the night. What made this whole situation worse was that Sarah, Maggie and Desmond were waiting out in the parking lot for 15 minutes because they had to come pick me up. Of course, it was after Maggie’s bed time, so when we got home, she spent an hour crying in her room before she finally fell back asleep.

I tell you now, if I wasn’t so in desperate need of money at this point, I couldn’t stand waitering much longer. It is getting harder and harder not to bring this all home with me every day, disrupting what are some of the best moments of my private life.

Monday, though, brings a glimmer of hope.

I have a job interview with a legal magazine in Boston, looking for me to become their next courts reporter. I would be working right in the downtown financial district, and if everything goes well, Sarah and I can move our family a lot closer to the city. We would be living and working in Boston, not in freaking far Marlborough, which is an hour away. It’s not quite The Dream of combining my private and professional life to the benefit of both, but it is the dream we envisioned when we first said one year ago we wanted to live in Boston. This is a job I could keep and stay in and excel at. Yes, the money would be important, but I would also be furthering my career and doing something that suits me far better than bringing people plates of food. When I was having a rough time Tuesday and Wednesday, I just kept repeating to myself that it could all be over soon; that I wouldn’t be a waiter for life; that I wouldn’t have to abandon the dreams of a Boston life.  This could really be something.

Of course, I may be putting too much on this one job interview; that if I don’t get a job, that it will be even harder to pick myself up off the mat once again and keep going to Stephen Anthony’s and Piccadilly Pub. Or, even worse, it will turn out like the Patriot Ledger, where I have a job offer, but the position is very unstable and the pay is so low that I couldn’t possibly support myself, much less a family.

Still, I’m talking this job interview for what it is today: a glimmer of hope guiding me through a difficult time in a my professional life.