For too long
For too long I’ve been waiting and
Searching on my own

Oh and my life goes faster
Oh, as the storm rips slowly

Oh, I’m awake
I’m awake

As the storms rips slowly

Oh and my life goes faster
Oh, as the storm rips slowly
Storm give us the right course, show us the right door
Storm, give us the right course, we’re stuck in the unknown
I’m stuck here in a storm

What do you know, Sunday night, my favorite time to write.

I wanted to write this last night, however I had already wrote something, and publishing a second passage felt like it would water them both down, so I slept on it, and thought about it all damn day. Here we are, buckle up.

I often explain to people how the thing I miss most about living “normal” is working. By living normal I mean leaving the house consistently for more than 20 minutes at a time for a bike ride. I haven’t lived normally almost all year, the last day I worked is June 30. Now while June 30 is just a few months back, it feels like a life time. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll even remember how to do my job when I return(of course I will, it’s all I love, and one of the only things I’m great at.).

People give me a hard time about focusing too much on returning to work, and not enough time on healing. For me work is healing. What I do for a living may seem simple, and not important. To me my work, and the work that the team I get to work with does, is very important, for a variety of reasons.

For those that don’t know I work in hospitality, which is just a douchey way of saying I work in a restaurant. I choose to say I work in hospitality, because I’m not in the business of transactions, for me it’s not about the food and the drinks, it’s about the human connection. It’s about helping people make memories, or as I’ve called them in a previous passage, moments. I said before that we won’t remember everything in our lives, we just remember moments. When death calls you have a remember a bunch of really happy, and probably also really fucking sad moments.

Whether it be a sad moment, or a happy moment, I like to try to create the best of times for people when I work. I wrote and posted about a book earlier this year called “unreasonable Hospitality” a book I’ve been obsessed with since I got my hands on it. I actually have 5 copies left, of the 25 or so I’ve purchased. It’s a book I found to make such an impact on me, that I give it out to people anytime I have to explain why I choose to approach hospitality the way I do. You may recognize the title because it was in that absolutely wonderful, anxiety provoking show “The Bear” season 2.

Last night I was reminded why I miss work, and what makes it so special to me. My boss Tom posted to social media that a couple had gotten engaged and was celebrating at his new restaurant Hook+Line. To help the couple celebrate, he grabbed a bottle of bubbles, and a champagne saber, and headed to the currently empty patio area for a photo-op and popping of bottles. Tom likes to party, and I don’t mean he himself, but he likes to make things fun and exciting for people who are kind enough to embark on his establishments.

Through that I’ve learned how to really make people have a good time when they come to the bar at alcove, times they’ll hopefully never forget, but may be a bit fuzzy from the fun. It’s very selfish of me to miss work, I don’t miss it because I like working, I miss it because I like making people feel good, it makes me feel good, so it’s all for my own benefit.

Alcove is like no place I worked before, Tom makes it clear, make sure the guest has a good time, give shit away, talk to them about products they may find interesting, whatever you do make it a unique experience to them. Don’t act as a robot as a lot of hospitality workers can these days, approach ever situation based on the people, based on the vibes they give off, use your skills to anticipate why they’re here, and let’s make sure they never forget why they picked us to hangout with.

Now there are a couple of examples of moments that I think about when I’m feeling down about not working, they probably make me feel more down, but they’re fun moments.

Two women walked in one late afternoon, it was super busy because of an event at the garden, one put her bag which had a box of coupes in it, a type of glassware, on the bar and ran to the bathroom. I looked at the other woman and said “you brought your own glasses?” apparently this woman had received the coupes as a gift, they were from crate and barrel or one of those fancy stores but one was broken in the box. Her perfect set of four coupes, now down to three. She went to three different locations to see if she could exchange them, not only could she not, the people at the stores weren’t helpful. At alcove we keep a section of random glassware, I had just brought in a set of four gold rimmed coupes to add to the section, this is for off menu drinks, special people, special occasions etc, just a way to have fun for us. I brought the four glasses over to the woman and I said I heard you had some trouble today, I want you to take these glasses with you. She cried. To me it was some glasses that I had spent $18 on at T.J. Maxx. To her it was the one engagement gift she was really excited about. When she cried I panicked. Did I do something wrong? Did I overstep? Turns out the day had just really sucked, and those glasses were what changed it completely. It was a moment of “unreasonable hospitality” for me. A term most of you probably won’t actually understand but I’m happy to explain if you reach out separate to this.

The last moment of hospitality I’ll share for the evening, as I long to get back to my career in it, is a much different one. One night after a Celtics game, or a Bruins game, I forget which, a group of four people came in. This is a relatively private blog so I can say these people were a pain in the fucking ass. As they began wrapping up their night one of them went out to smoke before returning for his last drink and heading home for the evening. Upon re-entry to the restaurant as they were closing out he asked if we had any carrots or celery he could take to feed the bunnies outside. We have these giant planters on the wharf outside of alcove, which house a million bunnies, I said we couldn’t because like we don’t need bunnies trying to get in the restaurant or over staying their welcome out there, also the kitchen was closed. As I walked away I heard they were in town from Miami, so now things changed. I ran downstairs to the walk in fridge. I got some celery, and carrots, broken into small pieces, and put them in a to-go box. I brought the box out to them and said for the bunnies, but if anyone asks I didn’t give this to you. A simple gesture that made some out of towners have a better night.

During the pandemic, at the beginning I wasn’t sure I’d ever to return to such a fragile industry, especially when I couldn’t see peoples faces. how can I build a connection with someone I can’t see?

A few years later I admit two things:

1. I will never pick another career, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life, it may be the only long term thing I’m certain of.
2. As much as I claim to hate people, not only do I love people, and think the world needs a little more kindness and magic, I live to make other people’s lives more full, even if that’s only in the form of food and drink sometimes.

Where the skies are gold not gray,

J.