I work in a busy restaurant (we’ve done over 600 covers during weekend brunch) where things are done a certain way. The place is a machine with systematic operation. The owner, and chef, made this quite clear to me when I first started working there about a year ago. I told him, 'Let me know if I'm doing anything wrong. I'll fix it. I want to do this job well.' Naturally, he let me know, in between the evolving pool of tasks of which his days consist. Aside from the constructive criticism, our conversations were few and concise. And I understood that dynamic. He was (and always is) a needed man of many functions. But still, I would brace myself when he’d ask to talk to me.
One morning a couples months back, right before we’re about to open up the doors for service, he comes up to me and inquires, ‘Hey, can I talk to you for a sec’ ?’ I obliged and took a deep breath.
He opened up. ‘So, yesterday I turned forty-two years old and I’d never seen anyone skateboard in person before. Then I was walking the through the square and I saw you skating at the monument. I didn’t recognize you at first and I was thinking to myself, ‘Oh, here are some skateboarders. What are they gonna do? They’re gonna fall, because they always fall.’ Then you went and I saw you stick a trick. I saw you land something. It was the first time I’d ever seen someone successfully do skateboarding.
“What!? No way. I can’t believe you’ve never seen anybody do a skateboard trick before!,” I told him, still in disbelief that the conversation had nothing to do with work. If he was forty-two, he grew up in the hayday(s) of skateboarding. What kept him from seeing the elusive phenomenon for so many years? I can’t imagine. Still, he swore by his story. It’s more bizarre that he saw the make because I was committed to getting that single trick for hours the day before. He walked by, and saw the one I was trying hundreds of times, over and over, to get away with. He saw the keeper. I’ll bet he’s in the background of the footage somewhere if he walked through the middle of the square.
By the time our conversation was over, customers were filing through the door to beat the brunch rush.
