Why I Still Miss Waiting Tables In A Ski Town

I really don’t hate my current job.

And, no, I’m not defending any ambivalence I might feel toward my dream side-gig writing about skiing. I’m referring to the one I’m at forty hours a week: desk-bound, making sales, plugging orders into a computer, and navigating the–shall we call it–interestingly mundane landscape of day job office politics. I also write, but instead of jetting off to parts unknown to cover adventure, exquisite cuisine, and over-the-head turns brought to you by the Sea of Japan, I'm just a normal dude with a platform, raising a family, and paying the daycare bill in a pretty unglamorous way: via the old nine-to-five

Any career uncertainties bubble to the surface because my favorite job yet is one far removed from both my current career and my side-gig; one I’d argue remains the best job in any ski town.

And how I miss waiting tables. 

Not only can I wrap my mind around the simple transcendence of a dinner spent with friends or family in a way I can’t upward mobility; serving steaks at night all those years ago put it all together for me. The days spent skiing; the panicked thrill of the six-thirty rush; the mean if no-bullshit vibe of the staff; spending all my tips late-night at The Bistro. In a larger sense these things were of little consequence, but in the moment, to me, they mattered. Deeply. And, good lord, was it fun.

I stumbled upon my restaurant job the winter I moved back to town after deciding–much to my parents' dissapointment–to take my second break from college. It was a classic spot–an old-fashioned steak house in a slightly refurbished barn that still used short, crummy wine glasses and did 400 dinners a night all winter. And it held a legendary renown. The crew there was a cadre of mostly degenerate young men (that isn’t a complement; the few women who worked there offered a needed counterweight we could have used more of). They were known for making cash hand over fist, and for being a fast crowd. I can’t fill these pages with what transpired at the end-of-season parties. 

The restaurant also had a certain familial appeal. My mother had waited tables there in the late 80s and my father managed the bar there in the 70s. One of his old friends still ran that bar. Looking back it seems like I was destined to work there. I joke to my four-year-old that his children will mark the fourth generation that our family has worked there. He responds in the way I probably deserve: “What, Dada?”

I was hired on that first season as a busser, and the three-full turns, gargantuan bustubs, and a hundred-and-twenty days of skiing brought my hips to the breaking point. I also met a girl that season. We skied every weekend, partied three nights a week, and basked in the good life. Rent then was cheap–I was socking away cash just clearing tables. And that first year marked the beginning of nearly a decade that I missed not a single powder day. My young self thought I had it all figured out. I couldn’t have been happier.

That was back when thirty seemed old–when the cool older guy who worked with us for a season saved all his five dollar bills to travel to Southeast Asia in the spring. He had decided to leave his CPA job in Denver in his mid-thirties to snowboard and bus tables in Steamboat. That’s what I want to be like, I thought. And there was Brooksy, an absolute institution in his own right; a crusty old comedian who had been at the joint for a generation. Thinking of his cackle still brings a smile to my face. He’d get so fired up entering a big order into the computer, fighting off the shit-giving of four surly dudes waiting in line behind him that the veins in his balding head would throb. One day, a customer pulled him aside during a rush and asked him if he could bring out a dessert to their table, and possibly sing happy birthday at the table. “I ain’t singing nothing!” he spouted. He had us in stitches nightly. I don’t know where he is now or what he’s doing, but we still quote him daily.

After my first year I trained up to serve, eschewing the bus tubs for a nicer shirt, still skiing more than I could scarcely fathom by day, while by night I explained to out-of-town customers the difference between cuts of beef and why my face was so sunkissed below my eyes.

I got in with a crew of guys my age at the restaurant who started around the same time I did. We’d ski untouched sidecountry hard all day before rushing home to change before our shift started. Maybe also to sneak a beer in beforehand. If time allowed I’d occasionally hit Saturday après–all too often a bit too hard–with my girlfriend (herself an architect who busted ass all week) before sliding into work for my occasional weekend bussing shifts with an inebriate, silly grin on my face. On more than one occasion I was hungover by the time shifters came around at seven to set me straight.

But that was for the younger version of myself. And perhaps the less rickety. One year, I hurt my knee, got the thing scoped, and took most of the following ski season off. I hobbled around the restaurant on that bum knee like a pirate with a peg leg all winter. One woman I worked with asked if I was just going to walk like that now. I defensively retorted that I walked just fine, thank you very much. But I knew better. And picking up as many shifts as possible that season, I had dinner just four times in six months with the woman I was going to ask to marry me. The writing seemed to be on the wall. I got a second job in a warehouse, and eventually was hired on as a sales rep. And that was the unceremonious end of my five season serving career.

I lament leaving those old days behind, but you do it for a reason. Year-round paychecks are nice, and I’d never sacrifice seeing my wife and kids at night and on the weekends. I am pushing forty now, after all. Priorities have changed, so I work days now. And it’s not all bad at my current job. It’s just not that same breakneck freedom, ever cascading toward who-knows-what’s-next that I hope young people in ski towns can always experience. Forever.

No matter, I still long to put on that apron and run around a dimly lit dining room with my friends for a few hours each night after skiing all day. 

And I always will.