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[whocalledwho]

“underappreciated, underpaid, and underrated”

 I continued with Corporate kitchen jobs and realized that I wasn’t being treated fairly. I had plenty of experience and a degree yet I’d be overlooked when it came to promotions, and it wasn’t due to my lack of trying. I was outspoken and committed and I couldn't understand why my Chefs would tell me I wasn’t ready. Later a few admitted they were afraid others wouldn’t take me as seriously because of my age and gender. That was my final straw in corporate kitchens. Though I stayed with the company I moved to another department and spent the next three years managing rooms in the hotel. I was in charge of placing each guest in their rooms, communicating with each department in the hotel and I finally felt appreciated. I was making $16.75/hr working 4, 10-hour shifts and that was my first taste of freedom. I worked all my life to be a chef and after 10 years in the kitchen I left making $12.90 working 5 days a week 8 hours a day. So this new life not only gave me my freedom but self assurance that I didn’t need to work myself to death. Like my uncle. Having three days off gave me a chance to figure out who I was without cooking and I traveled. With my husband. We went on road trips from Florida to Las Vegas from Las Vegas to New York. We were everywhere. Eventually my husband and I decided we were moving on from our corporate jobs and we were going to open up a food truck, and we did. In Sedona arizona. Sedona wasn’t ready for the progression but we managed to have a good first year, as well as working for a team of guys making their lunches. My husband and I worked side by side and it was one of the most fulfilling years of my life. I grew up, we both did. We had to file our business taxe and we got our first taste of being business owners. My husband had grown up in Sedona since the 80’s and if you’re familiar, you’re familiar. It’s a small town and there’s a lot that goes on behind closed doors and I’ll leave that at that. Sedona is also the first time I experienced racism. A town that’s known for peace and tranquility, wasn’t so welcoming to a Mexican American that did not know any Spanish (neither did they?).But we knew this wasn’t it for us, we wanted to start our own brick and mortar and that's when someone my husband knew growing up approached him asking for help starting his new restaurant. So we did, we had a contract saying we’d help start and train staff for 3 months and we did. If you’ve been in town long enough you know that finding staff is hard. Someone who isn’t transient and who has a good work ethic. Coming from Las Vegas known for its  Hospitality, I was thinking Sedona would be similar. Boy was I wrong. Anyway we went on our way and about three months later the restaurant owner had put himself into several thousand dollars in debt and asked us to come back and be partners. Contracts were signed and we went to work. My husband and I worked 16 hour days 6 days a week. We were burning ourselves out but we didn’t want to compromise the quality of the food with staff that didn’t care or lack experience, like he had done while we had moved on. When we left the restaurant was making over $1,800 a day seven days a week and now it was making $200-$500. Small town and word spread that the quality had gone down while we were away. When our contract was up the first time we were making about $100 a day each 5 days a week. Flash forward to our first year in this new business we made over $350,000. The business was doing well, we had steady staff and people who wanted to learn but now it felt like we were working just as hard as we were with no staff at all and we didn’t feel supported by our business partner. The three of us would sit and dream about how we would brand the company and the menu and how much we could change our small community. It seemed like we had it all...except now we were back as “owners” and we discussed taking a pay cut. I wasn’t thrilled by this and I made this very clear but I believed we had the chance to make something out of this. This was ours and I had never put my absolute all into something more. Working so many hours in such a small community you see the same people over and over, you learn their names, their stories, and that's a HUGE factor in my decisions to move forward even though I was making $4/hr. The community and the love for what I did fulfilled me enough. Or so I thought because on the other side as much as I love serving my community, I wasn’t making enough to pay my bills. This was my reality. I think oftentimes people forget that we’re all human and for whatever reason a simple 3 foot wall makes the world of a difference when you’re in the service industry and that gives them the right to pass judgment either silently or bluntly. Mostly out loud in this case because working 13 years in Las Vegas in the Industry was not as bad as my 3 years experience there in that position.in “my restaurant”. I was always used to having a team of people behind me, a sort of brigaid because that’s what you are in the kitchen, anyone who’s worked in one knows there is a sort of comradery and you stick up for each other because we were trained that way. Here it was my husband and I against a few hundred for lack of a better term wackadoo’s. It may seem like I’m name calling but drive on in and you tell me. But let’s get back to my now $6/hr after my business partner “doubled” my income, his words not mine. Now this for me is where I had to stand up and say this isn’t okay, I was ultimately doing everything short of ordering,and paying our monthly employee and business tax. My husband was elbows deep in the dish pit every single day, all day, ordering, scheduling, menu planning, and managing social media, all while being the only one cooking.Things weren’t adding up both figuratively and literally and we didn’t know what we had gotten ourselves into. There’s so much more to this story that gave this experience a bad taste in my mouth. Still we prevailed. I wake up each morning thinking how can I do something differently? What is it today that I can do to make better choices and how do I keep my goals in reach? My husband and I continue a total 15 weeks paid under minimum wage because our business partner had gotten himself into so much debt while we were gone and told us even though we weren’t getting paid fully now at the end of the year we would be getting dividends and it would all be worth it in the end. Although I’m not a sucker, I was, because here’s where I get sucked right into doing what I love. Our business partner makes a connection with another local business in the meantime that is  in our same complex “plaza” and she’s said she loved what we were doing with social media  and she lived out of state and was having a hard time managing her staff. Insert our new business, the three of us, my husband, and business partner. We agree to manage her staff and keep an eye on consistency. Day one all of her staff quits except for one eager staff member. She was a “greenhorn” and in charge of it all with us to support her. We spent a few weeks getting things in order and we had a steady staff at our other business to allow for some time at the other. I have never been more thankful for three people and I’ll just say it GIRLS in my life. They were hard working, dedicated, they took direction and they believed the same dream that we did. I’ll note too that all the girls were making more than me and my husband and much more than the other business partner, although he wasn’t working in the restaurant or on payroll. They were making $9 plus tips working around 20-30 hrs a week. Again those three got me through some of my toughest times and I’ll never be able to express that enough. Now we really “have it all”, but we were still craving real time off. We worked 2 years straight before we decided to run off and get married at the drive-thru in Las Vegas for a day and returning to work the next. We had waited 8 years to get married always in the hopes of having more money to have a grand party but in the end we knew we ultimately had everything we wanted and that was each other. We were at our lowest financially but at our highest in our hearts and our minds not to mention we had almost lost my mother-in-law earlier in the year. We knew we were a good business team and we both mimicked the drive I mentioned earlier so much so that we knew no matter what we would make it through. Day one him and I put our relationship first and when I felt like it was too much he would pick it up and I for him when he felt like he needed a break too. We really do make a good team. A few weeks later COVID hits. Not Arizona initially, although plenty of people were passing around a sickness in town at the end of last year. Are you keeping up? So much happened in such a short period of time but at the same time as the World was closing down our small town was still going. We closed for two weeks, in march and before the first of April my husband and I agreed to open both businesses, with a lot of reluctancy from our business partner. We used our three young ladies as the new staff in our other business knowing we had spent a year in our little shop alone being underpaid. We could afford ourselves. Things were still in the air. We didn't know what was going to happen locally and for the first time in a long time, as I’m sure many can relate, we could not predict the future. We felt like we just worked so hard to get knocked down, and like  I said before Sedona was still going at this point in some ways. There definitely wasn’t any paper products most shelves had been wiped out but after two weeks besides toilet paper and antiseptic alcohol and a major jump in price on our meat products we didn’t see a change on our side locally, in fact both of our businesses by May were making a steady $600-$1,000 a day. We relied on our community. We continued to consistently maintain a weekly clientele and we were there again, we knew anything we put ourselves into would be great, but seeing the results in your face is satisfying. We took the blessings we could and I now at this point we were making two incomes. Still my $6/hr plus tips, and my husband's $4 as well as $1,000 each each month for “managing” the other business. At this point the duties hadn’t really been defined after those two weeks in either business but we were trying to pick up the pieces at the same time as respecting all laws and trying to stay as healthy as possible. Sedona did take a hit, the hotels had either dropped to half capacity or closed completely along with a lot of the restaurants and bars that relied on that foot traffic, we had an amazing community that really came together and believed in what we were doing. I had spent the last 22 months or more, establishing relationships with MY community. In four white walls and a buffet style line with a registrar at the end. We were okay. I felt progress, and even though I was reluctant to take on another business all along and especially after we had taken on a  lot of the labor, this was steady income. I could afford a car with air conditioning, hello Carvana! That moment was so short lived because a two weeks later my business partner and I had a disagreement, both of us disagreeing about who was in charge where and how fairly the duties were distributed. This was the first time this had ever really happened as him and I didn’t spend much one on one time together. He didn’t contribute much initially and fell short on his word often. Often enough for me to try to avoid him at all costs for weeks at a time, trying to keep things professional because ultimately we lived to feed the beast, the restaurant. The three of us together felt we had so much at stake and In any partnership you disagree, but whatever disagreement we had at that moment didn’t prepare me for what came next. He “let us go”. I’m currently writing this two months later after I couldn't sit here and fester anymore. I was losing my mind trying to figure out how this could have happened and where or what I could or shouldn’t have said. I’m a warrior, I’ve felt this as a child. I’m also the oldest of three, a Mexican American, Non Spanish Speaking, Chicana, and those of you who know me, know my name know me. For those that don’t just know you’re right, this is a very brief outline of my career and isn’t even a glimpse into the situations or my full open opinion except the feeling it took me so long to shake. The realization that I was underappreciated, underpaid, and underrated, willingly.