Just Say Maybe

My first waitressing job at 16 was my dream job, a summer position in a café at a resort hotel in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Overriding his anxiety about the entire venture, my father helped me arrange private lodging for the summer in a rooming house not far down the boardwalk in exchange for my promising to call him weekly with a status report. My plans were simple: to swim and write poetry on the beach when I wasn’t working. I hoped to become the tannest, friendliest, most competent waitress ever hired by the hotel. 

On my first day, a serious-looking man in immaculate tennis whites ordered a whole wheat on rye. I wrote the item neatly on my order pad, so nervous and  eager to please that it never occurred to me I was being made fun of, and handed  it to Gus, the short-order cook. Gus, a stout, sour fellow in a dirty apron, read it out loud and poked his head and shoulders through the order window, barking at  me like a wounded sea lion within earshot of all the other wait staff. On day two, I retrieved an older woman’s empty coffee cup from her table, and an open but  unused creamer fell from the saucer, spilling cold liquid down her bare leg. She screamed, tipped over her chair, and complained about me to the café manager.

I stuck it out. The manager hated me, Gus thought I was an idiot, and my fellow waitresses, most of whom had previously worked in the same café, barely tolerated me. I attempted to compensate for my many deficiencies by arriving early, staying late, and doing all the tasks which everyone else detested: mopping the wrapper-strewn floor after closing or hauling ice from the outside walk-in freezer. By the first week of August, golden-skinned but physically exhausted, I was admitted to the emergency room of the local hospital with a severe case of mononucleosis. An attentive nurse helped me dial the café from a bedside phone so I could ask for time off.

“I don’t believe you,” said my manager. “Get your butt back here by tomorrow or you’re fired.”

“Okay,” I said. She couldn’t see the tears sliding down my cheeks onto the hospital gown. “I quit.”

I had just taken the first faltering step on what would turn out to be an exhilarating career path, perfecting the art of quitting. The next summer I threw in the towel on a position as a mother’s helper at the New Jersey shore, caring for two belligerent twins, and that fall I resigned my post as telemarketer for a magazine sales company shortly after the extensive training was completed. In the space of a single year, I managed to jump ship on a fi eld engineering firm, the retail lighting fi xture department of a large store at the mall, and an ice cream shop in which I was required to wear a uniform I despised, a gray dress with a white collar which made me look exactly like a young prison matron.

Quitting got faster and easier with practice. I adopted what I believed was a
compassionate, almost regretful tone, to cover the exhilaration I felt at escaping
the confines of yet another stint in the salt mines. “So long, old buddy, see you downtown,” I told the alcoholic bar manager in Rhode Island who wanted me to
work Christmas Day. “Au revoir, Madame,” I told the stylish French deli owner
who insisted I run all her errands after my shift on the fl oor was over. “I think you
should put real half and half in the carafes, not skimmed milk,” I told the smarmy
omelet-room director. “People hate dishonesty. Oh, and I quit.”

At a certain age and skill level, I knew myself to be entirely dispensable. Ending
a job was a quick ticket to transformation, a brave, creative way of upholding
my values, whatever they turned out to be. I learned what I did not want to do
again, and with whom I did not want to do it. Quitting was a skill, as breathtaking
as parachuting out of a plane. In the course of one day, I could fling myself from a small, cramped cabin in which I was bored or poorly paid, to the vast possibilities of open sky, an unimagined self. Never knowing what job might strike my fancy or how long I’d last before I inevitably threw in the towel made life exciting. Would I sail out the door in a week? A month? Work of all kinds fascinated me, but leave-taking was infinitely more interesting.

I developed grace and diplomacy when exiting more responsible positions, the sort of jobs which required a couple of weeks’ notice or careful training of successors. I regarded my jobs like lovers who’d been important once, deserving kind treatment even as I edged toward the door. I couldn’t be so cruel as to tell a boss the whole truth, that the duties had begun to bore me, that I hated the false gaiety of Friday employee lunches, that I could never be happy in a law office. No, really, it isn’t you, I said. It’s me. You should start seeing other people. Officially, I planned to further my education, attend to my aging parents, take care of a friend. Parting was thus bittersweet—once or twice at a goodbye party, viewing a chocolate cake with my name etched in white icing, or tearing the gift wrap from an autographed album of photos of my smiling colleagues, I came dangerously close to changing my mind. But departing requires discipline, and I employed the rigorous single-mindedness I’d developed over the years. Sentiment mustn’t delay me at the gate.

Like all good things, my career as a quitter eventually came to an end. I’m still ashamed at the way I abandoned my principles. I remember the interview as if it were yesterday—a handful of clever, sneaky hospice people sitting around a conference table, smiling at me.

“Frankly,” one of them said, “we don’t even care to see your resume. This job is yours. We won’t take no for an answer.”

“No way,” I told them. “I’ll fi ll in while you look for your real person. I couldn’t possibly work here permanently.” They rolled their eyes and gave me the front door passkey. And so it came to pass that I signed on accidentally for a job I couldn’t seem to leave. Each January, I told myself I’d be taking off any minute, but it was clear I’d lost the knack. I loved the patients and their families and the nurses and all the rest. I didn’t even mind my duties, which should’ve been a red flag right away.

Two years in, the supervisor of Human Resources urged me to take at least a few days of the vacation time I’d accrued and to fill out forms for retirement benefits. I looked at her as if she were out of her mind. “I don’t need all that,” I said, laughing at the idea of being a regular employee.

“Well, just in case it works into something long-term,” she said.

“Not much chance of that,” I told her successor, a few years down the line. Still, you never know. I might end up liking it.

Stacy Appel is a writer in California whose work has been featured­ in The Chicago Tribune and other publications. She has also written for National Public Radio. Email Stacy at WordWork101@aol.com­.

~Stacy Appel