from minimum wage to restaurant owner 2

see I told you blogging was new to me as that last post got ended unexpectedly! Anyways- The manager (Ron Haines) turned my application over and recognized that I had Black Angus work history, he says I used to manage the Black Angus in Anaheim and did you know... from that moment I knew I was hired! $3.35 an hour minimum wage in the State of Oregon at that time. I was just happy to have a job. A job in a restaurant I had never eaten at and I knew little about fish and chips.
In 1993 Skippers was still in it's prime and we were a busy fish house! On Friday and Saturday nights the line of guests would go outside the door and around the building!
At the time we were cutting fish by hand and there was a lot of prep to be done always, for the first six months I worked either in the back doing prep or the dining room bussing and clearing tables. The restaurant was more full service than fast food, there was no drive thru, in fact there was a smoking section! that is a thing of the past. After six months had gone by I had learned a lot and worked hard - I liked the pace of working in a busy fish and chowder house. Feeling more comfortable I was finally allowed to work on the cook line! this is where the magic happens! where fry cooks go to battle furiously cooking fish and fries at break neck speeds, and the friers are full and cooking for 2 to 3 hours with no let up. The rush would hit and I would start cooking and time would just fly by, during the rush you never knew what to expect but somehow we always made it through it. Ron was a good manager and he pretty much was always able to guide the ship so to say through the rough patches. I learned to live for the lunch and dinner rush to prep for it, almost to need it like some new drug I had found - what a rush. I knew I was born to cook. I worked hard and I learned a lot from Ron and all the other employees from the early days, it was good times.