My decision to quit my first job was the best one of my twenties.
It took chutzpah, and let’s be honest, it took balls. Metaphorically speaking, obviously. But my decision to quit my first job on Madison Avenue to become a talk show host, AKA a waiter, was the best decision in my twenties.
I landed the job at Universal McCann, the media agency of the much more well-known and often mentioned on Mad Men, McCann Erickson, a few weeks after I moved to NYC. It had only been a month since graduating from Arizona State University, but I had spent the previous summer in the city for an internship with Blender Magazine. I found out three things after that incredible three months.
- I did not want to work in print
- You absolutely need air conditioning to survive the summer’s heat and humidity.
- I fell in love with the city. Every fiber of grit, grime and glamour. I wanted it all.
Even though I moved to Manhattan without a job or an apartment, I knew it was the place where I just had to be. The idea of doing this now as I enter my last year of my thirties sounds fucking crazy! Where did I get that amount of obscene and unwavering confidence? I literally had three suitcases and a week-long reservation at the Milford Plaza, right near Madison Square Garden. It wasn’t until a couple of years in the city that I learned that most called it the Mildew Plaza.
After two weeks, one spent on the couch of a friend of a friend’s in Hoboken, I found an amazing apartment and my job. I was a junior media buyer, making a whopping $30,000 in 2004 and dishing out $1100 in rent for one room in a three-bedroom, one-bathroom on 31st and Lexington. It doesn’t take a finance major to realize that that income to housing ratio was over 50%. Fortunately for me, I was a broadcast journalism major from the before mentioned ASU. I didn’t care, I was working in advertising in New York City!
The corporate dance came naturally to me. My mom was a very successful executive with Sysco Corporation. I felt like I had the playbook to getting noticed and ahead in the international media company. I vividly remember the look on my colleagues faces when they saw me going out to a wine-filled lunch with the two top executives. They were dumbfounded, their sporks of ramen froze halfway to their mouths from the break room.
Despite a couple of promotions within the first 18 months, I knew something was missing. It was actually a terrible first date’s seemingly simple question that rocked my world. She said, in a thick Long Island accent, “Are you good at what you do because you love it, or do you love it because you’re good at it?” I almost fell off my bar stool. My mind was blown and so was all of my cash! Did this girl have a hollow leg?
I thought taking an improv class would be enough to temper this overwhelming need to be creative. It did. For about a week. I began looking forward to next week’s class the moment our last exercise or scene was over. I felt like I was missing out on this secret world that filled the city every night. My days and nights were being consumed by work. This was in large part due to the invention of the BlackBerry! Not to be confused with PinkBerry. That hit the city a few years later.
I wish I could recall the minute or even location I was in when I decided it was time to hurl myself off the corporate ladder that I had so quickly climbed. But I don’t. I do remember receiving my parents’ blessing. I told my closest friends, but that was about it. I think that I probably would have done a big Facebook status update, but I wasn’t even aware of Facebook yet.
There was a restaurant every ten feet, so I was confident that I would be able to land a job quickly. I had waited tables all through college, plus I loved interviewing. Sick, I know. After a few trips around the city, interviewing and secretly laughing at all the schmucks caught in the rat race of a 9 to 7 job, I became a server at Blue Water Grill in Union Square.
Overnight my life completely changed. I went from my office on the 23rd floor, working on clients like General Motors and Jack Daniels to studying the ingredients in spring rolls and getting to work at 4 PM! I couldn’t believe that I was still in the same city. My address hadn’t changed, but just about every other element of my life did.
I was a sponge for these new waters. It was a lot like being the new kid in high school. There were cliches and gossip about who’d slept with who and who hadn’t slept yet. The staff was full of beautiful people from all over the country. This actually made it a lot like college. There were actors, musicians, grad students, all mixed together in a high pressure, high volume, cash-filled clash of individuals.
Although the ladder of success wasn’t quite as clearly defined as it had been in my prior life, I still managed to make my way upward. The restaurant was part of a rapidly growing hospitality group that was considerably more corporate than the free-spirit, artsy types were used to maneuvering. That was a huge advantage for me. For as much fun as I was having in my new life, it was a means to an end.
While the majority of my new coworkers were actors, I had no desire to be paid to play someone else. I wanted to be a host. I wanted to be paid to be me! I quickly found TV hosting classes. I got professional headshots. I would scour through the trade sites and even Craigslist every day, searching for anything that even closely resembled a TV hosting gig.
The nights were late but the money and lifestyle were phenomenal. I would typically work four nights a week and the dreaded Sunday brunch. It was usually close to 35 hours a week. Far less than my old gig and in my first full year slinging sea bass I made almost $70,000. I met amazing people that are still some of my closest friends today.
A few months after making the drastic life change, I booked my first gig! It was for an online news show that was being produced by ABC. I thought, well this isn’t so hard! The pilot was shot at ABC on a Saturday, which meant I had to work at the restaurant. I didn’t care though, I could have floated to Union Square I was on such a high! The pilot would obviously land me an agent and that would mean stardom was in the very near future.
That was the best and highest-paid job I would ever book.
I did some background and extra work over the next few years. I was even on an episode of Cash Cab. I became extremely well-respected at Blue Water Grill among fellow servers and even the chefs, who were absolute tyrants that had brought at least half the staff to tears.
Although I did not become the next Jon Stewart or Carson Daily, I did start my own production company. The venture, A Cocktail Napkin Production, was the brainchild of myself and a fellow server. We had absolutely no idea what we were doing. But that same obscene and unwavering confidence was back again. The two of us would work nights at the restaurant and then meet up around 10 in the morning and work until it was time to go to work.
Flash forward roughly a decade and I have ALS. But I also have my own nonprofit organization, A Life Story Foundation, that I started in 2012. The skills that I learned in my second act of New York City living come up every single day. The tenacious attitude and humbling nature of those four years were like an MBA program. Not only did I learn how to work well with creative people, I learned how to become one.
I was able to jam two lives into a seven-year span that had all the makings of a well-rounded human. There were the neon lights of love, loss, sex, drugs and a lot of work. But perhaps more importantly, there were lessons of success, failure, empathy, and creativity. I will forever be grateful for my time in the city. I would not be me without that time, those people, and that place.