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As you may know, I used to work as a waiter. For seventeen years, I served tables in a steakhouse on the ground floor of Two Union Square, one of Seattle’s tallest office buildings. Five evenings a week, I’d park my car on the street behind Town Hall. It was a venerable landmark that–over time–transformed into a cultural center for lectures, music, and touring authors.
Sometimes, I’d pause on my way to work to see who was listed that evening (specifically, for a writer I recognized). I’d try to picture my own name on the board that stood outside the columned front steps. This dream seemed attainable yet impossibly distant: the way I thought about parenting before my first child was born. I never stayed too long in front of Town Hall, though. I didn’t need a constant reminder of the distance between where I was and where I wanted to be.
When I reached Two Union Square, I’d walk through the wide foyer with its security guard behind the front desk and floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto downtown. I always arrived to work, as the first wave of business people left for the day. Men and women in business suits of varying hues emerged from elevators that carried passengers to and from law firms, investment brokerages, consulting firms, and businesses with names like Becker & Sons or AJ Kline & Company.
It all seemed like serious business, whatever was happening up there, where the elevators took you. These formally attired men and women–briefcases and cell phones in hand–seemed to have entered a game meant, explicitly, for adults. This was what I thought adulthood looked like. It was about suits, hurrying home, and trying to beat rush hour, while–all the while–carrying work home with you. Once real adulthood began, it didn’t stop until you retired.
Then, I’d head to the restaurant on the downward escalator. I wanted nothing to do with that world, rising above me, with its obsession with money, its formality, its pressure. Except, I was an adult–one with a wife, two children, and a mortgage, no less. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that, somehow, their world was more real than mine, more important. I felt as if I was on the periphery of real life, serving grown-ups, while suspended in a perpetual “first job out of college.”
Once the shift started, there was no time to think about any of that. It was a busy restaurant that demanded you keep your head down and attention on the work ahead of you. There was usually time to bullshit with the other servers and cooks. Mostly, however, you just had to work and stay focused; you couldn’t afford not to. If it was really busy my shift would be over before I could remember to check the time on the clock. Heading home with a pocket full of cash and a body full of adrenaline, I would need at least an hour on the couch in front of the television to release the craziness of the day.
Before that, however, I’d make my way back through the office tower. It was silent, then, except for the cleaning staff and the same, lone security guard behind the desk, keeping watch over nothing. I never enjoyed the emptiness of the building at that hour. To me, it hinted at the meaningless of all work. That, maybe, it was just something to distract us until our time was up. I’d hurry out to the street, sort of feeling like I was whistling past a graveyard. I would feel happy, though, once I stepped out into the evening. The city was alive but resting.
Sometimes, I’d pause, again, outside Town Hall on my way to my car. I didn’t want to hate that place just because its doors felt closed to me. I didn’t want to resent the business people, either (though it was so easy to do so). It’s strange, really, that you can resent someone, whose life you would never want for yourself, or that you could envy an author whose books you would never want to write. You have no choice but to come and go as yourself– a companion so constant and familiar that you might not recognize it until you try to believe it isn’t real.
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