Family and Sacrifice

Enter - the crowded service bar after a long 4 day weekend at Le Passage. It's Monday morning at 4:15 am...the shift ended 15 minutes ago and started at 9:30pm Sunday (even earlier if you came in to decorate for the Memorial Day celebration.) Long story short, it was a crazy week for us and now we were done...having a cocktail together and sharing the war stories of our week. Laughter fills the room of people and a high-five is delivered between co-workers. Then another, and another. Someone turns to one of the new security guys with their hand up and extended in the high-five position and he looks at the person like she's stupid. "I don't do high-fives" he says. Immediately the room grows uncomfortable and quite. (Kind of funny to witness 1st hand...you would have thought a racial slur came out of his mouth or something!) Out of respect for the fired, I'll call him "new guy". He couldn't get over himself or his little smug attitude enough to give a stupid high-five! Yep...that's right...I fired someone for not giving out high-fives. "Joel you are such a jerk!! Why would you do that??". I'll explain.
At Le Passage, we have cultivated a family. A lot of blood, sweat and tears goes into maintaining a family, both a true blood family and one that is built with people you respect and love...on where work ethic is strong and focused TOGETHER on the shift.
Back to the new guy...
I'm very receptive to people and their pasts. I understand feeling like you are on an island by yourself because their is so much camaraderie that it makes you feel weird or out of place. I also know that you have to keep your eyes open to your environment and how TO or NOT TO be part of it. I mean, hell, if I hadn't made a conscious effort to leave my neighborhood and the shadyness that I could have gotten myself wrapped up in, I'd be dead or in jail right now...true story. It's my opinion that it is AS important to know what to gravitate TOWARD as it is to know what to separate yourself from. Make sense? Turning your back on evil is only half of it...you have to know when to walk towards the good.
Aside from the non-high-fiver that he was, over the 3 days that he worked here he never decided to be part of the team. Do I think that is his fault? No. I just made the decision that in the mean time while he's out there on an island, shit can go down. I run a nightclub. If I don't know 100% that each of my guys can and will do everything in their power to keep our guests and staff safe then I can no longer work with that person. If you "don't do high-fives" then what else don't you do because you take yourself so seriously? We aren't security...we are hosts. We don't elevate the problem...we pro actively prevent them. We tell people thank you for coming because we appreciate that without them, we would be nothing. At the end of the story, I think "new guy" will put that hand up and probably over zealously smack the next high-five hand he sees.

As far as the sacrifice for family goes, sometimes you have to step outside of the situation and observe it for more than it is on that given day or week or month or year. To date, the biggest sacrifice that I have made becoming the General Manager of Le Passage has been the time that I have sacrificed with my little girl.
NO EXAGGERATION - for the 1st 18 months of her life, I had Hannah 6 days a week in the morning and worked 6 days a week at night. My schedule was literally nutz! During the 1st stage of being a daddy, I was bartending /managing a bar in wicker park. I would get out at 2 or 3 and have Hannah at 6:30am every morning. I got to sleep on Tuesday mornings because Hannah's Mommy (Melissa) worked at night on Tuesdays. I had my little angel a lot of the time then. That was very important to me. I was there for her 1st words, her first steps, 1st diaper BLOW OUTS, her 1st roll over, sit up...you name it...I was there. We couldn't afford daycare at the time but even if we could, I would have rathered sleep for 3 hours a night and catch a nap in between Daddy duty and work in order to be there.

I didn't expect to be the GM of LP...I was walking down the street 3 months after I had quit my job because of my principles (a story that I will happily share with my daughter one day). My phone rings and it is the assistant General Manager of LP at the time asking me if I can work in 2 hours. I had walked about a mile and a half south of my house for 2 reasons. 1) walking is free...I was so broke that I was beginning to wonder if my morals had gotten in the way of me providing for my little girl...I was sad. And 2) I had nothing better to do on a Saturday night.When I get the call, I realized that I didn't have enough $ to catch a cab back to my house so I ran home. Showered, shaved, grabbed my bar bag and caught the bus to work. I got there at 9:02pm. Officially the 1st and only time I have ever been late for my 1st day on the job. Long story short, the next week I had another shift, 2 weeks later I had 2 shifts, 3 weeks later I got the busy bar, a month after that they asked me to be the head bartender and about 3 months after that they asked me to be the GM. It's funny how fate works...my first exposure to a nightclub was Le Passage and it was also my first nightclub bartending job. Le Passage is also where I met the mother of my child. Who knew that 5 years later, I'd be back as the GM? As good as I feel about that story, I knew that accepting my current job would be a huge sacrifice of my time. Sounds crazy, right? We're open 3 nights a week but I work damn near every day...a lot goes into creating, maintaining and executing a great party every week people. It's taken a lot to get people to believe in me as their leader but even more so as their equal. I tell people all the time that we work together...no one works FOR me...only WITH me. I believe that what I am doing, even though I now only have 2 MAYBE 3 days with my daughter, is the right thing. Looking to her future I see school, clothes, toys, shotguns (for me and her crazy uncles), cars, college, a wedding and grand children. It's a well-known fact that full-time tip-based employees (bartenders, servers, etc) make more money than most industry manager! If you divide the amount of hours a week that we work, there is NO ONE that gets paid as low as the managers! Lol! But that's ooooooooookay...I feel like this was the best move for me to grow into a better business man and provider for Hannah. I know that I made the right decision. I am growing. The business is growing by the week. The buzz is growing. All I want is for people to know that I was associated with it...there's plenty of credit to be distributed amongst my team...my family.

I really didn't know that this blog was going to go like this...I can't help it, nor do I want to. My mommy always tells me that if you share what God has blessed you with and it reaches ONE person then you have done well. Hey...I'm a competitor!! I want to reach at least 2 peeps! Lol! Bye!

Sacrifice is good IF it's for a reason...sacrifice is GREAT if it's for family. - Joel D. Barnes