My first day on the job was one rude interaction away from not happening at all.
I had just moved to Austin and although I had secured part-time remote employment, I needed something to help pay the rest of the bills. A friend of a friend recommended applying to this bar, Fado Irish Pub. She had just been fired and it was right before Paddy’s Day so she was *sure* they needed help.
“Don’t put my name on your application, though. Put Jen. I’ll introduce you so it won’t be a lie. But you should know that management never talks to each other. So, I would just call back on Monday and ask for Keith, then tell him that Dave told you to start next week.”
This worked. It actually worked. My first day of work was March 17th, 2007. St. Patrick’s Day. I was put on Door Security since they had no time to train me on serving before the big day. I was told to be there at 5:00am to get ready for the doors to open at 5:30. I didn’t know anyone that worked there and since vendors were coming in and out, it was hard to tell employees from the guy dropping off the beer. Not knowing who to report to, a liquor rep offered to take me to the office downstairs to meet the manager. I walked into a basement full of beer, liquor, and plastic cups to find a short man wearing kitchen clothes sitting at a desk.
“Hi! I’m new. It’s my first day.”
He slowly took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes and said, “So?”
That’s it, I thought. Done. I’m done with this job. I didn’t wake up at 4:30am and offer to work 12 hours on the greatest drinking holiday of the year to be treated this way. I don’t need this.
But I did need this and that’s the only thing that helped me bite my tongue and wait for further instruction. Had I walked out, my life would have never been the same.
It was supposed to be a short-term gig. Just something to bring in extra cash while I found a stable job in production and could start working a “real” job. I didn’t even want to make friends with the people there. I just wanted to keep my head down, make some money, and get out of there. It turned into everything but.
It’s hard to say why working at this bar was different from any other. Had I gotten a job down the street, maybe I would have made friends. It’s possible one of them could have become close enough to stand up at my wedding. I may have met girls that would become my tribe. It’s hard to say if another bar would have hosted my wedding after-party or our going away party. But that place was Fado.
Fado was the place in my 20’s that I knew I could go to and run into people that I wanted to see, even years after my last shift. The regulars were beyond loyal. They would celebrate all life events there, from weddings to wakes. They rallied together and raised money when one of our servers became deathly ill and was in the hospital. Mysterious Ways, our resident U2 tribute band, played for free at a fundraiser to help with hospital bills. When another server, Jenni, got sick with cancer and ultimately went to the hospital, everyone helped put together a care package for her. She died days later and her memorial and charity fundraiser were both held at Fado.
They came in on Christmas Eve with their families to sit in the cottage by the fire and tip generously. They stayed after our shifts were over to have a pint and listen to our stories of bad patrons and long days. They helped us network to get jobs when it was time to move on.
The staff was always a ragtag group of train wrecks, myself included. I’ve never known more people who had DUI’s that all worked at the same place. We actually had a lawyer come in to speak to the staff so we could be prepared in the event that we got pulled over after drinking. We were all terrible with money. We would start off shifts with goals in mind. I need to make $100 today so I can cover rent on Monday. Would making only $60 mean that we were just $40 away from our goal? Hell no! It meant that we had $60 to drink with tonight and we’ll try again tomorrow to make $100. They should have scheduled a financial advisor to come in instead of the lawyer.
We’d work long, hard hours. New Year’s Eve. Early morning soccer and rugby matches. Gaelic Football. CRICKET! I could write an entire episode about working at 3:00am to 4pm for a completely packed bar of Indian Cricket fans who crammed into the pub to watch the world series. Our manager had a hunch it’d be profitable and his bet paid off but I’ve never been more physically exhausted in my life, other than the 21 hour St. Paddy’s day shift the previous year. Now that I’m a working stiff, I sometimes miss how much better beer tasted right after a long shift. It was so cold and felt so deserved.
The patio still might be one of my favorite places in Austin, despite how hot it would get in the summer and how many cockroaches it would attract. There was just something about sitting on the back patio and letting one beer turn into five while the sunset on the city. People would just keep showing up. Every time we’d be about to leave, someone else would be finishing their shift or another regular would offer to buy the next drink. The place just had the ability to suck you in. Even in the years after none of us worked there anymore and we’d venture off to new bars and restaurants, I don’t think we ever found a place as comfortable as the back patio at Fado.
Now, after 20 years, Fado is closing its doors. The downtown lease finally got the best of them, as it has with nearly everyone in the neighborhood. They plan on opening in a new location at a later time, but I think we all agree that things will never be the same. I’m sure they’ll survive as a pub no matter where they end up. I bet even some of the cynics that have been a loyalist to the downtown location will even check out the new place, but never without comparing it to the Good Old Days.
Ah, the Good Old Days. This elusive period of time that we’re never really in. Even when I first started working at Fado, employees were always talking about how good it used to be. How much better the money was or the food or the management. Then we all quit overtime and come back to tell the new servers what they missed.
Last weekend, I flew back to Austin for a baby shower. It was Kathleen’s baby shower. I shadowed her on the floor my first week as a server and she became one of my closest friends. As we all got older and settled and had kids, long drinking days at Fado became annual events rather than weekly occurrences, but we all decided to go back one last time. We sat on the patio, ran into old regulars and coworkers. We waxed nostalgic about drinking stories, bad shifts, awful co-workers, and late nights. A few of my friends cried. It truly is the end of the era, not just for the pub but for me personally.
See, this month marks one year since I have left Austin and moved to Columbus. It’s been a tough year. I realize how much harder it is to find your tribe in your 30’s than it is in your 20’s. It’s been a tough year that makes looking back on the Good Old Days of Austin a masochistic exercise. There is something completely symbolic about Fado closing its doors. It has unexpectedly allowed me to reflect on everything that Austin gave me and be grateful for it and then gracefully move on. I finally feel ready to move on.
So, cheers, Fado. Thank you for giving me a job that supported me through my twenties. Thank you for introducing me to my best friends. Thank you for being there when my husband was deployed and becoming a second family. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to train employees, which is something I do as a profession now and love. Thank you for being a place to go to when nowhere else sounded good. Thank you for shift pints, late nights, FIP’s, “phone calls”, boat parties, Christmas parties, wedding after parties, and going away parties. And to everyone who was a part of it, Thank You.
DailyDebs 