The End Of an Era

As we get older and start working we tend to bounce around from job to job and have different attitudes towards each of them. I have worked in retail, I have worked in sales and I have worked in restaurants. I have now been working in a the restaurant business for ten years of my life and it has become my comfort zone. I have a great personality and I am a good server and know how to utilize these to make great money. I joke with everyone I have worked with at the Old Firehouse Winery about how on any given night I know 10-20% of the people in the restaurant which got me to thinking. Tomorrow is my last day and it will conclude my five year tenure at the Old Firehouse where I have made lifelong friends and plenty of drinking buddies. Not to mention the fact that I got to work with people from all over the world. All of these thing are memories I will always cherish and be able to hold with me as I leave my comfort zone the last five years.

The winery has been a safe haven, my way to make good money, have a great time and have a really flexible schedule and now as my last day approaches in a short 16 hours I am stuck thinking will I ever find a place where I got along with the owners/managers and fellow staff as well as I did here? These five years at the winery have flown by and its hard to think that place has consumed 20% of my life year to date. Wow, think about that 20%, in a generation of movers and shakers how many people can say they have stayed in good graces with their employers for that long? This is not a subtle brag but more of a "Reflection" (my winery people who read this will get that joke I hope) of how the winery has shaped me these last five years. So as my tenure and reign as "zee best server in all zee world" comes to an end at OFW as we have affectionately called it these last five years I cant help but be thankful for all the memories and friendships I have made there.

A wave of emotion is hitting me writing these last couple sentences because as much as I hate the word "love" these days because of its vast overuse I cant help but say how much I have loved this place and the friends I have made here. There were so many good times that made this job worth it I can truly say I was blessed to meet you all. So as I leave my favorite job I have ever had I want what we have built these last five years to continue on here and keep the traditions we have engaged in from drinking at the foreign house, to partying at bonfires at the cottages, to all the nights we drank/created shots at High Tide, to working in the pouring rain and being absolutely miserable to everything we loved and hated about the job alive.

So to all my foreign friends, my wife, my best friends, the few people I couldnt stand you all have shaped my life in more ways than you will ever know and I thank you.

Love you all,

Eddie