When I moved to the "big city" from my college town; I knew literally no one, except my ex-husband and his best friend in the entire town. The city scared me. The first time I tried to merge into 6 lanes of traffic, I started to get so flustered, I had tears rolling down my face by the time I got to the grocery store-a full five minute drive. Soon after I moved up, my high school girlfriend, Chris moved to the suburbs so that made life less painful but she started dating a real loser so then I didn't see as much of her. My ex had a good job but I needed to find something too-I was bored, lonely and I was burnt out on school.

I got a call from an old friend named Blair that had been my manager in one of the kitchens in which I had cooked in college. He had moved up to the city to get away from his ex and start over. He said his sister and her best friend had just started a catering company and needed some help. Talk about timing! I was hired by his sister, Jayme, the next day and so began the Catering Years.

 

Jayme's partner and best friend was named Teri. For the first several months, I didn't know much about her, except that she was always pleasant and had a sweet husband and two cute children. Jayme immediatey befriended me but I soon discovered that she just did that to try to control me.That didn't go over very well.  Teri ran the office and Jayme ran the food side of the business. Once I became acclimated to all of the menus plus prepping, cooking and expediting food, Jayme seemed to do less and less. Often not coming in until 10 or 11AM and then she was hung-over so we would be lucky if she stayed until 2 or 3 in the afternoon. She spent a lot of time in the bar, two doors down in the strip mall where we were located. Of course, the more time she spent away from the store, the more all of us working with and for Jayme lost respect for her. Jayme is also bi-polar but doesn't take her meds so Blair and I often endured a person coming to work in the best mood on Monday but by Friday be screaming at the top of her lungs about something that made no sense. I definitely had a love/hate relationship with Jayme. When she was nice, she was very nice but otherwise...she was a real b*tch. We usually had a third person helping us full time in the kitchen but it always seemed to be a different-forgettable-person rotating in that position. Blair got fed up with Jayme after a few months and quit. Jayme hired a bartender named Clarence to help manage the kitchen so she could step out and work in the office. Clarence is a little black man with an awesome sense of humor, a lot of baggage and a dirty mind. He was still married at the time but would regale me with tales of his escapades with other women; to which I made no qualms about being appalled. I think he liked the innocense me and I liked his frankness and his stories entertained me so we became fast friends. We really had a lot in common, which was a bit surprising to both of us considering he came from the inner city and I came straight out of "Petticoat Junction". We both knew all about how to appreciate a good Ham and Beans with Fried Potatoes, Cornbread and Greens. We learned a lot about each others' cultures that I don't think either of us would have ever known without the other person. Clarence had a strong work ethic, strong belief in God, kept his temper even and was able to work Jayme out of the worst of her moods. We would joke that was because he was accustomed to working around drunks in the bar all the time. Clarence eventually was asked to manage the Roxy and he was offered more money than Teri and Jayme could afford to shell out to compete. He took the job so  it became a ritual for all of us to go over and see him at the end of the day.

 

The company was growing at a tremendous rate. Teri's husband-Mike started coming in on his days off to help out and ended up taking over as kitchen manager because Jayme was tied up helping Teri in the office solicit and sell to clients. Mike and I are both Cancers and worked well together from the start. We were short handed a lot then so we worked a lot of 10-12 days and got to know each other pretty well. Mike was extremely easy to talk to, easy to work with, easy to laugh with and hard to make angry. He was also very supportive of Teri. He worked hard, he supported my efforts to better the food and myself within the culinary arts. I took a class that the company paid for because he had convinced Teri and Jayme I was worth the investment. Meanwhile, Jayme hired one of the bartenders from the bar (The Roxy) who had been fired. Her name was CC and she had no experience whatsoever. She was late, came in hung-over and worked slower than molasses most days. Having said that, she was also one of the funniest people I had ever known, learned fast, made an honest attempt to do well and she stayed and worked long after 5 with Mike and me during the holidays. I got to the point where I learned every part of a catering job-from expediting, delivering, helping set-up elaborate functions, serving and bartending, to head server and then when the vans came back, sometimes well after 10 o'clock at night-clean-up.

 

In less than two years, we took over another two sections of the strip mall-tripling our work space and had one heck of a successful catering operation. Jayme, however was a thorn in everybody's side. I had gotten to the point of just barely tolerating her as had Mike but Teri still held fast to her friendship. Although she spent most of her time without Jayme griping about Jayme. Jayme had never been good at separating her work from her social life-neither were the rest of us- and we had partied with her many times. Teri went home to her kids the first year but once Mike started working with us-we all went to the bar after a long day. Over time, Teri and Jayme would argue several beers into the evening about the business. Jayme would stomp out and Teri would vent to me and Mike about how unfair Jayme was and how selfish Jayme was acting. Teri and Jayme won two airline tickets anywhere around the world from a Chamber event and Teri agonized about whether she should go with Jayme to Europe as they had planned. She finally decided to take the three weeks with Jayme and they left the business for Mike and me to run. Mike was not amused that Teri had not ever even offered to buy another ticket so he could join them. He told her he felt like she just wanted a babysitter for her business...and looking back, I think he was right. She scoffed at him said he was being silly and told him to get over it. Teri came back from Europe with a renewed friendship with Jayme but it was short-lived. The holidays arrived and Jayme did very little to help us, slipping back into her old ways. We worked 7 day weeks-often 14 hours a day.

 

 It took Teri a long time to admit the friendship was finished but when she did-she really wanted out of the business. She wanted nothing to do with Jayme then. Problem was...they were each exactly 50% partners and neither of them were interested in selling because it had become such a viable-nevermind lucrative- business. Neither of them thought the other person had done as much to grow the business. The worse they argued, the more Teri would talk to me about it. Soon, it was if Teri and I had always been best friends and by then I had divorced the ex and met Hubby. Hubby fit in with the three of us (like peas and carrots)and "The Group" was formed. Clarence remained a close friend and when his wife finally said she had enough (I can't say I would ever blame her.)and divorced him-he became the official 5th member.

 

More later~

Sophia