🔒From the Editor: Nothing like those early jobs to learn lessons about the workplace — and life

This issue has a feature by Tina Fischer that looks at first jobs and the lessons learned. First jobs leave indelible memories, good and bad. One of my favorite anecdotes from Tina’s story is from the former barista, who now leads a trade association in Maine. Years after serving her last cup a coffee, she ran into a former café customer at the summit of Mount Washington. She couldn’t remember the customer’s name, but she remembered their usual order: a double cappuccino with extra foam. While the theme of this issue includes workforce development — a worthy field — that kind of training didn’t exist when I was young. We learned about the workplace by bumbling along. One of my most lasting lessons was from a summer job at the Lobster Inn, a high-volume tourist restaurant in the Hamptons. It was on the Sunrise Highway, and on Friday and Saturday nights it felt like all of New York crammed into its booths. I started at the bottom, as a dishwasher. It was humbling, smelly and greasy. There was melted butter on everything. One night, as the bus tubs piled up in my cramped workspace, the industrial dishwasher hissed and spat out a last gasp of steam. It was broken. I was elated — I can go home, I thought. Minutes after I reported the breakdown to the manager, I saw the cheerful owner, Roger Tollefson, burst into the dish room. Normally, he worked the front of the house, greeting and entertaining customers, often by taking the largest lobster on a circuit around the dining room. This time, he was holding a toolbox, and he headed straight under the dishwasher, kneeling in what seemed to be an inch of restaurant grease. He started banging around in there and I gamely offered to help. In less than five minutes, he had the dishwasher back up and running, and it was spewing out steam like a champ. Moral of the story is, whether you’re the boss, the owner, the manager: there’s no job beneath you and a good leader needs to know how everything works. Another lesson is: It’s not all glamorous, and there are a lot of dirty jobs in everyday businesses.