I'm finishing up Catch-22 right now. For those of you who haven't read it, it takes place during WWII, and it involves an entire squadron of pilots in the US military that are all stationed in Italy. Yossarian, who is the only normal person in the book, is portrayed as the most insane person in the book. The Catch-22 is that a pilot has to be crazy to want to fly a mission, and that a sane person would never want to fly one. The only way out of flying a mission is to be diagnosed insane, but the insane people are the ones who want to fly and therefore won't seek treatment for being insane because they don't know they're insane. Got it?
It occurred to me tonight that this Catch-22 is applicable to the restaurant industry. Clearly, restaurants don't want crazy people acting as the face of the restaurant and waiting tables, but you'd have to be crazy to do it. Those of us who accidentally fell into a job at a restaurant want out, but also know we're the reliable ones they need there because everyone else is crazy.
Two days ago, a nice man with a light Mexican accent came in and asked for an application. He was very friendly, and after he had filled it out, he asked me for the store's phone number so that he might call back to check on the status of his application. Today, as I was driving to work, I saw this man walking with his backpack down the busy street on which my restaurant is located, and I just knew that he had come from checking on his application. "He must be crazy to want to work here," I thought to myself, only later realizing that he was probably desperate for a job if he was walking around on a cold day instead of using a car. Anyway, it got me thinking about what his story might be. What led this unfortunate man to covet a job at my restaurant so much? For the purposes of my story, I will name this man Yossarian, not because he reminds of the character, but because Catch-22 is the only thing I can think about right now.
Yossarian grew up on a small farm outside of Navajoa, Mexico. His family owned the farm, and they worked very hard to maintain it. Yossarian's father was a proud man, but mostly a good one. Having grown up himself on the family farm, he had a very sentimental attachment to the land and would stop at nothing to keep it thriving as well as in the family.
What Yossarian did not know, but would soon find out at the tender age of eight, was that his father had made some risky investments in the fifties to protect the farm during the droughts that had hit the Yaqui Valley (where their farm was located). In the sixties, his father had not told his family (and especially not his sons) about the investments, because the people from whom he had borrowed money were shifty characters who had been arrested and sent to prison. This is why, in 1968, it was such a surprise to Yossarian's father (and his family) that these men showed up wanting the money they had lent with interest so many years ago.
At that time, immigration to the United States from Mexico was not nearly as common as it is today, but Yossarian's father still knew a couple of families who had made the jump up and east to Texas. It was with his family's welfare in mind that Yossarian's father packed up as many of their belongings as possible and convinced his wife and children to leave with him that night. He knew that the angry, money-hungry men that he had wronged would be back soon, and that he would be lucky if all they did was burn his crops. It was better to be safe.
Once in the United States, Yossarian and his brothers were enrolled in a public school in El Paso. It had been a long and difficult journey, one that was not made easier by the fact that none of them spoke any English. Yossarian was almost nine years old, and adapted quickly. His older brothers were fifteen and twelve, and had a much more difficult time with their sudden insertion into American culture. Yossarian's mother worked nights in a large factory, running some of the machines. Yossarian's father had found work in construction; he knew manual labor well. With the two of their incomes combined, the family had just enough money to get by. Eventually, the family became comfortable in Texas, and things went smoothly for a time.
When 1979 rolled around, it was time for Yossarian to graduate from high school and find a job of his own (he was 19, having been held back to repeat a grade his first year in the U.S.). Yossarian's family could not afford to send him to school; they only had enough to get by, and there had been a few close calls the years his mother had been sick with all of those stomach flus and colds. Yossarian knew that it would soon be up to him to earn an income for the family. His two older brothers had married and moved out of the family's small apartment, and Yossarian's parents would soon be too old to work their jobs.
Yossarian found a well-paying job in a meat-packing plant; the smell was terrible, but his starting pay was more than his father earned after ten years at his job. At the meat-packing plant, Yossarian had the opportunity to work with other Mexican immigrants and hear their stories. He quickly realized how lucky he had been to have his entire family survive the trip to Texas, and to have had a roof over his head so that he could do well enough in school to graduate. It was at this plant, during one of his day shifts, that Yossarian saw Angela for the first time. To most people, she would seem average, or even plain. But to Yossarian, her kind eyes and vibrant smile could not be rivaled. He felt a warmth emanating from her that he had never experienced before. The two quickly fell in love, and married two years later, both of them 22.
Ten more years went by, and Yossarian and Angela were still working at the same plant. They had two children, Miguel and Anita, who stayed home with Yossarian's mother during their shifts. Yossarian's mother's illnesses had become more frequent, and she was now too weak to work the long shifts expected of her at the factory. In 1991, Yossarian's mother died of cancer. The family, although devastated by the loss, was able to survive the death of their matriarch financially. Yossarian worked over time to pay for the cost of the funeral. A year later, things seemed to have returned to normal, although Yossarian knew life would never be the same without his mother.
Yossarian invited his father to move in with his family after his mother's death, and with three incomes the family was doing okay. It was not long, however, before Yossarian's father simply became too old to perform the tasks asked of him at his construction job. He eventually had no choice but to retire, and this would take a financial toll on the family. Still, the family managed to get by until 2000, when Angela became pregnant again. She and Yossarian were shocked; they were 40 years old! Angela, who had delivered her first two children naturally at home for lack of a better option, knew that this would be a difficult pregnancy from the beginning. Her morning sickness was more intense, and her level of energy dropped significantly. She was worried about the medical expenses, as she and Yossarian had barely any health coverage. One night during her second trimester, Angela woke to excruciating pains in her abdomen; she knew that something was wrong. Yossarian raced her to the hospital, where the doctors placed her on strict bed rest for the duration of the pregnancy. To make up for the lost income, Yossarian began working as much overtime as he was allowed at the meat-packing plant, pulling more that 70 hours some weeks. When a nasty stomach virus was going around and everybody else was at home, Yossarian was working at the plant and vomiting into a bucket he kept nearby (he'd had to hide it from his supervisors so he wouldn't be sent home).
Eventually, the medical expenses and the overtime became too much for Yossarian. His kids were both in the last few years of their public educations, and he hated to move them away at this point in time. Angela would be back on her feet soon, and they could work together to pay off their debt to the hospital. The family managed to keep their heads above the water for the next few years, when one day they received a terrible phone call. Yossarian's father had been in an accident while visiting some of his old construction friends at a new site. Since he had not been an employee, he had not been wearing the proper gear for the height of the project his friends were working on. He'd lost his balance and fallen fifty feet; he'd died on impact. The company was certainly not going to pay for the funeral, and many questions were raised as to why he had been allowed on site at all. Yossarian and Angela were once again faced with funeral costs.
Having met one of his co-worker's cousins from another Midwestern state, Yossarian had heard about a new job opportunity at a waste management center. The center had recently opened and was still short-staffed. If they took action now, the friend's cousin had said, he and Angela would both be able to get higher-paying jobs. Yossarian and Angela took a chance and moved out of state with their youngest child (Miguel and Anita had both earned scholarships to a state university and were currently living on campus). Having spent everything they had to make the move, there was no chance for Yossarian and Angela to change their minds once they reached their new home and found that there were no longer any jobs left at the waste management center. The couple sold their only car, and Angela was able to find a job cleaning houses that were near the city's bus route. The pay was terrible; Yossarian had to find some sort of job! He began walking the streets during the day, looking for a place--any place--that would give him work. The recession was taking its toll on this city, however, and it was increasingly difficult to find anything. One day, Yossarian went to bed feeling desperate and hopeless. He was tired of always having to struggle! It was so unfair that God had given him nothing but death and poverty in return for his hard work. That night, while Yossarian lay wallowing in self-pity, Angela and their youngest child, Yolanda, walked into the room with some hot cocoa for Yossarian. Yolanda handed Yossarian a picture she had drawn of her family at school that day. In the picture, everybody was smiling. They were standing in a field with large, colorful flowers and a rainbow in the background. Angela smiled at Yossarian, and he realized that he could not give up hope. He had so much to be thankful for already, and so many reasons to keep doing everything he could for his family.
The next day, Yossarian wandered into a restaurant and asked for an application. Even though he had a feeling that he would not be hired at the restaurant, he gave the girl he'd talked to a warm "thank you" and left the place with an optimistic smile. He would try again in a few days, and even if things didn't work out, he had a feeling they would work out just fine.
