{"id":3381,"date":"2022-06-26T05:54:10","date_gmt":"2022-06-26T05:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/?page_id=3381"},"modified":"2026-04-07T01:11:43","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T01:11:43","slug":"bottoming-out","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/true-life\/1985-1989\/bottoming-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Bottoming Out"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

By December of 1985, it was the end of my first term of Foundation at Emily Carr, and I was flat broke. I had about ten bucks left in the bank, and I started to panic.<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

Scrubbing for Dollars<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

My friend Mark encouraged me to apply as a busboy at The Pantry restaurant where he worked as a fry cook. I was about to enter a grand tradition of taking a shit job to survive<\/a> before my fame landed! I started soon after, bussing tables, washing dishes, scrubbing toilets, and peeling potatoes for about $4.15 per hour. My shifts tended to be from 5:30 till 11pm most nights, and daytime on Saturday.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

After class ended at 4:30, I’d run into the bathroom, change into my white short-sleeved shirt and brown dress slacks, and then haul-ass across town on my 10-speed bike, down the steep hill of Main Street to Marine Drive to start my evening shift at The Pantry.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Of all of my shitty duties, I think that peeling potatoes and sweeping out the walk-in fridge were the ones I hated the least. With peeling, I could sit down, and sweeping was easy and fast, inside the cool interior of the walk-in fridge. Dishwashing was a bit nerve-wracking because I never seemed to pull out bus pans from the front fast enough during rushes. Saturday lunch rushes were usually the worst for that. Generally, things were just go, go, go.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The worst duties of all were bathroom clean-up (scrubbing out the urinal) and emptying out the grease traps from under the grill. The first task was revoltingly smelly and vomit-inducing. The other task felt a little bit dangerous: a long tray sloshing full of hot oil and fat needed to be dumped into an oil drum next to the wooden porch outside the back door. Ugh!<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The positives of the Pantry restaurant job were the kids that I worked with, most of whom were high-school aged or college-aged, and mostly from East Van like me. They were good kids with good senses of humour, who mostly worked hard with minimal supervision. The biggest plus of all had to be the free hot dinner that came with my meal break. I have fond memories of my buddy Mark, or Lee, Parm, or another cook saying those magic words “What do you want for dinner dude?” Free food was simply the best thing ever.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

One night, Parm was cooking and told me that if I got my clean-up done before our 11pm closing time, he’d make me a steak dinner for my break. Parm just wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. I succeeded, and ended up relishing my T-Bone in a corner booth that was usually occupied by our assistant manager (who was away that night). Sweet!<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In order to get my clean-up done quickly enough to earn my steak, it’s conceivable that I might have cut a few corners with my sweeping, mopping, and cleaning the stainless steel in my dishwashing station. I found out soon after my “steak night” that our restaurant actually had the reputation for being the worst store in the whole Pantry restaurant chain. I laughed at that. I usually worked hard and conscientiously, even though it was a total crap job. I had to survive.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Most weeknight shifts ended with me riding about seven kilometers home on my ten-speed. I’d have to stand on the pedals all the way up Main from Marine Drive until about 63rd Avenue. It was always an effort, but the evening air was often cool and refreshing, and I could feel myself releasing tension and frustration with each crank of the pedals. I was about 20 and damned-near invulnerable anyway. By the time I took my right turn eastward onto the relative flatness of 49th Avenue, I’d feel like I was practically coasting downhill. I was independant, self-propelled, and in phenomenal shape from all my hard-cranking bike travel. I was proud and free, and earning it my own way.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I doubt that many of my Pantry colleagues were supporting themselves on their low incomes. I figured that most of them still lived at home with their parents. I had recently been given a 20 cent per hour raise and been named “Head Busboy”. Suffice it to say that such a lofty promotion did not go to my head. Even with my share of the tips, it was a joke considering how hard we worked for the paltry minimum wage of the day.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

While I diligently scrubbed food and sticky sauce from other people’s dinner plates, my mind was often a million miles away in thoughts about art school. I’d wonder about philosophy, artists, or what an instructor had told us that day in class about working as a urban designer. I just wanted to be anywhere else, so my brain untethered itself while my hands stayed busy with the necessary grunt work of paying the goddamned bills.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

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Even though I worked like a dog, I faced a very lean Christmas that year. I’d put up a tiny, silver two-foot Christmas tree that had once belonged to my Dad’s mum when she lived alone in her little flat down on Kingsway. I was able to buy little gifts for my sister and my Dad that year, but basically that was all I could manage. I was really flat broke.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The best gifts I received that year were a bursary and two “care packages”.<\/p>\r\n

Aunty Molly’s Bursary<\/h2>\r\n

My dear old Aunt Molly knew how I’d been struggling financially\u00a0 that year (she’d also been into my flat on a visit, and seen how poorly I kept house).<\/p>\r\n

My Aunt Molly was a Rebekah, the women’s branch of the Odd Fellows.<\/a> She’d been a member of the Rebekahs for most of her adult life, and had appealed to one of their organizers to get her nephew a bursary for art school. When she told me about it, I couldn’t believe it.<\/p>\r\n

I put on some good clothes and hopped a bus over to the Odd Fellows Hall. Inside on the upper floor was a large auditorium, with a wooden floor like a school gym, and a stage area at the far end. I remember a lot of wood panelling on the walls, and a slightly dusty aged smell in the air. I was introduced around, met a lovely lady, posed for the camera, and accepted a cheque for five hundred dollars. God it was life-saving money to me! Dear old Aunty Molly had really looked out for me.<\/p>\r\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\r\n

Care Packages<\/h2>\r\n

The care packages were cardboard boxes of food gifted by friends and family. One day, my old girlfriend from the PediCab job appeared on my doorstep with her sister, bringing me a box full of food. That was such a sweet and unexpected gesture!<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Right before Christmas, my Aunty Palma and Uncle Bruce (my Dad’s older brother from Prince Rupert) had a giant box of food delivered to my doorstep from the Woodwards Food Floor in downtown Vancouver! (This is the kind of gift that they’d sent our Dad a few Christmases earlier, probably because of concern for him as a single parent after my Mum went into hospital for good.)<\/p>\r\n

As a literally<\/em> starving college student, I was so glad and grateful to have friends and loving family looking out for my starving self! It really helped to soften the landing while I kept working to keep a little money in the bank.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

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This image is \u00a9 copyright\u00a0Chris Reynolds<\/a>\u00a0and licensed under Creative Commons<\/a>.<\/em><\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n<\/div>
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By December of 1985, it was the end of my first term of Foundation at Emily Carr, and I was flat broke. I had about ten bucks left in the bank, and I started to panic. Scrubbing for Dollars My friend Mark encouraged me to apply as a busboy at The Pantry restaurant where he … Continue reading Bottoming Out<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":1743,"menu_order":230,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3381","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3381"}],"version-history":[{"count":43,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5158,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3381\/revisions\/5158"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}