Apr 02, 2022
9 mins read
I don't have time (or the will) to continue writing this tonight, and I don't know if I'll come back to it anytime soon.
The only important point I think I should still touch on, for you, my supporter, is the fact that I personally don't feel okay with how these types of situations must be handled.
I don't have trouble understanding the necessity, as businesses aren't about to become homeless shelters, not if they're going to stay open for their actual purposes.
I have other thoughts on that, but this isn't the time.
But I personally struggle with even imagining myself telling the poor guy to leave.
It's winter right now, it sucks out there, and he needed all KINDS of help.
It's not written below yet, but the story basically ended as the man got chased away from the building.
A different employee, whose partner works with homeless people to help them transition into a fuller life, tried talking to the man into leaving, but to no avail.
The poor man was babbling to himself words no one could understand, and at one point was walking around and freaking out the customers. He somehow had weed though, this of which he kind of made a mess all over the table he'd been sitting at.
Anyway, there are more details below... and I'm honestly starting to think at this point I could easily just have finished the piece on Medium in the first place. 😂😂
Whatever, I have some copy to study before I'm completely jobless myself.
Words
It’s Not Emptiness
I don’t know what it is
Events tonight left me with a tremulous heart.
A homeless man came into the restaurant — my workplace — in a bad state, really freaked out the wait staff, and had to be chased off.
One of the servers, a recent hire, even went as far as calling the cops.
She was advised not to, as this isn’t the most abnormal incident to take place in this city, and the cops are known not to respond too quickly, often allowing the situation to resolve itself before calling back to check if they’re still needed.
That was the case tonight, as I was the only one left in the building to answer the phone when they called.
I don’t know the real reason the rest of them wanted to keep the cops out of it, but to me it felt like a waste of time for everyone.
Not to disrespect the police in my city, but the general feeling was that as unpleasant as the situation might turn out to be, it wouldn’t be worth getting the law involved.
In all cases, it’s not exactly what happened that bothered me, but the position I took in the whole thing.
I work as a cook at a small local Greek diner. At least, that was my main job, but I prefer to spend most of my time in the centre of purification — otherwise and commonly known as the ‘dish pit’.
We have an old-school triple sink setup with no machines doing the grimy work, and I like it.
It’s my favourite job in any professional kitchen, as I can direct myself at every step of the way while also secretly focusing on my thoughts.
When in dish, I also take care of salads and desserts.
Still, I did recently just hand in my notice to quit, to focus on other things; my last day comes up on the 11th of April.
Tonight was going well as ever, perhaps a slightly slower night than the usual Friday, and my mind was balancing back and forth between thoughts of the exciting tasks waiting for me at home, and the reminders that only the current moment can ever matter completely.
I have some emails from Brian Kurtz of Titans Marketing waiting to be reread and analyzed closely, it’s what I expected myself to be doing in this very moment.
But I had the urge to recount the event which shook me tonight, and the turmoil of thoughts and feelings that came with it.
Before I go into any further detail, I just want to point out that I’m not specifically thinking of going into marketing.
I have however fallen deeply in love with copy writing.
If you’ve read any of my work before, then you know I’m not a bad writer — I’m not the greatest, but I can string sentences together, and sometimes I have fun stories, interesting ideas, or useful information to share.
You can probably also tell that the intensity of my love for writing changes from one piece to the next, depending on my purpose for doing it that day.
Well, it’s possible that I’ve entered a new age for my craft, wherein all my passion is never omitted from the text.
It’s something to do with Eugene M. Schwartz, he just gets my socks rocking right off my feet.
I know there’s no exclamation mark punctuating the ending of my last sentence, because I’m trying to keep an even tone, but trust that one would belong there.
Again, I’m not the best writer out there.
Point being, I want to make sustainable money with writing, and I think I’ve embarked on the right path for doing so.
And I’ll absolutely seek to take some marketing work, it’s just not my priority.
Most of all, I’d like to grow myself as a business/public personality, and to promote my own work.
We’ll see how it goes.
Either way, I’ll soon be taking a train across Canada to work once more in the rockies.
One goal is to cut down my current 20–25 hour daily commute by working and living in the same building, something entirely manageable in small, secluded tourist towns.
This will give me some space to finally obsess over my preferred craft.
It could mean sacrificing my ability to record music for a bit, but then my current workstation barely supports it anyway.
I just got a working guitar pedal for the first time in years, this one with a loop function, and it’s helped me to reach steps I was beginning to fear were forever out of my reach.
I have ridiculously unbelievable guitar jams just waiting for the day that I can mic up and let ’em rip.
There’s no room to fit my amp anywhere I can set up my recording equipment, it’s a hassle.
Which is why I need to upgrade my entire lifestyle soon.
Changing my environment will be healthy for me as well, as I’ve been living with my parents since 2018, and they’re not very private about their lack of faith in my abilities to achieve anything big that doesn’t relate directly to my formal education in computer science.
There isn’t a chance I move in that direction.
I even quit my focus on coding and AI, though only because it’s too many things to do at once.
Anyway, you get the idea.
I work in kitchens, want to focus on writing, and I’m moving to live and work in condition that allow me more free time and inspiration to focus on my writing.
Now to talk about tonight, and why it upset me so much.
It was nearing quarter after nine in the evening, forty-five minutes before closing time, and the restaurant was practically emptied out.
A couple of regulars sat drinking at the high-top by the bar at the front of the restaurant, and a small group of young adults hung out at a table near the back, right by the kitchen doors.
Sometimes I spy on the customers by peeking at the camera security system in the office.
I’d been assembling salads for much of the last couple of hours, so dishes had built up a bit, which is cool.
Now I was catching up on clearing out the pit.
Up until this point, the night had gone smoothly, and other than for the anticipation towards studying those marketing emails later, I was in high spirits.
Then one of the servers walked in, a look of confusion and discomfort on her face.
She told us, “There’s an older man who just walked in, he’s definitely from off the streets, and I can’t really understand anything he’s saying.”
There was an exchange between her and one of the owners who works with us in the kitchen at night, I didn’t really catch most of it, but she essentially ended with, “Well, he’s only asked for water and coffee so far, but depending on what happens, I might need help kicking him out please.”
Instantly curious, I bounded into the office to see what he looked like.
He was definitely homeless.
I don’t usually like going out onto the floor to talk to people in the first place, even eventually going so far as to start avoiding the regulars I used to talk to all the time.
Just the day before, my Christian grandmother had told me how she doesn’t believe God wants us to sacrifice ourselves.
Now, this really doesn’t seem accurate to me, and I’m already working on a piece to explore the topic, but I think I understand why she had said it.
It’s also perhaps just what happens when I talk about someday possibly becoming a homeless person who just goes around making peoples’ days.
To be fair, I haven’t found someone yet who doesn’t find that idea absolutely ridiculous.
I’m just saying, depending on the part of the world I’m in someday, especially if I have a phone with internet, it could be an option to live in the streets, still make my own money, and otherwise just go around talking to people who look down or something.
Actually, I never said anything about that whole plan involving me still working online.
She did say something about “not being a beggar”.
Either way, I’m getting off point.
I was all pumped up, wondering if I’d have to be the one to go out there and kick the poor guy out, when I started thinking about whether it would be worth anything happening to me in this situation.
Mainly because I’d be going in without a single clue of how to handle the situation, which opened me up to contemplating every possible bad outcome if I failed.
But then another thought struck me,
