Bob’s dad used to fret that he’d wind up a dish washer in a restaurant.

When I decided to major in creative writing for my undergrad degree, my family feared a similar fate for me.

They were all right.

Bob and I wound up working in a restaurant.  

We cook our guests nourishing meals, true.  We also scrape people’s table scraps into compost buckets, discard their soiled napkins and tissues, clean their kid’s puke off the bathroom floor, scrub the toilet they use each week.

But it’s not because it was a fall-back for when we’d failed at everything else in our lives.

We chose the work to be of service to our community.  After years of battling ecological and community predation in various forms — pipelines, fracking, an attempt to shut down our post office — We recognized that the best way to save a place is to hang out an open flag, welcome the public, and encourage visitors to become neighbors, and neighbors to become a community.  A community attracts more people to love it and protect it.  It gives people a sense of belonging. It gives people hope for a future.  When people have hope and a sense of belonging, it’s a whole lot harder to strip the trees, pollute the water and poison the soil.

It’s that vision that drew our kids into the work with us.  I don’t think they ever recognized restaurant work as degrading or menial.  I believe they saw it as instrumental for building community and protecting the mountains and pastures.

Their understanding of their place has kept the business humming through a pandemic.  Saoirse gets up at 3am to drive down with me to proof the croissants; Ula has now taken over scrubbing the toilets each morning.  Corey dashes back from morning chores to help clear tables and wash dishes.  When the doors open at 9, Saoirse races to make the coffees, Ula moves from table to table taking orders.  They mask up, remind the guests to do the same, and remain cheerful.  I attributed it all to Sap Bush Cafe being a good place to work.  I somehow thought we were a better place than all the other restaurants with “HELP WANTED” signs hanging in their windows.

But something began to shift these past two summers. We got busier.  And Ula got grumpier.  

Corey and Saoirse kept up their work without complaint, but Ula has a harder time hiding her emotions.  She would snap when we rang the bell; tears appeared in her eyes as she picked up food.  I began running her orders when things seemed hectic.  

And that’s when I started to hear it as I crossed the floor.  The little jabs at my kids.

You put in our order wrong.

How come she got served before me?

I need  …. I want…. How come…

That’s the trade, of course.  It’s all about the service (although I’d like to think it’s about the food).

None of the comments were particularly rude.  But walking in my kids’ shoes in an effort to help out, I started to feel a new kind of pain.  Those little complaints build up over the course of a day.  Without kindness, without words of appreciation, they wear on a soul.  They make a person feel as though, no matter how hard they try, they will never be enough.

We were all racing, working to keep up…But only for the sake of keeping up and meeting demands.   All of those deeper reasons that Bob and I chose our path for felt like they were drifting down stream with the endless storms and flooding we’ve endured this year.  I stopped my long-time habit of pausing my work to come out and talk with our customers.  The kids, feeling the pressure of the guests, would admonish me.  Orders might pile up!  Customers might become annoyed!  It was safer to remain in the back and just keep working.  

We wanted a community gathering space.  Now we were just expected to be a well-oiled machine.

I stopped feeling so smug about my labor resources.  I understood why those “Help Wanted” signs are ubiquitous across the country.  Why would anyone want to show up to work only to feel as though the gift of their life energy was never enough?  We want to work when we are able to make a contribution, to help, to give smiles and peace and connection.

There has been a national discussion of the importance of changing work culture, of employees getting higher wages, more sick time, more flexibility.

But looking out at the rush of summer business, I have further questions. 

Is there more to it than that?

Is it the way the general public treats those who are in service to them?

Have we grown so accustomed to the power of our dollars to command obsequious and increasingly expeditious customer service that we forget to be thankful for the assistance we receive?  Do we forget all those who have families and loves and dreams and ideas who give of themselves to bring us our morsels and widgets and conveniences?

Sure, employment culture needs to change.

But so does customer culture.  So does national culture.  We’ve come to accept that the ability to pay for a product or service completes our responsibility in a transaction.  It does not.  The world does not get better until we exercise kindness, compassion and gratitude in all our exchanges, regardless of whether or not money changes hands.  

We mulled the problem over for weeks here at the farm.  “If they’re giving you a hard time, take ‘em by the ear and throw ‘em out the door,” one neighbor advised.  

“We should put a sign on the door,” Bob and I suggested, “If you’re in a hurry, drive 8.4 miles, turn right on Route 7 and McDonald’s is 2 miles down on your right.”

“You girls need to learn to stand up for yourselves,” Mom counseled.  “Give it right back to people!”

“Why?”  Saoirse challenged her.  “Why is it that we’re supposed to learn to be rude because other people haven’t learned to be polite?”

Her comment stuck with Bob and me.  

And we realized something.  

We started this cafe to help change the world.

Serving nourishing meals and good coffee was a start.

But there’s still more to be done.  

As small business owners, we are in a place to define our business culture.  When customers experience it, they learn something from it, and that culture spreads.

If we want the world to be a kinder, more patient place, then we have to teach it.  And that starts with what we expect of ourselves.

So we made little signs for every table.

We’re doing our best.

Kindness helps.

It’s a reminder for the customers, certainly.  It’s also a reminder for us.  Kindness is the secret ingredient for making everything delicious, and it needs to come from all of us.

We’ve had them out for two weeks.  The change was instantaneous.  

But the seasons are changing now, and business should slow down.  Maybe we won’t need to ask for the same  level of patience, forbearance and kindness going forward.  But if the labor shortage is any indication, then we all must continue to teach it.  And learn it.

Folks, as the growing season gears down, home schooling gears up and my need for creative rest and private time with my thoughts becomes strong.  Thus, the podcast and blog will soon be wrapping up for the season.  If you’d like to continue following our adventures through the fall and winter, be sure to follow @sapbushshannon and @sapbushhollowfarm on Instagram, or Shannon Hayes and Sap Bush Hollow Farm on Facebook.  

This podcast happens with the support of my patrons on Patreon.  And this week I’d like to send a shout out to my patrons Lee Terry Tate & Laura Whalen.

Thank you, folks!  I couldn’t do it without you!  Your year-round support enables me to write these weekly stories during the growing season, then supports my family as we rest and recharge through the winter.   If you’d like to help support my work, you can do so for as little as $1/month by hopping over to Patreon and looking up Shannon Hayes