Invitation to connect on LinkedIn
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Just wanted to tell all my adoring fans 7 of you that follow me that I've moved my blog over to http://tommypierucki.com. Hope to see you guys there!!
It's time for a positive blog post. It's time to lift up those who deserve it. I want to take a minute and tell everyone why I love what I do, and most importantly where I do it. I've been serving tables for most of my working career. I've had a few spats of selling cars in between, but serving and bartending have been my main source of income. I get paid on the generosity of others. Most of my paychecks are zero dollars, and very few of them have a positive amount on them. Mostly somewhere between $4 and $60 for two weeks. What CK's pays me is an hourly rate that mostly covers my taxes, and I never see any of it. I work for tips. Seems kind of lowly when you think about it. And it can be lowly at times, don't get me wrong. If people don't want to tip, then I don't make money. But I'm good at what I do. And that makes me my money. Sure, just about anyone can do what I do. It's not rocket science by any means. But one of the best things that I have going for me is not only the venue at which I work, but the people that I have surrounding me. We are all professionals. We are all really good at what we do. I can't do my job without the help of my talented coworkers. I also cannot be free to do my job well without the support of the best management staff I could possibly ask for. For those of you who don't know much about where I work, CK's is a family owned restaurant. Kendra is the owner, and does not take that job sitting down. She is hands on, and always doing something to make sure her place is the best in town. She encourages the personalities of each individual to be genuine, and real. Before I came to CK's, I had worked for a few corporate restaurants. The corporate restaurants taught me a lot. They also taught me where I needed to be, and it wasn't with any of their cookie cutter food factories. I will be the first to admit it, I goof off and am lazy at times. But when it comes down to it, when we're busy, or a customer needs something, any one of us is already getting it done. The rest of the management staff is on the same page as Kendra. They will goof off with us when it's time to do that, and they'll be in the trenches standing right next to us, and having our back when that time comes. I've never felt more at home at a job than I do at CK's. They have surrounded themselves with a team that's pretty tight. To do as well as we've done over the last 6 years, really speaks to that. There have been numerous restaurants and bars that have come and gone in the short amount of time that we've been in business. All the while, we keep doing better and better each year. As far as the rest of the people that I work with, I would say it's the best group of servers, bartenders, and hostesses I've ever seen. Way better than any corporate place could ever do. When you have that kind of team to go to work with everyday, it makes going to work a little less hectic. I've seen how bad restaurants are run, I've seen how managers can micro-manage, I've seen how poor structure and communication breakdowns happen. None of that happens. We communicate, we help each other selflessly, and we all are thankful for each other. And thank God for everyone I work with. It's like we're all on the same page, and we're all that awesome dysfunctional family that everyone on the outside wants to join. To any of my coworkers that are reading this, I just want to say thank you for being who you are. Thank you for always being awesome. See you tomorrow.
So this is another night where I wanted to write, but I'm not really up for it. My feelings got hurt at work, and I just kind of wanted to pout about it, come home, relax and go to bed. But as I was laying in bed, I thought that I would hate myself if I didn't get out what happened. So here it goes. And no, nobody shit themselves tonight. At least none that I'm aware of.
No, no one wants to hear me sing....Ok, fine from Tommy Pierucki on Vimeo.
It's karaoke...there's beer involved....and I don't care if I butchered the song....I had fun.
I've been living in Phoenix for the last 5 years now. As most of you already know, I'm from the Chicago area. I'm a huge Cubs fan, and a huge Bears fan. If I see someone in my section at work wearing a Cubs/Sox/Bears/Bulls/Blackhawks hat or shirt or whatever, I normally have no problem starting up a conversation with them about where they're from in Illinois. Talking with people comes very easy to me. Breaking the ice is a necessity in my job. I have no choice. Someone sits in my section, I have to go over and greet them. I remember when I first moved here and I was working at Friday's and I saw someone with Chicago stuff on, I couldn't wait to talk to them. A lot of the time it would lead to long conversations about Illinois, or Arizona, or the Cubs/Bears, whatever. I was just so excited to see someone that knew of Wheaton, IL. I thought it was crazy that I was 1800 miles from home, and still managed to find people from the same area. It was such a great part of my day. It was my way of connecting with people at my job. Even when I worked at P.F. Chang's, if we were on a wait, and I saw someone in a group that was wearing a Cubs hat, as soon as I had a table open in my section, I sat the group. I would totally ignore the waiting list. I didn't care. These were my people and I wouldn't let them wait. I was able to make a better connection with them, by one, sneaking them into my section, and two, chatting them up about being from the same area. I still chat up people that are from Illinois, but lately, it doesn't seem the same.
After being here for 5 years, I hear about the Diamondbacks, the Cardinals, the Suns, ASU, and God forbid...the Coyotes. I'm not really a huge fan of any of them, but somehow being around them and hearing about them all the time, some of them seeped into me. By no means have I lost my loyalty to the Cubs or the Bears. But sometimes I feel that because I don't have them around me all the time, I lose a little bit of my fanaticism. Again, I'll be glued to the MLB package for as many Cubs games as possible, and probably sitting at CK's for every Bears game. Lately I find that I'm behind on all of the talk that happens about MY teams. Maybe it's because I don't live in Chicago area anymore, and I don't have ESPN 1000 dialed in all the time, or maybe it's that WGN doesn't seem relevant to my world any longer. I don't see commercials with Chicago sports stars. I see commercials like Dan Majerle doing Emergency Chiropractic. And now these Phoenix commercials are the norm. I call Phoenix my home. Heather and I have bought our first house here, and we're not going anywhere for a long time. Lately, if I see someone wearing a Cubs hat, I'm less likely to say something to them. I don't know why this is. I'll still talk to them if that conversation comes up, but now I'm less likely to initiate that talk. I'm starting to feel a little less....Chicago.
It's funny, if you Google the term "Living Aloha", you don't get great results. You really don't get the idea. Although I believe that it means something different for everybody, Googling the term won't bring you any closer to the idea. I never really knew what it meant for most of my life. I don't expect everyone to get the idea of what it means. So if you read this and you can't grasp what I'm talking about, it's completely okay. But what I am going to do for you is take you on the journey of how I learned my definition.
It all started with a trip to visit my sister Kelly that was living on Oahu. Her and her husband were living there because he was stationed on the Marine base in Kailua. They had been living there for a little over 2 years by the time I got the chance to visit. I wish it would've been sooner. I went to visit them with a friend of mine. Neither of us had ever been to Hawaii. We wanted to do so many different things, like visit Pearl Harbor, go snorkeling, try surfing, rent scooters, play some golf and basically just be as touristy as possible. Little did I know that I was in for the biggest change in my life during this week. Upon arriving to Honolulu airport, one of the first things I noticed about Hawaii was that a lot of signs and street names were in Hawaiian. The first highway we saw was named Like Like. We made a little fun of the fact that we were taking a highway named Like Like. But my sister quickly corrected my pronunciation of the words. It is pronounced lee-kay lee-kay. And she explained to me how to pronounce words in Hawaiian, and from there on out it was fun to start saying all of the street names out loud. There was my first lesson in living aloha. Respect for local language. Once we got settled in, we wanted to hit the beach. Kelly lived about a mile from Waikiki Beach, and it became the first place that I stood up on a surfboard. We took some surfing lessons in the shadows of Duke Kahanamoku's statue before we actually went out in the water. And then once we went out and started paddling into some very small waves on some very large foam boards, we actually were able to stand up and have some fun. It didn't hit me that we were riding the same waves that the originators of the sport were riding. It's pretty cool now to think of this, the fact that I learned to surf on the same waves where it was invented. It's equivalent to learning how to play golf on The Old Course at St. Andrew's in Scotland. The view from our beach was breathtaking. As long as you don't mind all of the hotels and urban feeling you got from just off the beach. But those hotels weren't always there, of course. We, as Americans after acquiring the strategically geographic islands, put them there. But that's a whole different story. Now that I had had a bunch of practice runs on Waikiki Beach, my Brother in-law took us to the spot he loved the most, Diamond Head Beach. It was at the base of Diamond Head Crater. Which is an old volcano, but now completely dormant. The waves were great. They weren't too big for us beginners to handle, and weren't as small as Waikiki. But this was the day that changed EVERYTHING. I had caught a few rides and was having a great session for my first day at Diamond Head. I had paddled back out to the best place to catch another wave, and it was there that I took a look around. I looked straight down and saw crystal clear water and beautiful coral right underfoot. There was a slight breeze blowing, and it was the perfect temperature that day. I took a look at all the other surfers having the time of their life. I saw the smile on my friend's face and all the joy that came from all the fun we were having. I looked up to see the dormant volcano. THE DORMANT VOLCANO. This thing used to spew lava and destroy everything in its way. But now it's a peaceful backdrop for just another piece of paradise. It was then and there that something inside me had changed. I felt like I had a new found appreciation for what Hawaiians had been experiencing for generations. I had just been smacked in the face by aloha. And it was awesome. I never had a feeling of being so small, and so amazed at where I was. It was one of those moments that doesn't happen often. It felt like this was where I was supposed to be. Like I had found what I had been looking for all my life. The one moment of peace and tranquility that was right in front of me and had come to me so suddenly. I knew I liked the water, but I didn't expect to find my own personal sanctuary while sitting on a surfboard. But there it was, staring me in the face and I was unable to ignore its magnitude. The word aloha that everyone is familiar with means hello, goodbye, and love. Aloha is really a state of mind. It's more than just a greeting or a farewell. It means having mutual regard, affection and extends warmth in caring with no obligation in return. It means living in harmony with your surroundings, the land, and each other. It's a life force according to Hawaiian law. See the last paragraph in this link, http://bit.ly/bjgKk6. It means loving yourself and returning and sharing that same kind of love with others. It means doing things purely out of kindness. Aloha is contagious. Take 10 minutes after you land on any island and look around. People are different towards each other. There's unsolicited respect for one another. You just don't find that everyday. So take away what you will from my words, but what "Living Aloha" really means to me you will see in my day to day actions. And if I'm wrong in that assumption, then correct me. Remind that I need to live more aloha. And I'll probably tell you you're right. The picture you're seeing is the tattoo I designed. It is a wooden surfboard stuck in the sand. In the background is the view from Waikiki Beach of Diamond Head Crater. This is my daily reminder of how, where and why I should live aloha. Aloha and Mahalo for reading,TommySo tonight is the first time I've ever felt compelled to write. I really didn't want to open the laptop tonight, I just wanted to sit and zone out in front of the TV and not think about what happened. But as you can clearly see, I've opened it, and now I must tell my story. So here goes...
