One Sunday evening, I ran up and down the stairs of Zuni Café for six straight hours, delivering roasted chickens to guests who thought it was hilariously original to point to their empty plates and say, “I hated it.” Upstairs, Clive Owen devoured two plates of gigante beans. Downstairs, Yo Yo Ma asked for appetizer recommendations. I left sometime after midnight, exhausted, with $200 in my pocket. When I got home, I rode the elevator up to my apartment and collapsed.
But at 6 a.m. my phone rang.
The elevator was broken again, and someone wanted to know if I could fix it. I sleepwalked five flights of stairs and wrangled the geriatric cage till it groaned to life, then staggered back to bed. Later that evening — after collecting rent checks in the morning and vacuuming the halls in the afternoon — I headed to Book Passage, where I stood behind a podium in a new dress reading from my latest travel book. I autographed copies, posed for photos, and laughed when an audience member asked, “How do I get your job?”
The next morning, I cleaned dog shit off the stoop. I didn’t have a dog.
It was never my plan to juggle three jobs into my forties, but I was living in San Francisco, where it was necessary. When I’d moved to the city, I’d intended to work for a magazine, but within days of arriving, my agent called and told me that my travel book had sold. Now I needed to write it. Great news, except there was no advance, and my paltry savings wouldn’t begin to cover my living expenses. So I waitressed and wrote, and when my book came out and didn’t earn me nearly as much as serving did, I continued working at Zuni.
Wrangling three different jobs was tiring, but at the same time, it introduced me to a broad cross section of San Francisco’s population — socialites and politicians, servers and chefs, editors and interns, electricians and roofers.
Like many, I struggled to keep costs low in a city where dining and cultural opportunities beckoned constantly. I shared a Sunset apartment with two roommates, thrift-shopped, and rode Muni everywhere. And when I ate out, I had cheap Vietnamese food. Then one day, a friend called to say that her father needed an apartment-building manager and wanted to know if I was interested. I couldn’t picture doing the job — would I become a female Schneider? But it promised my own rent-free studio.
And just like that, I had three titles: scribe, server, and super.
My situation was hardly unique. More than seven million Americans work multiple jobs, and every restaurant on earth has “I’m not just a server” servers. Zuni is no exception; your burger may be delivered by a successful playwright, and the woman who made your Caesar salad might also be an opera singer. But it wasn’t until I worked three jobs to make ends meet that I understood how common this was for San Franciscans — even beyond the restaurant business.
Many people I knew cobbled together a similar livelihood. Joe was an accomplished decorative painter with a music studio, but he earned the majority of his living by painting lines on city roads. Patricia, a flight attendant, moonlighted as a go-go dancer. Dan ran a record label and built websites on the side. My favorite bartender was someone else’s favorite yoga instructor.
All this is normal in the city with the nation’s highest cost of living. Creative types quickly learn that job-juggling is what it takes to survive without rent control or a lucrative (but potentially soul-squashing) full-time position.
Wrangling three different jobs was tiring, but at the same time, it introduced me to a broad cross section of San Francisco’s population — socialites and politicians, servers and chefs, editors and interns, electricians and roofers. Because I wasn’t relying on writing to pay all my bills, I began to enjoy it more, and my professional life felt surprisingly balanced. My odd jobs also garnered respect; working where Jake Gyllenhaal and Jean Paul Gaultier dined was considered hip, and my newfound talent for fixing radiators was deemed badass by everyone I knew. I had an insider’s view of the culinary scene in one of the world’s most exciting food cities (and could finally afford more than pho). And as a property manager in a town with endless talk about rent and real estate, I became part of that conversation. More than anything else, my jobs made me feel like a local.
Before I moved away three years ago (in short, I met a guy; we got married and had a baby; we needed more space; we couldn’t afford more space; we relocated to New Orleans), I ran into an author friend at a party. I started talking to him about writing, but he interrupted me.
“Are you still managing that building?” he asked.
I said I was.
“That’s so cool,” he said. “Got any new stories?”
I mentally riffled through my latest tenant issues. The woman who’d tossed a full jar of molasses down the trash chute, then refused to clean up the sticky mess. The man who flushed a can of deodorant down his toilet, backing up his and three other toilets, and then yelled at me about it. The lady who threatened to sue me because another tenant’s dog barked at her, causing extreme trauma.
I ended up telling him about the 911 call I’d made recently after I heard someone pounding on my door and opened it to find a senior citizen standing in the hallway, her face swollen like a melon. She was clutching her throat — an allergic reaction — and couldn’t talk or breathe. It was the tenant who had made me cry during my first week on the job when she scolded me for failing to polish the elevator brass adequately — the tenant who, for six years, complained about anything and everything. She was a fierce old broad who’d lived in the building for 28 years and thought she owned it. But she also gave me spontaneous hugs, giggled constantly, wore fedoras and sequins and big jangly jewelry, and offered to babysit my newborn son.
And that day, she was at my door about to die. I led her to a chair and called 911, then held her hand, trying to calm her down while we waited and asking her to take slow breaths. It was terrifying. But then the paramedics arrived, three muscular men packed into my closet-size kitchen. They hooked her up to a machine, and within 15 minutes, she was breathing normally again. Before she left my apartment, she thanked and hugged me and tearfully said that I’d saved her life. The next day, she left a card and flowers by my door.
“But now it’s been a couple of weeks,” I told my author friend, “and she’s back to herself, complaining that I haven’t swept the garage in ages.”
My friend shook his head and laughed.
“I hope you write a book someday about being a super,” he said.
That was my cue that we could return to the more glamorous subject of literature, but instead he wanted to know if I was still waiting tables too. He asked if I had any stories about Zuni. I told him I’d finally quit; I’d gotten too old, and my knees bothered me. He looked genuinely disappointed and so did I — because I was. In the end, though, hustling three jobs turned out to be unsustainable.
When my son was 15 months old, we packed up our things and left San Francisco. I cried as we drove to the airport. Three years on, I enjoy my life in New Orleans. I like the climate, the slower pace, and all the festivals and music in the streets. I love the Spanish moss draped like scarves from old-growth oak trees. The cost of living is lower, too, so I’m able to focus solely on writing, editing, teaching, and parenting, which is simpler (if not easier).
But I miss San Francisco. I still daydream about the endless sushi and dim sum options. I miss doing yoga in Grace Cathedral and singing along to movies at the Castro Theatre. I miss the dazzling bay views from the hills and the cheap happy hours with my girlfriends. I’d be lying if I said that I miss juggling those three jobs. But I do miss what came with them, such as my writing community, Zuni Café’s camaraderie, and my favorite hardware store, Brownies, on Polk Street, where every employee knew my name.
Last year, I visited the Bay Area to launch a new book, and one of my events took place at the iconic McRoskey Mattress Company. As I scanned the audience in the packed room, I recognized people from all facets of my life in the city. My old roommate from the Sunset was there, a bunch of writing colleagues, a few former restaurant co-workers and customers, and even two former tenants. One was that fierce old broad, beaming at me and waving exuberantly. After the event, my co-authors and I walked across the street to dine at Zuni, where the manager, servers, bartenders, and bussers greeted me like family.
Working three simultaneous jobs had never been my San Francisco dream. In fact, it sometimes made me miserable, but it was my reality. Now, when I return as a tourist, I feel like I still belong.
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