What are the long-term risks of drinking all the time? What’s the real value of family and loved ones? And how do you work 100-hour weeks without falling apart?

This week, I had the honor of sitting down with Shane Alexander—a monster in the kitchen and one of the most genuine people I’ve met. You’ll hear me gush about the burger he made back in the day at El Farol… and yes, I still think about it.

Shane and I both helped renovate the new El Farol on Canyon Road in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We had a wild time, and in this episode, we get to reminisce about what that meant to both of us.

If this sounds like your kind of conversation, please like, subscribe, and share—it really helps!

Thanks for listening! My name’s Andrew.

I record strange, fun things and try to make sense of this weird, beautiful life. You can find more of my written work at ⁠my blog⁠. All of my social links are at the bottom of that site. You also have a contact page there. Please let me know if you have any comments, suggestions, or notes for improvement!

I’m just here, taking notes as I go, trying to figure out what it all means.

Cheers!

Welcome to Serves You Right! This is Andrew and I’m glad you can make it. If you are a server, a bartender, backhouse warrior, this is the spot for you. Follow me as we try and work out one fundamental question. Whether or not you can truly be happy working in the service industry. 

With everything involved in working in service, the alcohol, late nights, low wages, restaurants and bars offer a very strange blend of challenge and opportunity to a large under-service portion of the population. Are they flawed and ugly in some ways? Absolutely. The service industry does also serve a deep and fundamental human need though. That drive for fast flexible work environments, the thrill of quick money, and the appeal of the slightly dangerous. Again, my name is Andrew and I’ve worked in restaurants and bars for about 20 years now. I’ve done everything from dishwashing and bar backing all the way to being a general manager. This is my record of what I’ve learned imperfectly, slowly, painfully, and hopefully you find that interesting and you have an easier time in it than I did. Alright, let’s do it. Alright, today we have a fun one. 

Shane Alexander. Shane Alexander is a gentleman I… he’s near and dear to my heart. Shane and I work together at Santa Fe, El Firol. Oh man, the oldest bar I think in Santa Fe, if not the US. There was a bullet hole in the bar intentionally left in from back in the heyday of Santa Fe. So me and Shane joined after it switched hands and fell into the ownership of a couple of people you’ll hear us talk about. Max and Frida Rich. Rich has since passed away and I do hear that the location has changed ownership, but we definitely get to talk about the fun times of renovation. 

He has, hands down, some of the best tasting food I have ever tried in my life. We also during that whole process, straight partied it up the whole time. The local bar in Santa Fe, the Matador definitely saw us shut it down a couple of times. There was excess to excess. I did end up leaving El Firol over some disagreements with ownership and eventually moved away from the state entirely. Shane ended up leaving about a year after I did. This is the first really in-depth conversation we’ve been able to have since we work together. We have the odd call here and there and I got to come by and see his house and hang out with his kids once, but nothing in-depth like this. 

So this is really, really a pleasure for me. You know, I love this man dearly. I hope you stick out until the end. We definitely get to hear Shane talk about a lot of really personal, really powerful things. I expect to hear some of the dangers of success, some of what the drive for success can do to you. Expect to hear what working 100 hours plus a week will do to you. Some of our just reminiscing and some of our just discussing what the loved ones in our lives do for us and what they mean for us. You know, expect to hear a couple of vulnerable, honest human beings sharing some struggles. Yeah, without much ado, let’s just get into this. All right, serves you right. Here we go.

Oh, just a quick note. We do jump in quite in the middle of our conversation. Me and Shane just kind of started talking, no introductions and it’s how we rolled. All right, hope you enjoy. 

Just after awhile i was just to him, roughly, it was stuck with me as my rep from Cisco and we’re just talking about me needing to kind of leave restaurants in general, just not really working the kitchen anymore. And he was like, well, Cisco’s looking if you’re keen to come over and work here. I’m sure you’d be great. So he kind of helped spearhead that. And I’d initially offered myself I’d taken another job with Bill at just the best to work in the warehouse. 

He like his warehouse supervisor almost kind of work with him and learn that that didn’t work out. 

I’m sorry. 

Just just the best produce. 

Oh, yeah. 

Yeah. So yeah, so I started working for Bull that that kind of didn’t work out. And I did Max know, okay, I’m committed to this thing first. If this doesn’t work out, I’ll give Cisco a shot. But for now, I gotta wait. Anyway, so yeah, just the best didn’t work out. And so I took a job with Cisco and just started to get into sales. 

When was that? 

That was in September of 2023, I think. 

So you’ve been doing it for a solid two years? 

Yeah. Yeah. More or less. 

Yeah. Is it different? 

It is. It is. It’s very different. It was actually in the beginning, it was a little like when four or five o’clock rolls around, like your body knows that it should be kicking into like stress mode, because services come in. Like there should be like, I’m not doing anything. I should have done something. What fires do I have to anticipate for what fires are happening currently? 

So the body was, it’s seven o’clock on a Saturday. What are you doing? 

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So no, the natural stress process is the nervous system that kind of starts to crunch up in the evenings just being at home. But that didn’t take too long to get over. It really didn’t. 

Well, that’s good. And then, so we just sort of jumped into that. I think it would be helpful. Can you kind of tell your side of how me and you ended up working together? And I’ll try and fill in some gaps. 

There we go. Yeah. So yeah, it was, I don’t even remember the date. I know it was May. I just got done with Las Campanas. I was executive sous chef there, taking a job as the head chef at El Farol. It was supposed to be a month long construction process. And we started to get everybody on board. And it ended up being at least a three month process. But I think that was kind of beneficial for us because we had some time to continue to work and develop on menus and drinks and make sure things were going to work well. As far as pairings were concerned, but yeah, I’d come on as the head chef. Max had hired you as like the bar manager, lead bartender. Yeah. And I just remember meeting you at El Farol and it was all a lot of fun. Everything was fresh and new and exciting. 

It was something. Yeah. I still remember. So it’ll be interesting kind of to explore from my side. So you know my wife. We just got married. She said hi, by the way. She promised to remember to say that. And so I was working at Coyote. And I heard that this gentleman named Rich was looking for someone to renovate the bar program at El Farol. And I was not of the age group that would go to El Farol. 

So I finally reluctantly kind of agreed to meet with him. 

That’s right.

He sold me on the whole thing. And I still was hesitant and actually was the one that got me to sign on. And so I left Coyote right in the middle of the summer. I came over. It was right in, I think we had two months of construction left. Yeah. I remember not realizing that we were not going to be open for that long. Yeah. 

Well, I think everybody was assuming that it was going to be a quick process. I do remember those conversations at Max where you know, I think a lot of the construction definitely moved quicker because he there were things that he was doing to help the general contractor as you know, just to get things done and do some stuff on the weekends to just move the process along. But yeah. 

Yeah. That was a wild time. So I remember that time. I don’t know if me and you’ve ever actually really talked about this, but in that process of the construction, not working my regular service jobs and not having that extra pool of my attention at the time, I definitely got myself into some troubles. I was definitely drinking more than I probably should have been. Which you know, you get used to working in the service industry. You only really have like an hour after work where you can go to the bar before it closes down. 

Yeah. And you can press. 

I was nine to five and evening’s free. 

Yes. There were a whole lot more hours. 

Yes. The hours you work now actually. 

Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, you know, if you went and sat at Boxcar after work, you could get a good six, seven hour drinking session in before they kick you out. 

Yeah. Yeah. We know we know we timed it. 

Yeah. 

So we got through that construction process, which was a little bit while opened up. El Farol was interesting. It was definitely an experience. I feel like I learned a lot. I definitely I’m very grateful for it. But yeah, it was always kind of weird, just just from my perspective. I don’t know. 

I agree. I agree. And especially the best of the conversations that we had initially in the beginning bringing everybody on and the actual processes that happened once the restaurant had opened, you know, come on, develop my food program. It’s going to be yours. And then I develop it and it’s not, you know, for you, come on, develop the bar program. It’s going to be yours. You do it. And then it’s not right. Like there was there was it seemed like there would be a whole lot more hands off and general steering from the 30,000 foot view. And it became a very grand 10,000 foot view management, micro management of menu bar program wines. 

Yeah. That’s a very gentle way of putting it. I think I, you know, I feel like again, you know, I want to express the gratitude there because I think had I not gone through that, I wouldn’t have been admitted to the advanced Somm test or any of that. 

Yes. 

But I feel like going through that experience definitely taught me, and that’s my dog. So he’s excited. It taught me that if I were to ever open a restaurant again, I’d want to get more things than writing that I did. 

Yes. 

Or just insist on more clarity than, you know, the handshake deals that are there was something that Sid to try to push me for, right, was get more in writing, get more in writing, because I was, I think, also a lot too trusting just that you could do a deal of a handshake and expect that somebody would follow through with it. Right. There was some compensation that I had signed into as the chef that I would be allotted at the end of a year if I could stick through certain costs, right. But not everything again, wanting the best of everything, but having it at the cost of a cheaper product on the menu, right, doesn’t lend itself towards a great food cost. So, you know, I think from anything from the amount of employment to what you’ll be able to have your hands on in writing and then also specifics on any additional compensation, I think is always good for any chef to have, right. Like if I’m responsible for food costs at what level, who am I responsible for? What grounds are there? You know, when you run in, I’ll for always just a single facet restaurant, you know, and if you’re going to get into anything else, like a bigger resort, we have multifacets, you know, can you bonus off of all of it? Can you bonus off of just sections of it? If one hits it, can you still make some compensation? I think that’s a better way to go rather than on the whole, right. If I can hit some metrics, can I still, can I still get additional compensation rather than having to hit everything perfect all the time? 

Yeah, because I mean, I remember that time, I remember, you know, working with you and there’s some shifts that I remember, you know, you could see it just like in your face, the weight of everything crushing down on you. I was looking for a better adjective there, but crushing down on you.

Yeah, well, I mean, I wanted to be able to do a good job, right. Because my first chef gig, like proper chef gig, and I was responsible for a lot, I needed to make sure it worked properly. We didn’t have a lot of time allotted. You know, once the kitchen really could open once we got all of our permits, there really wasn’t a lot of playtime to develop cooks. And so you do have to balance that, you know, you’re not allowed any overtime. So you got to balance being able to have them get the experience. But the restaurants still have to operate, it’s still got to be clean, right. And so I’d let dishwashers go at appropriate times, but math still needed to be washed, stuck until one o’clock in the morning, washing mats, right, scrubbing walls, cleaning dishwashers. 

As they get a hold of the things that I’ve already taught them now, more time opens up because they get more efficient. So now I can start adding additional training stuff to them. And the same way happened with cooks, right, doing hoods, things like that. 

Yeah, it’s a lot of pressure. A lot of pressure to make sure people were happy with the food, round wine and chile. I think there’s a lot of big expectation around it. Yeah. 

So when did you leave El Farol?

It was probably two, I was there for about two and a half years, two and a half, three years. Yeah. 

And then you went to another spot, right? I’m sorry, my remembrance of where you went after was kind of spotty. So I went to Boxcar. I had spoken to Tate and Sylvia and they were looking, they were going to develop some more stuff in Santa Fe. And so I’d taken that gig in the hopes of being able to have other restaurant opportunities open up as well and be able to start learning how to manage multi-restaurant operations. 

But then that didn’t really work out. They had some stuff kind of fall through for them in that interim. They’re working on stuff now and some stuff is moving pretty well for them now. But it just wasn’t at the time and it just wasn’t a great fit. 

So yeah, from there I went to a chef in the mine who had fallen ill and needed to take some time off but she needed to be able to still have the kitchen operate. And so she asked me to come on as a sous chef just to help her while she was on the FMLA, about three, three and a half months and then just kind of see what went from there. And there was a member club of Club Quail Run, so I was there for a little bit, small club. 

That’s the last time I checked in with you where you were working before we talked recently. 

Yeah. 

And I guess after that was when he joined from the distribution side.   

No, so after that, so I don’t know if you ever remember Peter O’Brien. He was my food and beverage director at the Club of Los Campanas and he went from food and beverage director back because there was a chef before restaurant owner chef, then food and beverage director and then he got back into kitchens and cooking at the end of Anasazi. 

And then he got a job as executive chef at Bishop’s Lodge Auberge kind of taking it over to run it. And he was looking for a sous chef. And so we had reconnected and he had said to me, hey, do you want to come over and apply and be my sous? 

And so I had taken that job on. And that was also, that was COVID was kind of in the middle towards the end of COVID kind of. There was still a lot of restrictions. Our first Thanksgiving, everything was done to go, one because the property wasn’t done yet. We couldn’t open up. We had kitchen permits but not permits to be able to put people in rooms. 

And again, there was COVID all that yeah. So we had put together a pretty good to go program for Thanksgiving. That was a lot of fun to see how you could sort of level up or really make to go foods look real nice. A lot of thought went into them. There were a lot of menus and cards and things that came with it. It was very boutique. It was really nice. It was really cool to do. 

And so we had done that. And then, yeah, I started to work for Auberge. And they’d let Pete go probably two weeks before opening, the grand opening of the resort. And so then there was a whole different level of stress. Because now it was a resort kitchen, high-end resort, Auberge. A lot of expectation there too. 

The hours that I was working there, again, just the amount of stress. And I think that the incest that need to want to please everybody and to do such a great job. I didn’t really know how to let a lot of things go in the kitchen. I was very good at picking things up. I think at the time, instead of holding people accountable to finish their jobs, I would just be okay with having cooks in the kitchen up picking things up. 

So I was working. I was averaging 100 hours a week. 

You’re a one-man band. 

Yes, I was averaging 100 hours a week. We didn’t have many employees. Again, you play the game of who’s going to show up for breakfast, right? And I had a… 

There were only 168 hours in a week. How did you… When were you sleeping? 

I wasn’t. There was one week I pulled over 130 hours in a week. So I would pull the normal 16 to 18, sometimes 19 hours a day, 20 hours a day in the kitchen. And I’d go home and sleep for a couple of hours, come back, right? But on my sixth and seventh day, I’d pull a 24-hour shift. I didn’t come home real quick, wake the kids up, take a shower, try to have my wife as best as I could to get them out the door to school. And then I’d go back for another 16 to 18-hour shift. And so I’d done that for multiple weeks on end. 

And H.R. eventually caught wind of it and they sat me down and said, you’re not doing that anymore. You can’t. It’s physically dangerous for you to not sleep. 

And they definitely wanted me to have as much of a work-life balance as possible. But when you’re opening up a resort and you don’t have people to staff it, and they need to open up other outlets and they have pressure to open up outlets, you got to pick one or the other, right? 

You can either give me time off and hold off on outlets or you can open up outlets, then you got to give me people. You know, so…

I wonder, because I hear a lot of myself in what you’re saying too. This desire, I want to do a job, I want to do it well. And I don’t want the thing to have my name on it if it’s going to be shit. But I also, I fear that impulse that I have to go and do it myself. Yeah, I think we’re very similar in that regard. 

Yeah, because you get to a point, I think, I had to start to realize that I’d been through the processes, I’d been through and made the mistakes that I’d made. And those processes and mistakes put me in a position. Again, my drive, I think, was a part of it too. But you get to a point where you’ve had your opportunity to make all your mistakes to get to the point that you’re at to be able to do what you can do now. 

I didn’t understand at the point I was at at the time that me allowing those younger cooks to go through those same processes was going to benefit them. I was almost helicopter parenting my cooks. You know, I was hovering over them. I was not giving them the opportunity to make mistakes. You know, I think it’s better to let them make the mistakes correct afterwards. But again, at the same time, you need a proper foundation crew to be able to allow that to happen as well. You got to be set up for success because service still has to happen. So they have to still make mistakes within reason. 

There can’t be a mistake that affects the guests. There can be a mistake, but then you have to pivot and still take care of the guests. 

So yeah, I think you probably are on the same vein as me. I have difficulty seeing, you know, the drink that is the truth that’s created incorrectly is one thing. The drink that takes an extra two minutes to get out because the bartender’s new is another thing. Yeah, but both mistakes grate at me, but one seems to be infinitely worse. Yes. If you’re just whacking moles, it’s easy to just keep whacking moles and stay at work early. 

Yeah. It’s the curse of people who do well at things, I think.

Yeah, it is. You know, when you really do want to do a great job and you’re driven by wanting things to almost be perfect every single time, right? Every time this is the process, this is the procedure, this is what you got to follow. 

And I don’t think that there’s some of that culture here now in kitchens and bars and in restaurants because a lot of Americans have trained overseas with other chefs, right? People are coming back with more mission star experience. People are coming back with more of their culture where they’re driven. Sorry, give me a second. 

I’ll see you soon. I’ll be there soon. Love you. Cheers. 

They’re off to the baseball. Awesome. Yeah, you know, I think a lot of that culture is starting, but I think a lot of it also sits better in the bigger cities, right? You know, Austin, Chicago, New York, you know, you have to learn how to be competitive in order to be able to get a basic job to survive, right? And people walk into restaurants because that’s what they want to, that’s the career they’re in. 

Something like Santa Fe, you got your guys who work their two jobs. If they don’t nail it correctly every single time, they’re not all that affected by it, right? They’re not as driven, not as much, I don’t think. I think there are some of them that still have pride in their work. They still understand how things need to get done and they’re great workers in Santa Fe, right? Great workforce, but I think there is a difference in the guys who are culinary driven or just restaurant based. 

Yeah, yeah. 

There’s a difference between a server just trying to sell one on the floor and someone who’s actively trying to become a sommelier, right? 

Oh, yeah. I mean, Santa Fe is a strange circle to square too. The only place I’ve ever worked, there’s such a like palpable imbalance between demand and supply where every person in the entire United States and overseas wants to come to Santa Fe to see Santa Fe and you have what? I don’t even remember, 50,000 people that live there? Yeah, it’s millions of visitors every year. 

Yeah, it’s very tourist driven. 

Yeah. And so yeah, you work the job and you’re on the floor and you get fired from El Farol and you walk down the street and you walk into the compound and get job that day. Oh, yeah. 

Yeah. 

So, I mean, and I mean, I’m sure that there are restaurants in Austin and York and Chicago that you can do that in, right? But eventually, if you want to do anything with yourself as a chef or as a manager, and you want to build that career, eventually the word gets round. There’s so many other people competing for that job that’s only going to go so far in a bigger city, right? In Santa Fe, you can burn a bridge and two years later go back to it, right? And burn it again and maybe two years later go back to it. 

Well, that’s because everyone’s broken high in Santa Fe. Yeah. What did your family think about you when you were working like that? 

Oh, man, it was terrible. I remember the first, of course, having Dylan, you know, Sid and I had conversations. She was a little worried for us to have a second kid because of my drinking problem and because I was pretty absent and because I wasn’t as together as I thought I was right at home. I was, I think I was a lot more focused on work and being able to do well there and not as focused on being able to do well at home. And we spoke about having a second kid and that was her concern. And so then eventually agreed, fine, you know, Jameson does need a sibling. I think it’s important to have siblings if you can have siblings. And so we decided to have another kid. 

And so that was kind of those conversations at least penetrated enough for me to start to realize that I’m clearly not doing as well as I thought I was doing. Right. And so now I got to try to figure out all my personal stuff when I don’t know how to process stuff constructively and in a healthy way, right? 

While I’m drinking and while I’m putting drugs in my body and while I’m absent. But that was the start of it, right? And then, El Farol, Taylor, pastry chef. 

Yeah, I was, you should talk about her. She I still miss her desserts. 

Just, she’s good. She’s really good. But she got to a point. I was hammered by like six or seven o’clock in the evening, like service had just started. And I was hammered. I clearly had a rough week. And that was how I was going to deal with it was just drinking. And she pulled me aside, she’s angry. And she’s like, get your shit together. Like, shit, like, Shane, seriously, I don’t know what the fuck you’re doing, but get it together.

Now she didn’t fuck around. 

And so there was again, there was kind of the second small realization that something had to change. But I think at that point, alcohol or the ready kind of had its bites on me, right? And so I get to Bishop’s Lodge. And of course, I’m working all these hours, and I’m way more absent in the house than I’ve ever been in my career. 

And so I start to talk to Sid about the necessity of me finding something else, right? And she’s not opposed to me changing careers, but she just she’s like, we got a family, you better consider what you’re going to do is going to be worth it. What’s going to happen. And so I’m trying to put feelings out. 

At that time, I was using not a lot of cocaine, but enough to try and keep me moving through the amount of hours that I was working in a week as well. And she had found that. So that became a point of contention. 

And it just got to a point where she just, you know, we had a big fallout and she just said, look, I need help. I know I need help. I know you need help. I don’t know if you know you need help. But if we’re going to have this work, I can’t stay with you if you don’t get help. She said, I’m tired of this. I can’t do this anymore. So either you get help or we have to, we have to split in part ways. 

Did you get help?

I did. So, you know, again, at that point, I’m still working for Auberge. They’d sent me to Austin to go help with one of the properties in Austin, Texas. And so that was a good, I think small break for us because I was in Austin for a month. And she was here, I was still getting paid. I was working a lot, but I didn’t have the pressures of any of the household stuff that I needed to take care of. 

Sid also didn’t have to have the additional pressure of watching her husband, man baby, she had to look after. And so after a month, she came out, we spent a week, because the sisters out there, she spent a week out there. Now they’re already actively found a therapist, started working with him. 

And then when I got home and things kind of started to move towards the way they were moving, working all these hours, it just wasn’t sustainable. 

And we just decided it was best for me not to work in kitchens, at least in a managerial position anymore. And so I quit Auberge, called my father-in-law, because winter was coming. We still hadn’t figured out what I was going to do. But I just said to him, I was like, look, I know you need line cooks. I know I don’t need any responsibility. So I’d be more than happy to be one of your cooks through the season. 

So I would drive up to Taos every Wednesday and I’d come back home every other Saturday night or Sunday afternoon, depending on how my shifts were scheduled. And that’s all I did. I just got back into kitchens. I showed up, set up my station. I got on a drug called Naltrexone, pharmaceutical drug that kind of helped take off the sharp need to be able to drink. There were still times where I kind of stumbled a little bit, but that was like three years ago that I’d stopped. 

So understood I was an alcoholic, really knew I had to make a change, really knew I had to stop drinking and just started working towards that. But I was also actively trying to find something else, right? What else can I do? What else am I good at? If I’m not going to be in kitchens anymore, I know what I need to be able to bring home financially and what’s that going to be? How is that going to look? Is it going to be sustainable? Is there growth potential in it, right? 

Yeah. 

Wow. I did not know that in part of your story. So actually let me know. I’m so thrilled to hear that you’re doing better though. 

Andrew, if I stood up, maybe one day if we do do, maybe I can find a photo to send you and you could see I look like I’m almost at least 100 pounds bigger than I am now. At least with the swelling and the water retention and the unhealthy, you know, just not healthy chef, right? 

And now I’m the exact same weight as I was when I was in that space of my life, but just not drinking, eating healthier, trying to exercise, playing hockey, getting more sleep. That’s really made a huge difference. 

You know, it actually sounds like me and you had a very similar trajectory. We haven’t really talked about any of the stuff I went through, but I got sick. So for whatever reason, so apparently I have graves. If you look at my left eye, you can kind of see some of the scar damage. That’s the one where you’re like behind the eyes, the tissue kind of swells. And so for whatever reason, I had never known I had it until COVID sent it off. And so I had about a year and a half where I had trouble to go outside and see sunlight. 

Oh…

Driving was a little difficult because I’d have to wear sunglasses and the lights in the restaurant, like in the kitchen too bright to work. So I looked like I was like crying consistently. So thanks to that, I, you know, most of the time I was so weak and like in pain, I just slept most of the time. So I actually quit drinking for a large part of a year. There we go. It actually helps clear up a lot. 

You know, even just mentally, right? I’m enjoying, I’m enjoying being sober more than I ever enjoyed looking forward to having a drink. And it’s been hard, right? 

Because being a substance abuse user for 25 years, you know, anything happens, how do I escape, right? 

Oh, well, I’ve had a rough day. I’m going to go have a drink. And one drink turns into so many. And I had a chef friend of mine who brought up a quote, where it was, you know, if I have half a bottle of beer, I’m going to have six bottles of cocaine, right? It’s never, there’s never any limit, right? There’s no discipline behind it, right? 

But every time something goes wrong, I’m going to hit a drink, I’m going to hit a drink, I’m going to hit a drink and having to actually deal with the emotion and reality in its raw form was, that was a lot, it was a lot, man. It was not easy to go through, right? 

Feeling the feelings that I’d never felt before, right? Inside my body. Now I’m becoming more aware of my body and becoming more aware of my space. 

So I actually, after that, I did go to a therapist later and fun side story, I hate therapy, but I’m doing it. I think that’s part of it. If you don’t hate it, you’re not doing it right, probably. 

Yeah. 

Yeah, I’m the same way. You know, you don’t realize how shut off or like that wall that you put up in front of you and, you know, all that stuff comes out and you’re like, why the hell am I crying on a therapist’s zoom call? It doesn’t make any sense. But yeah, I guess there’s some something in there. Yeah. No, I have that same propensity to excess. 

Yeah. 

Yeah. 

And that’s it, right? It could never just be one drink. It had to be a bottle. It could never just be going out with friends for an hour. I had to drive home obliterated at two o’clock in the morning, right? Never any control, right? That was the problem. I didn’t have self control. And I don’t, I don’t ever think, I mean, I think I’m doing better with some self control. I think there’s still a lot of compulsiveness in me. And I think, you know, still getting the drive to want to not just do something just to do it, but want to give it everything I have. I’ve just thrown it into more constructive things, right? Youth Hockey, there’s some baseball stuff, making sure that I keep the house as clean as possible for my wife, I can take as many chores from as possible. I can apply myself in the job I have now as much as possible to make sure that she doesn’t feel any stress. So she doesn’t sell any houses because she’s in real estate now. So if she sells a house, that’s a bonus. If she doesn’t sell, we’re still okay. Right? So I can put myself into those things that are more constructive and still not really maintaining work life balance. I’m getting a hold of that, but it is just constructive. 

Yeah. Well, I wonder to, you know, I wonder how many people who do do things well have that in them too, that drive to do the extra. Because, you know, some of the ways that I studied wine, always made me think it was a little obsessive. You know, I couldn’t never just be a server on the floor, selling some wines, be okay with that. 

Yeah. 

I don’t know why so many people can just do that show up, work, go home. 

That’s what Sid does. She has the ability to separate that so well. Right? Yeah. Now she’s doing work and then the next thing she’s not. I’m like, I can’t, I can’t. I can’t. 

Well, people, maybe some people just can’t, you know, yeah, or maybe that’s, you know, the grass always looks greener. 

But I wonder, you know, if I could help play back life and choose the other path where I could just take it and leave it, I wonder how I think if I had my mind, I think I’d be bored. You know?

Yeah. Yeah. 

Or maybe that’s the story I choose to tell myself because it makes me feel happy. 

You know, I never finished high school, right? I didn’t do that well through high school. 

I didn’t know that. Yeah. 

Yeah. So I got my GD once I got to the States when I was traveling on the H2B visa. I was in Arizona, I was in Cottonwood working for the Enchantment in Sedona and had some extra time and just went and got my GD. But yeah, I couldn’t because the, even in South Africa, the school systems are not catered towards boys, particularly, right? And the energy of boys. But there’s also that structure of this is what you’ve been told, this is what you have to do. You can’t encourage free thinking and then try and close everybody in a box of being, of learning how to be. 

Yeah. 

Yeah. You know, you know what I’m saying? 

I think I’m picking up on what you say. 

Yeah. You know, I try to, I try to do that with my boys. I’m always trying to teach them stuff and I’m trying to teach them to be obedient. But in the same sense, I’m still trying to teach them to be free thinkers. And that a lot of times I need to understand that there comes a point where I need to stop telling them what to do and let them figure it out themselves. And that’s, that’s not what the school systems even in South Africa are, right? You get told what to do. You shut your mouth and you do what you’re told, whether you agree with it or not, whether you think it’s great or not. It just doesn’t encourage as much free thinking as I think everybody wants, wants it to encourage, right? It’s very systematic. 

Are you, I’m just taking a shot in the dark based on how I am. Do you have issues when you aren’t the person in control of things, schedules, timetables? 

Not always, right? Not always. It depends though. If it’s, it just depends what it really does. But it is, for the most part, if I didn’t have my hands around it, I feel like I’m out of control. 

Yeah. So that drives me crazy. 

Yeah. It’s going to be interesting with Jameson’s driving in a couple years, being able to sit in the driver’s seat with a 16 year old and let him learn how to drive, right? And not have pedals under my feet. 

I don’t know if you’re religious, but you will be soon. What do you think you would have ended up without your family? 

I don’t know. Probably dead. To be quite honest, right? If I had chosen to not stop drinking, honestly, don’t think I would still be here. I would have. 

I ask because I think the same thing about my wife. Honestly.

I would have either had liver failure. I would have probably, you know, with the amount of stuff they put in cocaine, now fentanyl, I would have probably done too much. That could have happened. Drinking and driving. I could have been in a wreck. I could have killed someone else and been in prison. Like there’s so many different things that I think would have happened for sure. So very fortunate, I think to have learned my lessons and actually learned from them or trying to learn from them anyway. 

Well, it is really, really refreshing and it’s really, I think, uplifting, at least in my life to know how much one person can really move the needle. Like finding Anne and just came out of nowhere and… Thank God. Yeah. 

Yeah. 

Sometimes, sometimes I feel like the best things in life, you don’t control or choose. It just kind of happened to you. 

Yes. Yeah. And it’s, it is, it’s hard to relinquish control a lot of the time. I think as a parent, it’s definitely a lot harder to relinquish control. Over your kids, you know, there’s definitely a responsibility to make sure that they’re fed and clothed and stay alive as they’re growing up and try my best to teach them to be at least the humans that I think would be beneficial in society and be kind. But at the end of the day, it’s just still up to them what kind of humans they want to be. Right. And again, it’s, you can’t encourage free thinking and then be real rigid in structure. Sid and I try our hardest to practice active listening with the boys, at least for them to know that there is that process where they are heard, they are humans. Right. I think it’s, it’s not until later when most parents understand that their kids are humans, right? Initially they’re just kids. Same thing. Sit down, shut up, do what you’re told. 

Well, I mean, that’s, that’s huge. In all honesty, my parents, for all the good they did, they were very closed off, very kind of standoffish, be quiet, stay in the corner, do what you’re told. And me and them are in a good spot now, but a lot of therapy is just like unpacking. What did that do? Yeah. 

Yeah. 

And there’s just a little kid that needed to talk to someone. It’s nice to hear, you know, some people are out there doing that. 

I mean, my dad, I think my dad did it well with us. I just don’t think he really knew how to navigate a lot of the other emotional stuff. He had all his own things going on, right? He was a single parent. He had four kids. 

Yeah. 

Struggling with money, third world country. And then there are a lot of things, as things happen now in my adulthood with my kids, and I look back at the way he reacted versus the way I reacted. And I’m like, that, that man had to had so much more strength than I had to allow me to go through what I went through for my lessons, right? We’re going to be beneficial for me, rather than trying to control the situation and trying to control me and. 

Well, hey Shane, it was good talking to you? 

Yeah, you too, Andrew. 

You too. I’m really glad that I catch up. I’m really glad that you’re doing well. 

Yeah. And if you want, we can call again and chat again. Like anytime, I think it’ll be good. No, I know that the whole point of everything that you’re trying to do is you’re trying to see if people can actually still work in the restaurant industry and be happy and have work life balance, right? And I think there are a lot of factors for sure. A lot of factors. But I think it’s possible. I think it’s possible, but I think you have to have the right. 

Right, mix maybe. 

People are mature enough. I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s just a whole, you know, trying, you’re trying to fit pirates into suits, right? 

Yeah. 

Trying to make pirates out of the computer. 

What are they saying? Hey, if you don’t want to slip, don’t go somewhere slippery. You know, I wonder how much of my life got fixed, not working in a bar where there are lax about shift drinks. Yes. Doing that alone. Like 90% of my problems. 

Yeah. 

Man. Yeah. It’s a weird thing. Working in restaurants is strange. And that’s why, you know, that’s all I’ve ever done for the last 20 years. So I’ve seen some people that have done some really amazing things. And I’ve seen some people that I think were way worse positions than you. Honestly. 

Yeah. And that’s all I guess choice right. At every crossroad, you got to make a decision what’s best for you or not. 

I wish I could go back in time like 20 years and have like one hour to talk to myself. Yeah. Look here. You’re going to think this is fun, but you’re not going to enjoy this. Just think about what you’re doing. But we don’t get to split test life. 

No. Cool. 

I do want to ask if there’s one thing you could change, what would you have changed? Maybe nothing, but you never know. 

I mean, drinking a lot was definitely a problem. Not learning how to manage my emotions sooner was a problem. So if I could drink less and be more self aware, I think would have helped a lot more along the way. If I could have gotten out of my own way, I think I would have been just fine. 

Yeah. You know, we are all existing in a prison that we built ourselves. So yeah. I am going to give you a call at some point because I want to talk more, but cool. Thanks for being one of the first guests and it was awesome. I really wish if you ever go back into restaurants, please let me know because I will go to your restaurant after you get the support you need because there we go. I still think about the burger. Just so you know. 

I think if I ever do, I’m pretty excited to go be a dishwasher. I think I’m going to put together my playlist, get my headphones and just find a way to sling dishes and just smile. 

I was never happier than when I was bar back. Yeah. I still remember the first night I did it. Yeah. Yeah. 

Cool. 

Hey, cool. I’ll talk to you soon. Good to chat to you Andrew. Love you brother. Sweet. Cheers.

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