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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Mark Des Cotes, I proposed to my wife as the ball was dropping on New Year’s Eve and she didn’t give me her answer until the following year. I believe if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share how standing my ground got me both fired from my job as well as promoted.
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What I Learned Yesterday:
Tonight is New Year’s Eve and I’m sure many of you will be out celebrating with friends and family having a good time and perhaps hoisting a glass of champagne at the stroke of midnight. Although this story isn’t about New Year’s it is about a party I attended many years ago.
I got my first job as a dishwasher in a local restaurant. It was one in a chain of movie themed restaurants that doesn’t exist anymore. They served a wide variety of food and were known for their nachos and 10 cent all you can eat wings every Wednesday night. There was also a bar in the restaurant and a DJ booth where the hits belted out every weekend. It was considered the popular night spot in Cornwall at the time.
I was pretty shy and kept mostly to myself while working. I talked a bit with the staff, but I was only 16 years old and the waitresses and cooks were all over 19 so we didn’t have much in common. They’d often talk about the night clubs they went to in Ottawa or Montreal but I was too young for that. BTW, The drinking age in Ontario is 19, and in the province of Quebec, which is only 30 minutes from here it’s 18. So I was the only one there that wasn’t of legal drinking age. Well, that actually wasn’t true, I had a school friend that I helped get a job there as a dishwasher as well but he worked opposite shifts to me so I never saw him there.
At the end of November the first year I worked there, one of the waitresses decided to throw an impromptu staff Christmas party at her house. The manager was nice enough to close the restaurant for the night so nobody would have to miss the party. I wasn’t really the party type and wasn’t planning on going but my friend Jay, the other dishwasher, talked me into it. That was the first time I had really seen any of my coworkers outside of the restaurant. As you can probably guess, they weren’t the same people.
I don’t know if I lived a sheltered life to that point or not but before that party I had never really seen anyone drunk. My dad on occasion would have one too many rye and cokes but he would just smile and hug us a lot. So this was my first exposure “stupid drunk”. People falling down passed out, cooks and waitresses that barely talked at the restaurant getting it on in the corner. Even my friend Jay, also 16 years old, discovered he liked Vodka.
I was offered many drinks but turned them all down. I didn’t drink back then just like I don’t drink today. But that’s a story for another time. I spent most of that night replenishing snacks, picking up empty bottles and cans and making sure those who had passed out were comfortable.
Some time after midnight, Darwin, the assistant manager at the restaurant and the guy I reported to, decided the party was too lame and that he wanted to go to another party he heard about. Now Darwin could barely stand as he grabbed his helmet and stumbled towards his motorcycle. A few people told him he was in no condition to drive but he just waived them off saying he was fine.
Now this was the mid 80s and drinking and driving wasn’t the big deal it is today. Not that it wasn’t a problem, it’s just the consequences for getting caught were pretty light compared to what would happen to you today if convicted for DUI. M.A.D.D. was still fairly new and we didn’t have the education and exposure to know how big a problem it was. But in lieu of all that, I still knew Darwin was in no condition to drive, let along on a motorbike.
I followed him outside to his bike on the pretence of wanting to see it. I lied to him saying I was interested in getting one. It was one of those slick racing bikes with the word Ninja written on the side. I told him I had never had a good look at his and wanted to see it up close. I asked for the keys to start it up and Darwin handed them to me. Instead of putting them in the bike I put them in my pocket and started back for the house.
He called at me to come back but I told him no, I wasn’t going to let him drive. He started after me, yelling choice words that I wont repeat on this podcast. This drew attention from inside the house and soon there was a crowd outside surrounding us as Darwin was threatening to punch my lights out if I didn’t give him his keys back.
I was terrified. I had never been in a fight before, let along with someone bigger and 10 years older than me. But trembling, I stood my ground. I told Darwin that if he touched me I’d call the cops. A couple of the cooks grabbed and held me, encouraging Darwin to have at it, but luckily a couple of the waitresses were reasoning with him not to hit the kid.
He backed down, but still demanded his keys. In this battle I had no backers. People were telling me to just give the keys back to him. Darwin could barely stand up he was so drunk, and there was no way I was going to give the keys back. So in a desperate move I dropped them down a sewer grate on the road.
If I thought Darwin was angry before I was mistaken. He charged and came very close to tackling me. It took several people to hold him back. One of the waitresses, who was pregnant and hadn’t been drinking calmed him down and offered to drive him home. He told me not to bother coming in to work the next day. I was fired.
I didn’t get any sympathy from my coworkers. In fact, most of them told me it was a stupid thing I did and how they should have never invited a kid to the party.
I was devastated, I went home shortly after not knowing what to tell my parents. I had been told by everyone at the party what a horrible person I was and I had just been fired from my first job. I may have cried myself to sleep that night.
The next day I received a phone call from the restaurant manager. He hadn’t been at the party but had heard what had happened between me and Darwin. He told me I hadn’t been fired and to come in for my 3 o’clock shift.
Now, the terror I felt the night before was nothing compared to what I felt after that phone call. I had to go in and face all those people from the party, including the assistant manager. I felt so nauseous that I almost called in sick.
When I pulled into the parking lot one of the cooks that had held me for Darwin was getting out of his car. He waited to walk in with me. To my surprise, he apologized for his actions and said he thought it was a pretty cool thing I had done. He knew Darwin was wasted but didn’t have the courage to stand up to his boss. Walking into the restaurant I was greeted with similar comments. The other cooks congratulated me on standing up for myself. The waitresses told me I was very brave. I even got a hug from a few of them, and for a 16 year old boy, getting a hug from an attractive older woman was quite something.
Darwin found me alone in the staff room getting ready for my shift. He didn’t say a word as he approached me. Instead, he grabbed and lifted me off the ground in a huge bear hug. He told me that he had never been as drunk as he was the night before, the effects of which were still evident on him. After being dropped off at home he was too out of it to navigate the stairs to his front door and ended up passed out on his front walkway. It wasn’t until he woke up several hours later that he remembered his house key was in the sewer back at the party house and he had to break a window to get in.
He thanked me for saving his life. He recognized that he was in no condition to drive the night before and would probably be dead if it wasn’t for me.
The story got back to the restaurant’s owner and as a thank you for looking out for his staff he promoted me to busboy, a position that came with a pay raise as well as a small cut of the waitresses tips.
The staff treated me differently after that. I was still the young kid but from that point on, I was part of the gang.
Here’s what I learned
Standing up for what you believe in isn’t always easy. In fact it can be downright terrifying sometimes. Drinking and driving wasn’t talked about much back then but we still knew of the consequences. And yet those at the party were ready to let Darwin drive in his condition rather than stand up to him. After all, it was his problem, not there’s. I was young but I knew that someone that could barely stand on his own two feet probably couldn’t ride a bike that well. I don’t know if I would have acted differently if he had been driving a car instead of a motorcycle. I like to think I would have acted the same.
It’s not easy to face adversity and not back down. Especially against those who hold a power of authority over you. Not to mention all those people telling me to just give Darwin his keys back and then turning on me when I dropped them down the sewer. But I knew my actions were the right ones and I did the best I could in the situation to follow through on them, prepared to face the consequences.
Some of the greatest changes throughout history came on the heels of someone standing up to adversity. Now I’m not saying my actions compare to some of history’s great standoffs, but whenever you have something you truly believe in, something you know in your heart is right, it’s worth standing your ground for.
So while you’re out celebrating the New Year tonight I want you to keep two things in mind. If you are drinking, please find an alternative mode of transportation. A few extra bucks for a cab is well worth it. And secondly, if you see someone about to drink and drive, please have the courage to face and stop them. It doesn’t matter what they or others may think of you. Your actions could save lives.
BTW, the following morning the waitress who’s house we partied at was able to retrieve the keys from the sewer using a metal clothes hanger and returned them to Darwin. So I didn’t have to feel guilty about that for too long.
I’m Mark Des Cotes and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
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