“Imagine me dying a dishwasher?”

A man describes his professional progress from dishwasher to restaurant owner.

ΑΝ.: In the beginning I was washing dishes and to be honest, I was panicking. In my mind… there was the thought “Imagine me dying a dishwasher!” (Laughs). So, I was trying to learn the job, at least to become a cook and in my free time, constantly, when I didn’t have… dishes to wash, I was constantly getting next to the cook to learn the job. Finally, after three months I left there and I became a cook. I worked somewhere. Some… A large restaurant then in Montreal was giving an opportunity to new cooks. It was placing you at a certain place, meaning, one week in the salads, the other week somewhere else and finally I became a cook. After a year, I was lucky, I met a guy who was working together with me and he proposed that we go to… to open a business together. Restaurant. Oh… I told him of course that… I was in Canada only a year, I didn’t have much money, but he told me he had no issue. He’s going to lend me money, to become a partner, because he didn’t have any relatives in Canada either, he had grown fond of me because I was diligent… eh… a good kid, forever a kid we were then. And indeed, we bought a restaurant, which did very, very well.
RE.: Where was that?
ΑΝ.: We made a lot of money. It was Drummond and Maisonneuve, in Montreal.
RE.: Ah.
ΑΝ.: Downtown, in Montreal. Drummond and Maisonneuve. This restaurant, I kept until… ‘77. In ‘77 I sold it and opened another restaurant, in Laval. Generally, all my… life is in restaurant and bars.
RE.: Mhm…
ΑΝ.: Lately I had one… one large restaurant, one bar and one reception hall. But I sold them now, I’m seventy-one years old because it’s time to take a rest.