TALES OF MARTY Part 2

The next day, he just appeared at the front counter at 7:30. Nobody could actually remember seeing him arrive. He was just there. “I know I am early, I like to be early. Where do you want me?”


“We’ll get to that in a bit, first, we need to handle the paper work.”


I sat him down with our company handbook so he would know the rules of the road. What we expected of him and what he could expect from us. I could have sworn he was an Evelyn Wood speed reader. He was covering those many pages at a startling rate.


At the end, we have a form that highlights the really important sections of the employee manual. The form requires that the employee acknowledge that they read and understood what was in each of the sections. Martin initialed all the sections and signed the form.


As with all new employees, we tour them through the building to familiarize them with where everything is. At different places along the way, I would stop and describe how and why we do things a certain way. Martin was expressionless during the whole tour. I can’t say he heard a word I said.


He was ready for work.


Martin came to work in blue sweat pants, a clean white t-shirt and black tennis shoes.


We use what is called 4-Way aprons in our restaurant. That means there are four different clean faces on each unit. You turn them around and refold them to get a different face. You strap the thing around your middle, run the apron strings around you and tie them in a bow.


When Martin put that first apron on, we knew we would be amused with this character. His barrel chest and large belly did not lend themselves to conventional expectations. Martin’s shape suggested that the apron would either be worn below the gut or above the gut. It was clear that below the gut was out, that left above the gut.


Imagine a large round ball. You are trying to figure out how to strap an apron onto it. Now, that was comical.


As Martin was trying different approaches, we both had to laugh. I thought it was a good sign that Martin could laugh. In the end, the apron was strapped on and he looked like a very pregnant woman with an apron. It was almost up to his armpits. It had to be high or it would slide down the front. But it was secured in place and that was what we were looking for.


I took Martin over to the prep area where Linda H was working to introduce her to Martin. Her eyes got big when she got a good look at him, but she stepped right up and reached out to shake his hand and welcome him to the party.


That act broke the ice for Martin and Linda. It wasn’t long before she had him comfortable in the job. We gave him different jobs to do to measure his skills. In every case, he was more skilled than our other cooks. From that standpoint, we were feeling okay.


The fact that he could cook breakfast meant that Linda wouldn’t be the only one in the house with that skill set. I was certainly relieved about that since I hadn’t cooked eggs since 1973.


Understand, we have only been open about a week. Linda was still learning to do things my way, the other cooks were learning, but if you don’t have cooking skills, the first thing you need to learn is the basics before you can learn my spin on the food. If I wanted Martin to be of value, I would need to spend time with him to see what he needed to get up to speed.


It was apparent from the first day, he knew his way around a kitchen. There were times when he wanted to push me out of the way because his experience gave him the ability to know most of the steps, the thing he lacked was the specific knowledge of our products. If there is one thing that differentiates our restaurant from others is the way we do our burgers. If I had one thing to teach Martin, it would be cooking burgers my way.


For much of the time he worked for us, we struggled with his tendency to cook food his way rather than my way. Many times our customers commented about how we had changed the burgers and I traced the problem back to Martin.


It was only after he had worked for us for six months that I figured out that Martin was “special”. Up until that time I thought of him as quirky, but I never thought of him in that way.



One example I can use was when he came to me to request time off for a Special Olympics event. He needed a weekend off for a basketball tournament. I knew of members of our family that worked with Special Olympics projects and how they needed volunteers to work with them to manage events. I thought Martin was volunteering to help. It was after the event that he described the games and how his team fared that I discovered he was a competitor and it began to dawn on me.


That would explain a lot. It didn’t change the fact that he was “that” way, but I could understand the reasons better.


After we had been open for a couple months, we decided we needed white shirts for all the kitchen staff. We wanted to project the right image to the public when they saw our staff members in the building.


We asked the laundry company to get the pertinent information for the staff members and have enough shirts for each cook to have one clean shirt for every day. If cooks have a clean shirt every day, they will look sharp. That was the plan.


With Marty, his shirts were pretty large and his shape didn’t lend itself to tucking in the tails so he looked more like a guy in a white smock. After a while, he told me the aprons didn’t really fit to well. Could he work without an apron?


I guess if the expectation was for the staff to be sharp, we had already failed on that mission.


What Martin really needed was a raincoat. As he worked along, his shape got in the way of a lot of kitchen stuff and you could expect that Martin would have his clean shirt in sad shape within an hour of the start of his shift. One day it would be ketchup, the next day it would be mustard.



Martin never spilled stuff on his shirt that would be clean up easily. In the Charlie Brown comic strip they had that character called “Pig Pen”. We had Marty. He could trash a clean shirt before you could blink.


Part of the process of getting to know a new employee is that question and answer patter while you are working side by side. You ask simple questions to make conversation.


“So, Martin, are you from around here?”


“No, my family is from Michigan.”


“Do you see them often?”


“Sure, we all live here in Snohomish. Well, not my kids.”


“So you have kids?”


“Yeah, I have two daughters, one is a brain surgeon, the other is a lawyer. They live in Michigan still.”


“Do you see them often?”


“No, I haven’t seen either of them in ten years or so.”


Martin was 41 years old when he came to work for us. Figure out the math on that one.


“Oh, that is too bad.”


That was the first sign that Martin had a creative imagination. The thing about Martin was that over his several years working for us, his “stories” stayed consistent. The details of his stories were the same even after multiple telling.


One thing about Martin that we determined to be true was his passion for bowling. He bowled regularly at several locations. If I ever went to any of his locations, the people all acknowledged that they knew him or knew of him. He was one of those bowlers that showed up with a suitcase full of bowling balls and other “equipment” so he would be prepared for changing lane conditions.


One winter day we were working together and the conversation was about how much snow there was in the mountains at the time. Marty told me that he was excited about it too because on his day off, he was planning a helicopter skiing trip somewhere in the Cascades. “Yeah, me and my friend will jump out of the helicopter as it hovers near the top of this mountain. You know there is no place for it to land so we have to get our skis on before we jump and then hit the snow and be skiing.”


I think my eyes grew pretty large upon hearing that story. Martin’s physique doesn’t bring to mind Jean Claude Killy. But what the heck, there are some wide bodies that ski. Sounds good to me.


“That must be exciting and expensive!”


“Yeah, me and my buddy we do it all the time.”


“Isn’t that expensive? How do you pay for it?”


“With the Microsoft money.”


“You have Microsoft stock?”


“Oh yeah, when I was in high school, I took ten thousand dollars and bought shares. I think I have a couple million dollars worth today.”


“That’s incredible. So when you want to go skiing, you just sell a little?”


“Well, I have the money in a trust, but I’m loaded.”


“So why do you drive a broken down old car and live paycheck to paycheck?”


“I just want to be a normal person.”


I can tell you there was nothing “normal” about Marty.


I look back on the several years that Marty worked for me and he is one of the most memorable employees I ever had. Whenever I think about Marty a smile comes to my face. He was truly an unforgettable character.


Since he came to work for us at a critical point in our history, his contribution is particularly meaningful to me. I really appreciated his help at a time when I needed a cook. There wasn’t a time when I gave him an assignment that he didn’t throw himself into it 100%. From the time he came to work until he went home, he was working. I didn’t have to check on him to make sure he was working.


As a matter of fact, there were times when I would find ten times more produce prepped for dinner than we needed. “Say Martin, what’s the deal with all the salad in the cooler?”


“Oh that, I was just working along and forgot to stop.”


“So what are we gonna do with all this salad mix?”


He had this look on his face like I had asked him the most profound question.


One day, Martin came to me to talk.


“I’m giving you my two week notice. I am going to work for a company in Kirkland doing janitor work. I will be managing the night shift for this company and will be supervising 200 employees. I hate to leave you out on a limb, but this is a great deal for me.”


And Marty was gone.