Tammi Hunter - Le Bouillon
MARCH 17, 2020 © Right Here, Right Now.
I’m grateful for my boss, my family, and my second family who is here. It’s been super difficult, super hard. Having to say goodbye to people, not knowing where they will go and end up and hoping that they’ll be able to come back. I’m lucky that this team is really small, we only have about seven or eight in the front of house although we have a huge restaurant somehow we still do it. But, I only had to really release four people but those were really difficult. Even though I think a lot of people want to flee at the moment anyway and hide in their house , thats fine, but I worry about their money coming in or who they’re asking to help them or if they have anybody to help them. We tried to do our best to hold the people that really really needed it and look at the other people that had stability in other ways, so.
Normally I don’t cry eight times a day but now I am, and every time I do I feel a little bit better.
I know I’m down to 13 hours here and I don’t know what’s going to happen right, now but I’m always there for some food, or if you want to hang out with me, or a phone call, a Facetime. Everybody has been FaceTiming lately and just making sure that theres a little bit of joy in the day, a little bit of conversation and a laugh. I try to keep people upbeat so, the best thing I can say is hang in there, I hope we get through this.
Josh - “ It seems like with your personality you’re the type to really be there for people and uplift people, and be the strong one? Is it hard being the strong one right now?
…I’m kind of mom around here so, it’s not even playing a role anymore, its who I am. So yeah, tears happen, but we can cry together you know? That’s okay. So, it’s just part of me to do that. It’s not hard, it’s just hard watching everybody else.
Josh- What are you doing for yourself right now?
There’s not a lot to do at the moment. I mean I can only look at Facebook and watch the television and be disheartened for so long but, a hot bubble bath works and I did that two days ago so that helped me and silly things, like maybe a face mask or something like that just to get me out of the normal headspace that I’m in and make me feel pampered for a 5 minutes. That can just turn me around (laughs)
I think we have a date now…But at the moment I’m hopeful that people will continue to be able to take food from here, have the restaurants lights on. Like today we had a conversation about, take all of the things out of the fridges that don’t need to be used now, shut them off and you know, it’s almost a survivalist feeling. What are the stocked foods we have that we can brine and pickle, keep and hold and have them hold out for slow times. It’s a strange feeling to have to make pastrami out of that duck because we have to. “Having to” is the weirdest part about it, we have to pickle things, we have to use the things that we have now and jar them up and hold onto them and see if we can use them later…Pioneer times…Pull back all the resources you can and put out the best products you can at a different angle.
Yesterday they said April 30th, so maybe April 30th we’ll be back open? As for restaurants to have people back in them. At least that is the date right now…tomorrow what if it’s June 30th? When do you say “Give up”. I love our fighting energy here but when is it like…make it or break it time? Like either my boss is going to lose things and pay for things that aren’t going to come to fruition, and when do you call it? You know? It’s very crazy.
