Nordstroms in downtown Vancouver is as sombre as a church in the mornings. I know this because I went there in the spring of 2022 to apply for a bartending job. The store’s typically ritzy theatrics – – wide aisles, waxed floors, racks of $180 collared shirts – – are tranquil and gloomy when the store is devoid of people.

It was 10:45. Tuesday. I needed to see manager Naomi Byrne about a bartending job, and, hopefully, make a memorable impression on her.

I had dressed myself in leftover TV clothes – – vintage shirt with pearl buttons, threadbare Harry Rosen blazer. I practiced my tepid smile in one of the blinding mirrors in the Nordstrom’s makeup department. Harsh truth: I have a lousy smile. My whole family can’t smile for beans for some inexplicable reason. Our teeth are fine. But our faces simply are not inclined to execute a warm smile. In every family photo from my childhood, you can see all four of us – – mom, dad, me, my brother – – coaxing our faces into unnatural shapes.

A security gate was blocking the restaurant’s entrance. Behind the shuttered gate, a series of leather banquet booths, as vacant as pews, stretched to the restaurant’s bright windows. A hollow-sounding muzak was coming from a set of invisible speakers. Ambiguous cooking smells were wafting from a kitchen somewhere within.

I was early. Therefore, I had time to kill – – fifteen minutes or so – – before I could make my formal arrival at 11 o’clock. Didn’t want to appear overanxious or desperate or anything, obviously. I found a quiet area near the department store’s elevators. I took a seat on one of the Nordstroms’ welcoming lounge chairs, and attempted to soothe myself – – in vain, of course – – with calming thoughts.

This is a silly restaurant job, I told myself. That’s all this is. I’ll charm this Naomi Byrne person and begin my training tout de suite… Look out, top o’ the world: Here I come.

That is not what happened. 

What happened was this: Naomi Byrne, looking enviably fresh faced and bright (and annoyingly young) after her presumably restful vacation, told me, point blank, that the position I was applying for had been filled. It was filled weeks ago. The ad for the job, which I had found online, was dated. Naomi, trying to be kind, asked me when I had last waited tables or tended bar. I told her it was in Chicago. In the mid 90’s. Naomi, who was sharp, did a bit of math in her head. Then she asked me a question that landed like a blow to my midsection: “So then,” she began, “you haven’t waited tables or bartended in nearly thirty years?”

She moved behind the hostess stand as she asked me this. Her eyes, I noticed, were a soft lavender color. She was pretty. Tired. Ambitious. Healthy. She blinked once, then waited for a response…

Was it possible that almost thirty years had passed since I’d waited tables? That couldn’t be right… Could it be right…? Because thirty years sounded like an absurd length of time.

Naomi said that if she did hire me – – which she didn’t think she could do at that moment in time (again: job was filled weeks ago, remember) – – then she’d have no alternative but to start me off as a lowly trainee. “You’d have to learn the ropes for a few weeks, before we could even consider assigning you a section,” she matter-of-factly explained. She handed me her business card. Told me that they might have “something” in the next month or two. That I should stay in touch for the moment. She said that there was plenty of turnover in the service business. Which gave me hope, obviously. Then, like the good Canadian she was, Naomi apologized for not being able to offer me anything tangible right now, then sent me on my merry way.

I retreated from the restaurant. My legs were numb. I felt like I’d been anesthetized somehow. This was not the result I’d hoped for, of course. This was not the barnstorming that I’d imagined it would be. I’d hoped that Nordstrom’s/Naomi would be dazzled by my forthrightness – – how I had just showed up, in person – – can you believe this guy? how bold he is? – – and how my forthrightness told them everything they needed to know about my character. I also assumed (hoped?) Naomi might have remembered me from my TV days. It was possible. People still stopped me in the streets from time to time…

Instead, what I learned was that it has been nearly thirty years since I’d last worked in a restaurant. Had three decades really elapsed since that time? It seemed that it had, yes.

And that if I was hired by Nordstrom’s, that I would have to be a 53-year-old trainee, fetching teas (side note: waiters loathe serving tea because it is cheap, and absurdly complicated – – there are what feels like a thousand peripherals – – lemons, teabags, fussy spoons – – involved in a tea service – – and, worst of all, it involves piping-hot water) for some mentor-waiter with ironic tattoos who would likely be twenty, twenty-five years my junior.

Back out on Robson street, just in front of the double Nordstroms doors, I doubled over right away. I braced my hands against my knees. I felt like throwing up on my worn-out TV shoes.

Then I gathered myself. Pulled my shit together as best I could. I promptly emailed Naomi Byrne from my phone before I boarded the R5 bus back home.

A response was waiting for me by the time I got back to my flat: “Thanks, but no thanks,” Naomi had written.

A gloom draped over me. A gloom that reminded me of the heavy curtains in my grandmother’s front parlour. A nagging gloom that I could not seem to unhitch myself from for some reason.

I thought I knew darkness, depression, all of that horseshit, from the medical stuff I went through back in 2014. Assumed I’d touched the cold bottom of the deepest, darkest pool imaginable. But this? This was something new and far more menacing. And this was only the beginning, unfortunately…

Also published on Medium.