A message from Eky

Below is a piece from Eky. Eky was working with us for a little over a month in January 2008.

Eky,

We miss you at tidbit and we wish you all the success! We hope that one day you will move back to Seattle. Please stay in touch and keep sending us some fun updates!

-Nic and John

After my first month and half of work in Seattle (while I was on vacation at my university in Brazil), I realized that my plans of visiting Vancouver and later living in Santiago de Chile for an academic semester would not come into reality if I didn't start to look for a second job. Here's the challenge: how to convince the owners of Tidbit about hiring me for just a bit more than a month? My first day as a dishwasher quickly demonstrated that I was not quick enough. "If you can't be faster, I'm not sure if this job is for you" was one of the feedbacks in the end of that day. But I had in mind that it's always tough to start something you've never done before. Fortunately, Nic and John decided to give me another chance.

It was a tough job, but it wouldn't kill me. Besides, it'd be just 3 times a week, to replace a shift. Since then, every time I enter a restaurant I try to figure out who is behind the kitchen making that entire environment happen properly. John was always trying to relax me by singing in German and by making me think about special words in Portuguese to teach him. "Saudade" (it's like nostalgia but with the hope that what happened in the past may happen again in the future) remains in my heart as what I feel about Seattle and Tidbit.

My trip to Vancouver was awesome and right now I'm in Chile having some incredible experiences. I'm definitely not the same person and my bosses at Tidbit have a great contribution to the new paradigms of respect for the human being I've achieved.

Eky Barradas, 22, International Relations student