How my Dead Father Found me a Job

While the title smacks of hyperbole, of stretching and tossing truth like pizza dough for dramatic effect, my dad really did giftwrap a new career for me. Almost three years to the day after he died. Hand on heart.

                Hyatt Hotels was my employer for seventeen years, the length of an entire childhood—milk to Miller Lite. They took me in, doe-eyed and blinking, my first real job out of college in a post-9/11 haze. What stands out in that inaugural year of professional triumph is one Tuesday eight-hour-shift when all I did was fry chicken wings for 1000+ guests. But I learned perseverance and patience from that tedious poultry encounter and somehow managed to ascend to several different properties and positions throughout my Hyatt tenure, all while avoiding Buffalo marinade.

                By May of last year though, I was sacked—one of the thousands of hospitality employees upended after our industry evaporated like coyote piss in the desert. On shaky newborn legs, I embraced my fate, surrendering to a cruel reminder—that the assumption of being in control is merely kindling for some of life’s greatest bonfires. I had forgotten the old adage: When man plans, God laughs. To me though, the cackling sounded rather gleeful. Smug, even. Many days that spring, the celestial hilarity hurt my ears.

                Undeterred, I crammed my summer with writing, mothering, laundering facemasks, and swallowing translucent vitamin-D softgels after some HuffPost article claimed they were COVID’s kryptonite. I consulted with my career coach and my best friend from college who whipped my fossilized resume into shape and made it sing with key phrases like collaborative advisor and strategic analysis until it was opera-worthy. I honed my pitch and upgraded to LinkedIn Premium. I colored my damn parachute. I composed lyrical cover letters, regretting that the digital age precluded me from dabbing them in seductive fragrances like gardenia and baby freesia, a nod to Legally Blonde. By night, I perseverated, spinning my weaknesses into strengths like a circus contortionist, and by day, I networked with the level of gusto usually reserved for scouring the planet for the perfect bone marrow donor.

                Change in itself is no bunny hill. Career shifts can feel like Kilimanjaro. I learned that worthy guides and proper gear are essential. No one should be climbing it alone. 

                The challenge with professional reinvention is akin to running backwards—such a clumsy crusade to propel oneself away from everything familiar while relying on swift over-the-shoulder glances to avoid smacking straight into a wall. I hit that wall. Several times.  

                At my lowest point, I may have even engaged in a pep talk with my sister’s Goldendoodle. Although, when he responded by licking his privates, my destiny appeared rather grim. After all, the message was clear: Slush-pile resumes succumb to slow, anonymous deaths. The only way I was going to find a new job was through someone I knew. I just didn’t realize at the time that my someone wouldn’t be alive.  

                When my father died three years ago, I couldn’t have fathomed the many ways in which he would continue to impact my life. And not just in the cliché sense of carrying on his memory, his Olympic-sized competitive spirit, his grit-toothed lessons of fortitude, or even his devotion to carbohydrates. Instead, I’m referring to moments when I’ve been aware of some elusive, spectral presence stirring the pot or manipulating the marionette strings in my favor. I picture him in a cloudburst, hovering over me like a body guard with an oversized Costco umbrella. He’s there in service, unobtrusive and quiet as a luxury car engine, providing shelter and sanctuary. Sometimes, I even forget it’s raining.  

                By November, I was still coming up short in the career department . . . gradually . . . deliberately . . . combing for my next move. And while I was adamant about being intentional—rather than humping every available job post and ending up a miserable, hungover bride after her off-strip-Vegas wedding—I was also turning restless. Before I got the axe, I hadn’t fully grasped how much of my self-identity had been tied to my career, however unhealthy that may have been. In essence, my vocation permitted me the chance to adult (the verb-form), to travel, to carve out a space—separate from my primary responsibility as a mother. It was mine alone and it represented independence. Financial, as well as emotional.   

                A week before Thanksgiving, I received an email from my alma mater, advertising a joint virtual mixer with another university. Great, another Zoom meeting, I lamented, poised to swipe it the trash. But then the first line caught my eye. Stanford and Princeton Clubs of Chicago welcome all alumni to a casual and virtual meet ‘n greet. How odd. Pre-COVID, the Stanford Club had sponsored several downtown mixers with the entire Ivy League Club, but this one was solely with Princeton.

                Anyone who has sniffled through a Hallmark commercial knows that sentimentality is a powerful trigger. I thought of my dad, how proud he had been to identify as a Tiger. At times, his devotion to Princeton seemed almost excessive, until I would remember that we are all susceptible to irrationality when it comes to who and what we love. My dad’s college years were his halcyon days. He worshipped the place, attending every reunion, donating to the wrestling club, and drilling “Old Nassau” lyrics into his children’s brains, all the while clinging to the hope that his progeny might carry on the baton as a legacy. Spoiler alert: None of us did.  

                Still, it struck me that if he were alive—if his heart hadn’t failed him, if the depression hadn’t bulldozed him—this mixer might have been something we could have endeavored to do together, both quarantined in our own homes, separated by a mere mile due to the threat of contagion. And honestly, I didn’t have anything better to do that night. My calendar was as blank as my checkbook register.

                That Thursday, I donned a Princeton sweatshirt in his honor and my Stanford baseball cap over my dry-shampooed head. I resembled a cringe-worthy, pompous, poster-child of elitist privilege. In fact, I looked like a total ass. As two dozen Zoom-fatigued participants introduced themselves one by one, I thought about how my dad would have bragged about our little father-daughter duo, admitting how heart-broken he once was to have to sign tuition checks over to Stanford, sometimes even writing Princeton on the “PAY TO” line before voiding them in a less-than-subtle attempt at humor.

                 The truth is that I had always planned to follow in my dad’s orange and black footsteps, hurrying through those pre-American Revolution stone arches, literature books in hand, Lord Byron on my mind. But just as I was all primed to go, I veered west. California beckoned me as it must have those early explorers, promising an unchartered adventure that would be all my own. All through April of my senior year, my dad tried desperately to convince me otherwise. He wrote me letters, sat me down at the kitchen table for grueling, drawn-out talks, and even appealed to my sense of duty as a daughter. We were both twisted up inside, our love stretching thin like taffy, threatening to break. And when the time came and I decided, in an uncharacteristic act of adolescent defiance, to mail my declaration card to Palo Alto, he left the room, crestfallen.

                That Thursday, when it was my turn to say hello on the Zoom, I mentioned my dad, class of ’71, and his reverence for his alma mater. I told the group that Princeton’s campus was where he had reached his athletic peak—somehow juggling three collegiate sports—and where had he earned notoriety in the form of a wall-of-fame photo at Buxton’s Ice Cream shop after consuming twenty-four scoops of butter pecan. In one sitting. The man was a legend.

                As the group divided into random breakout rooms and we settled into ice-breaking chit-chat, someone mentioned that his company was hiring, a position within my parabolic searchlight: Customer Success. When the clock started ticking down, marking the final seconds before being transported back to the main gallery, this person kindly offered to pass on my resume to an internal recruiter. In the days that followed, I honestly didn’t give it much thought beyond gratefulness.

                Until I got the follow-up phone call.

                Two months and two interviews later, I was prepping for a virtual final-round with this very company. I positioned a photo of my dad, smiling right above my webcam, as a reminder to look directly at the camera. In the picture, he’s sporting a suit and tie. His hair still has its dark pigment and his cheeks are two Maraschino cherries, rosy from his drink—a Tom Collins—or perhaps, from the confined heat. The man produced more sweat than a Bikram yogi in a rubber suit. At the apex of his smile, I can spot his false tooth. My dad hung out with me that day in my office for four hours and eleven minutes. And at the end, he held his hand out, palm-up, before folding up the umbrella. He wasn’t just smiling at me; he was beaming with pride.

                This past week, I accepted the company’s formal job offer, celebrating with a double scoop of butter pecan. We can’t all be legends, but the view from atop Kilimanjaro looks pretty darn worth the climb. 

                In reality, my father would have never been on that alumni Zoom with me. Computers terrorized him more than chunky tomatoes in marinara sauce—which should not be underestimated. Only my mom could have actually gotten him logged on. And yet, he managed to help orchestrate my path to employment from beyond the grave.

                And that generous soul on the virtual mixer who forwarded on a resume as a favor and professional courtesy to a perfect stranger . . . he earned his bachelor’s degree at Princeton. If that isn’t divinely paternal intervention, I’m not sure what qualifies.