Only My Job

I sat in a fancy restaurant in Paris. It was my first time in the city. The place was ridiculously pretentious, with absurd prices and portions that seemed designed for people much smaller than me.

I was smoking – it was still legal to smoke indoors back then – and tapped the ash into a large silver ashtray that looked more like a small bucket.

After a while, the head waiter, who looked like Hercule Poirot, approached me with an expression of barely concealed outrage. He snatched the bucket-sized ashtray from my table and replaced it with an ordinary glass one. Then he carried the bucket away, waving his arms at his colleagues and muttering a stream of French that sounded suspiciously like curses.

A little later, I saw the waiter carrying the bucket back into the dining room. It had been washed clean of my ashes and was now filled with ice and a bottle of wine. He placed it beside another customer with the same exaggerated ceremony he seemed to reserve for everything in that restaurant.

I hated the city.

Most people loved Paris. They talked about it as if it were the most romantic place on Earth. But I wasn't there for romance. I was there on a business trip. I was a computer engineer, and at the height of the dot-com bubble my company had sent me to help a French technology firm.

In my spare time, I wandered around the city and did my best to be polite and respectful, but I rarely got the same treatment in return. Most people didn't speak English, and the few who did seemed determined not to use it. They would answer my questions in rapid-fire French and then look annoyed when I failed to understand.

I even tried learning a handful of useful phrases. It didn't help. Whenever I spoke French ­– with my unmistakably foreign accent – people either pretended not to understand me or immediately switched to a slower, louder version of French, as if volume alone might bridge the language gap.

To me, Paris was a nasty city filled with nasty people.

When I returned to my hotel, a message from my boss was waiting for me at the front desk.

Call me. It's urgent. Any time.

I called him immediately.

"Hi," he said. He sounded tired, defeated. "I'm sorry to tell you this over the phone, but the company filed for bankruptcy today."

For a moment, I said nothing. The words didn't make sense. I hadn't even known we were in trouble.

"Are you still there?" he asked. "Look, I know it's a shock, but the whole market is coming apart. Investors are pulling their money out. Companies are collapsing left and right. We weren’t even the first company today."

"Wait," I said. "What does that mean for me?"

A dry laugh escaped him.

"What does it mean for you? There is no 'you.' There is no 'me.' There is no company."

I felt my stomach tighten. “I.. I gave my life to this… You know that, I worked twenty four seven for this startup!” I said in a futile attempt to salvage something.

"You are lucky your plane ticket and hotel were paid for in advance," he said. "The bank froze everything this morning. Company accounts, credit cards, assets – everything. Don't even try using the company card. It won't work."

"But how...? What happened?" I stammered.

"That's just how things are right now," he said. "I'm sorry. I've got twenty more calls to make."

The line went dead. I stood there for several minutes, the receiver still pressed against my ear, trying to make sense of what had just happened.

The company was gone. Just like that.

A few hours earlier, I had been an engineer on a business trip to Paris. Now I was unemployed.

I didn't sleep much that night.

The next morning, I woke up early, showered, shaved, and put on the same shirt and tie I had worn the day before. For a few minutes, I moved through the routine automatically, as if nothing had happened.

I picked up my bag and headed for the door. My hand was already on the handle when I froze.

There was nowhere to go. The realization hit me all over again.

The company that had sent me to Paris no longer existed. The project no longer existed. By now, the people I had worked with were probably clearing out their desks, carrying cardboard boxes to their cars.

I put the bag back down.

Besides, getting to the client's office would require a taxi, and I wasn't even sure I could afford one anymore.

So instead, I left the hotel and stepped out into the Paris morning.

My hotel was only a short walk from Place des Vosges, so I headed there and sat down on one of the benches.

Unlike the previous few days, which had been cold and gray, the sun was finally out. The square was full of people strolling beneath the trees, talking, reading, or simply enjoying the weather.

My stomach growled.

An old man stood nearby, scattering crumbs for the pigeons. For a brief moment, I found myself watching the bread instead of the birds.

Relax, I told myself. You had a decent dinner last night. You're not going to starve.

A young Frenchman sat down on the bench beside me. He pulled a baguette from his bag, along with a wedge of cheese, and began preparing himself a quick lunch. It was almost absurdly French.

I must have been staring, because he looked up and caught my eye.

"Tu en veux?" he asked.

"Pardon," I said with my broken French. "Euh... je ne parle pas français."

He smiled.

"That's okay," he replied in heavily accented English. "Here. It's too much for me anyway."

He cut off a piece of bread, added a generous slice of cheese, and handed it to me.

I hesitated.

Less than twenty-four hours ago, I had been an engineer on an overseas business trip. Now a stranger was offering me lunch out of pity.

I took the bread.

"Merci," I said.

He smiled, nodded, and after a few minutes got up and walked away.

I sat there for a while, holding the bread in my hands before finally taking a bite.

I spent the rest of the day wandering around the city and making phone calls back home, hoping to catch friends or family who might be able to wire me a little money.

No luck. Maybe tomorrow.

Toward evening, I found myself in a small park. Families were out enjoying the last light of the day. Children chased pigeons across the grass while their parents watched from nearby benches. There was something strangely comforting about it. For a few minutes, I managed to forget my own problems.

Then I noticed someone not far away. He looked familiar. A second later I realized why.

It was Hercule Poirot himself – the waiter from the restaurant.

He was holding the hand of a little girl, pointing something out in the sky.

I quickly looked away. Too late. He had already seen me.

For a few seconds we both stared, each trying to remember where we knew the other from. Then recognition spread across his face. He smiled and walked over.

I briefly considered pretending I hadn't seen him, but it was too late for that.

"You were at our restaurant yesterday, weren't you?" he asked in surprisingly good English.

"Yes," I said. "I'm sorry about the incident with the ashtray."

He laughed, which caught me completely by surprise.

"Don't worry about it. You wouldn't believe how many tourists mistake that wine cooler for an ashtray."

He gently rested his hand on the little girl's shoulder.

"This is my daughter, Marie." Then he turned to her. "Marie, dis bonjour au monsieur."

"Bonjour, monsieur," she said shyly before hiding behind her father's leg.

"Bonjour, Marie," I replied with what little French I knew. Then I looked back at her father. "Sorry," I said. "My French is terrible."

"It's wonderful that you even try," he said with a laugh. "French is a terrible language to learn."

I smiled.

"So," he asked, "what brings you to Paris? Business? Or are you simply enjoying this beautiful weather?"

For a moment, I considered lying.

"Yes," I could have said. "Just taking a walk after work."

Instead, I just stood there. The words wouldn't come.

Everything that had happened over the past twenty-four hours seemed to land on me all at once. The company was gone. My job was gone. I barely had enough money to get through another day. And when I finally got home, I'd be unemployed, drowning in debt, with no idea what came next.

I looked away. To my horror, I felt my eyes filling with tears. I covered my face with one hand.

Without saying a word, he crouched beside Marie and whispered something to her. He slipped a few coins into her hand. She smiled and skipped off toward a nearby ice cream stand.

Only after she was out of earshot did he turn back to me. His smile was gone.

"What happened?" he asked quietly.

I told him everything that had happened over the past twenty-four hours. He listened to me without interrupting. When I finished, he rested a hand on my shoulder and gently led me to a nearby bench. We sat down.

A moment later, Marie came back, happily licking an ice cream cone. She climbed onto the bench beside her father as if nothing in the world could possibly be wrong.

"You know," he said after a long silence, "something very similar happened to me. I wasn't always a waiter."

I raised my eyebrows questioningly.

He smiled. "I used to work in IT for a bank."

"So you know computers?"

"I knew enough to think I knew everything," he said.

I couldn't help smiling.

"Those were the dot-com years. Everyone had an idea. Everyone thought they were going to build the next Microsoft. Investors threw money at anything that had a website. So I quit my job."

He shrugged.

"I raised money. Hired people. Rented an office. Bought equipment. For a while, I thought I had made the smartest decision of my life."

"And then?"

"You know what then. The world remembered that gravity exists."

He smiled as he said it, but there was sadness behind it.

"The market collapsed. Investors disappeared overnight. The company died before it had a chance to become anything."

He watched Marie for a moment before continuing.

"She was three back then. Her little brother was only a few months old."

"What did you do?"

"What everyone does." He shrugged again. "I looked for work."

"And..."

"I found the restaurant."

"Weren't you disappointed?"

"At first?" He laughed softly. "Of course." Then he looked at me. "But something funny happened."

"What?"

"I discovered that my children didn't care whether I was a startup founder or a waiter." He smiled at Marie. "To them, I was just Dad."

He turned back to me.

"And I realized something else. I hadn't lost my life." He paused. "I had only lost my job."

He smiled again.

"And between the two, there's a very big difference." He nodded toward Marie.

"Besides... I rather like this place." Then he grinned. "Well... as long as people don't use the wine cooler as an ashtray."

I laughed, feeling my face grow warm.

"Listen," he said. "I suppose you don't have any dinner plans."

I smiled and shrugged.

"Come to my house."

"Oh... I don't know."

"Oh, come on," he said, waving a hand. "It's nothing fancy. The food isn't as elegant as at the restaurant, but the portions are bigger. And if you ask me, it tastes even better."

He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket, wrote down an address, and handed it to me.

"Eight o'clock."

I looked at the paper. "But... how am I supposed to find it?"

He looked genuinely puzzled. "You ask people."

"I don't speak French."

"Let me tell you a secret." He smiled. "Most French people speak more English than they're willing to admit. They're just afraid of making mistakes." He shrugged. "Speak slowly. Be polite. They'll help you."

I folded the paper and slipped it into my pocket. "Thank you."

He nodded, took Marie's hand, and started walking away. After a few steps, he turned around.

"Oh... one more thing."

"Yes?"

"I know what you're thinking. I look exactly like Hercule Poirot."

I couldn't help laughing.

"They tell me that all the time." He smiled. "My name is Paul."

Then he waved and disappeared down the path with Marie.

I walked back toward my hotel to change for dinner. The problems waiting for me at home hadn't disappeared. I still had no job. I still had no idea what came next. But somehow, they no longer felt quite as heavy. After all, as Paul had said, I hadn't lost my life.

Only my job.

The sun was setting over Paris, painting the old buildings in shades of gold. For the first time since I'd arrived, the city no longer seemed cold.

It felt... welcoming.