Frants Tsyvinskyi/Getty Images
- I couldn't find a job after college, so I started working at a Tex-Mex restaurant.
- While working there, I fell in love with my coworker.
- We got married two years later and now have two children.
The last thing I expected after graduating from college and moving back home with my parents was to find my soulmate.
I took a job waiting tables at a local Tex-Mex restaurant while I killed time applying to the Peace Corps. Despite thinking I could leverage my English major into a job shuffling books at Barnes and Noble, they ignored my application. This restaurant was the only place I found willing to hire a rookie waiter. I intended to put my head down, serve fajitas, and get as far away from my hometown as soon as possible.
My trainer was a young guy named Benjamin, who was in a similar limbo as he navigated the aftermath of leaving college without the degree he thought he'd have by then.
He would later become my husband.
As my social life dwindled, the restaurant became my sole source of socialization
I spent my early weeks diligently studying the menu, learning the difference between the San Juan and the San Luis plates and the best way to upsell a margarita.
As a recent college graduate entering the ranks, I was an anomaly. Most of my peers were in school trying to degree their way out of the service industry. I felt like a cautionary tale about liberal arts majors.
At my first mandatory all-staff meeting, the general manager commented how many people meet their future spouses working at that very restaurant. I rolled my eyes. Dressed in a starched white shirt and black Dickies, covered in guacamole and reeking of the restaurant's signature garlic butter sauce, I could not imagine a less romantic ambiance. Plus, workplace romances did not happen while bustling trays of chips and salsa. That was for stints abroad between expats.
But my social life had quickly shrunk to a minimalist carousel of work and evenings watching television with my family. But a coworker invited me for drinks after work one night, and I said yes. I put on my Italia shirt from my summer backpacking through southern Europe and sat beside Ben. Later, he would tell me he made a point to sit next to me, hovering his arm behind my back like Keanu Reeves.
I passed my shifts, swapping plans and gossiping with my coworkers as we entered our dinner orders or ran credit cards. We would commiserate about bad tips and bad behavior.
As various friendships grew, I found myself getting especially excited to have my shifts overlap with Ben. We shared a sense of humor and worldview I found refreshing as I navigated this first precarious baby step into adulthood.
Ben and I only got closer
About a month after my first after-work round of drinks, I asked Ben to be my plus-one at a friend's wedding. He said yes, and I got nervously excited about something that might be more than friendship. Still unsure about this nascent workplace flirtation, I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed his company as much out of work as in. He also easily got along with my friends, and it was great for just the two of us to spend time together. It was an enchanting evening of dancing, conversation, and laughter. By the end of the night, we kissed.
Our low-key courtship continued as we worked together. We traded bits of our stories and developed inside jokes. He eventually asked me to join him as he applied to finish his degree at a local college, and he drove me to my Peace Corps interview in a city four hours away. The more we moved toward the future, the more we saw each other as inexorable pieces in each other's lives.
Ben and I have now built a happy life together
Less than two years after we started working together, we married. Our eldest took her first step before her aunt's rehearsal dinner —held at the same restaurant where Ben and I met. As fate would have it, my sister-in-law and her husband met at the same job. Two kids and almost two decades later, I guess I have to admit our general manager was right — at least about this one thing.
What appeared as a desert for flirtation was actually a hotbed for rom-com-level romance to blossom. Something about sharing the everyday minutiae in a workplace fosters the kind of deep friendship where love thrives.