Remembering three female leaders from my early years.

Happy International Women’s Day! Wherever you are, whoever you are, I wish you a wonderful day. Many amazing women shape our lives, and I am sure more than a few of them have been your leaders, or at least leaders that you have worked with. I want to share with you three female leaders from my earlier years. I do not think about them nearly enough, but they helped me get off to a great start in life and deserve a special bit of recognition for putting up with me, before the H.R. profession kicked me into line.

Miss Howell, my head of Year Four.

Perpetually bright eyed and bushy tailed, Miss Howell would literally dance into the classroom, singing songs such as “Moving on Up” by M People and James Brown’s “I Feel Good”. Now that I write this, I wonder if she was not just one of my favourite teachers, but also responsible for sowing the musical seeds which would grow into my unfaltering preference for genres such as soul, nu-disco and electronica.

Miss Howell (regrettably her first name is long forgotten) was one of those amazing teachers who really, really loved what she did. You would never just get a lesson. Miss Howell would use every trick in the book to make learning as exciting and evocative as she could.

I remember when she was teaching us about the rich history of Cheltenham, my hometown. A week later, seemingly not content with bringing Cheltenham to life using her A-game storytelling skills, Miss Howell took us on an impromptu walking field trip to the town centre. Here, street by street, she regaled us with stories and anecdotes of all the quirks that I love about Cheltenham and proudly tell people about today. Stories like how one of the thirty-two Montpellier Caryatids are fake, and should you walk by this charming row of statues and knock on them one by one, one would sound suspiciously hollow.

She also told us how, thanks to everyone’s favourite local spy base, G.C.H.Q., Cheltenham was second on the Soviets’ list of places to launch a nuclear strike in the United Kingdom, only after Whitehall in London. That little piece of trivia kept me awake for a few nights. After an afternoon telling us about architectural styles of window arches, she quizzed me on one building on St. George’s Road.

“Mike, what kind of window is that?”

“Double glazed?” I replied.

(But don’t hold that against her).

Debbie, my restaurant manager at Bella Pasta.

Ah, the stories I can tell you about Bella Pasta. I have promised my partner I will write a book about them one day. Debbie was recruited to replace a manager who was dismissed because he and a few waiters had taken all the alcohol bottles down from the bar shelves and were having a private party after closing the restaurant one Saturday evening. Well, it wasn’t too private, as they were having this soirée at a table by the largest (double glazed?) window in the restaurant, at the same time an area manager was driving past.

Debbie dragged what was essentially a loss-making operation run by disengaged school kids and students like me into a slick operation that – gasps! – actually began to make money. When Debbie joined, she was far from popular. She sacked people. She told us, to our disbelief, that it was not O.K. to drink beer in the kitchen and make ‘super-sandwiches’ from whole loaves of focaccia and expensive imported salami for team meals. Many who survived the chop, quit. The reason I didn’t do the same was probably because I was too lazy to find another job.

Debbie grew on me, fast. As K.P.Is such as food cost improved and the restaurant started to turn a profit, we were rewarded with vouchers and beer “as long as you take it home and don’t drink it here”. I was a chef, desperate to move front of house and make tips. She gave me my break and allowed me two shifts a week on the floor. She put me in charge of the kitchen on the other two nights.

Leading from the front, Debbie regularly pulled double shifts, just like we had to, once the exodus had concluded. She was a single mother. Her little girl would often come to work with her, sitting at table twelve in the corner, where Debbie could always keep an eye on her from anywhere in the restaurant. We would cook her mini pizzas and chicken wings while she quietly worked on her homework.

Thinking that once I went to university my days at Bella Pasta would be over, I ended up returning to Cheltenham at the end of each term to work shifts at Bella Pasta. Each time I returned, Debbie was as she always had been – a machine, a mother, and presiding over a restaurant that had crept further up the chain’s balance scorecard ranking boards each time I returned.

Sue, my headwaiter from Gleneagles.

For all the good Debbie did, I was never cut out for food and beverage service. I had my doubts at Bella Pasta, such as the shift where I accidentally spilled four pints of Guinness into a baby’s pram (over the baby too). My placement year at Gleneagles in Scotland in 2005, cemented my fears. Nimble and five star ‘grill-style’ service in the Strathearn Restaurant did not really suit my clumsiness and six-foot frame. It was hard work, for everyone concerned. My chef de rang once berated me for signing off every tables’ food order with a cheerful “Coolio”.

Sue, my headwaiter, did not make it seem like hard work at all. Her supportiveness was enduring. From the first moment I set foot in that restaurant, at around five in the morning for a breakfast shift, she sensed my unease. She had read up on me, knowing that I came from chain restaurants, and would need explaining what the chef means when he yells “ça marche!” or that in addition to being trained on silver service, I would need to understand what the concept means in the first instance.

So many things went wrong, daily. One evening, I dropped a tray of four lobster thermidors, thus creating a backlog in the kitchen that lasted all night. I forgot to process the Sunday lunch order for a Lord and Lady, thus initiating a whole world of drama and lost revenue for the hotel.

Sue’s patience and measured feedback kept me sane, and in no small part contributed to me – slowly but surely – progressing from commis to chef de rang by the end of my six-month term at the Strathearn, after which I was transferred to the casual dining golf restaurant as part of my placement plan. Sue, like me, probably breathed a deep sigh of relief the day I transferred.

Photo by Levi Guzman on Unsplash.