Hi.
I’m Mark.
And I am a former dishwasher.
Not a dishwasher who spent a summer washing dishes before moving on to bigger things. A real dishwasher. The kind who spent long hours standing over sinks, scraping plates, cleaning pots, and learning lessons that had nothing to do with dishes.
A dishwasher that became a Vice President for a billion-dollar national restaurant company. Partnered in other restaurants and eventually owned several restaurants individually with my wife, Mary.
Years later, Mary and I sold our remaining restaurants in San Antonio and closed that chapter of our lives.
Along the way, the experiences accumulated.
Some inspiring. Some satisfying. Some profitable.
Others sucked. In every way imaginable.
I have made millions and lost millions.
Built relationships and destroyed relationships.
Made good decisions and some spectacularly bad ones.
I know what it feels like to have the wind at my back. Invincible. When success seems natural and it seems impossible to make a bad decision.
Painfully, I also know the opposite. Every credit card maxed out to meet payroll. Wondering if a difficult season would ever end, and if spring would ever return.
I’ve sat at the feet of genuinely great people and watched carefully. I’ve also spent time around world-class assholes — and learned just as much from them.
In 2011, my daughter Katie made a request of me. She asked that I answer a collection of questions for my granddaughter, Leah.
Leah was three years old at the time.
The questions covered nearly every aspect of life: childhood memories, family history, work, mistakes, love, success, failure, beliefs, and lessons learned. The answers became a document written for someone I love deeply.
Because it was written for Leah and not for public consumption, I found myself writing with a level of honesty that might otherwise have been difficult. I never intended those writings to be shared publicly, and even today they remain private.
But that project planted a seed.
formerdishwasher.com is the continuation of that original document.
Consider it Volume 2.
The stories will continue, but now the audience is larger. These pages are still written for Leah, but also for my grandsons, Jack and Adam.
They are also for anyone who finds their way here looking for a story, a lesson, a smile, encouragement, or perhaps simply the comfort of knowing that someone else has walked a similar road.
I’ve reached a point where what I expect out of life is secondary to what life expects out of me.
I am driven to contribute. I hope the lessons I have learned might help someone else.
A story might make you laugh. An observation might make you think. Perhaps a mistake I made will save you from making a similar one.
You won’t find a carefully organized master plan here.
The title of this site is Random Thoughts of a Former Dishwasher, and that’s exactly what it is.
The stories, observations, lessons, questions, victories, failures, books, quotes, memories, and occasional rants will wander across a wide range of subjects.
Some posts may leave you wondering about my state of mind.
Don’t be alarmed.
I’m usually fine.
If you have found your way here, I hope you stay a while.
The dishwasher still has stories to tell.
With gratitude-
Mark
“I think everything important I ever learned, I learned as a dishwasher and a cook. You show up on time, you stay organized, you clean up after yourself, you think about the people you work with, you respect the people you work with, you do the best you can.”
Anthony Bourdain