Working With Confidence
A cafe has opened up to help empower those with learning differences, including autism. There are a few places in the workforce to help people with LDs, but this one is different. At Meadow Barn View, there is an actual “training kitchen” to help LD people learn how to cater and help with customer service skills. Alice Millin, training coordinator said, “What they seem to take away, apart from learning, is how to make brilliant dishes, is the confidence.” She also said, “It’s that sense of well-being and people having self-worth, and knowing that they can do it.” I remember I got my first job as a dishwasher at fourteen years old at an Inn in Maryland. I was lucky, because the wife of the couple that I ended up working for on the weekends ended up being my godmother. However, when I was working for them, I learned that I had a hard time finding things when they would ask me to go get something, or I would simply forget what they asked me to get so I would have to go back to them and ask again, and then remind myself what I was getting while I was getting it. Catering is no joke of a job, I remember working at weddings in August in the dead of summer in Southern Maryland and the only way I can describe it is that after working 8 hours of almost none stop moving, I felt like I just completed a marathon. There was one day where I even worked an event at the local fire house, which ended up being thirteen hours and will never forget it. I was getting paid five dollars an hour, which is what the minimum was back then. I also learned what it was like to work in a kitchen a little bit. When you work for somebody who understands your way of doing things and how you think, it’s a blessing.There were a few times where I just wanted to leave, but when you work for somebody who believes in you, it gives you that much more confidence to know that you can do it.
Cafe helps empower adults with learning difficulties: