By Tiffany Iung
I’ve worked in food service since I was old enough to have a job. As a born people-pleaser, I was destined for hospitality, and always dreamed of owning a little place where I could offer my own version of great care and good food.
But it’s hard to open a restaurant, and even harder in New York City. My twenties passed, and then my thirties, and it still hadn’t happened. In the summer of 2023, I was working at a hip little cafe (in Dimes Square, ahem), but it was yet another dead-end job. Still, the place was cute and customers were always asking me, “Is this your place?” While flattering, the more I heard this, the more I thought, “This should be my place.”
Every night I did my sad little walk to the subway after the job that was doing nothing for my career path. The doubly depressing realities were that I was too old for it (my coworkers were all fresh out of college), and too poor to open my own place (financial literacy has never been my strong suit).
On that walk to the subway each night, I passed Essex Market, a lovely public market in the Lower East Side where I’d worked in an office-y role when I was in grad school. One night I looked in the window and noticed a vacant stall; the woman who’d sold soup there the previous ten years had closed up shop. Market rents are much lower than for a whole Manhattan storefront, so the spots are a prized commodity, but it helped that I’d already worked in the market; my application was accepted and I could afford it.
To carry on the legacy, I opened that October serving soup. The first few months were great, with lines at lunch every day. Many of the Google reviews of my business (which I named Chomps Élysées, a nod to the years I spent living in Paris) mention how nice the owner is — I couldn’t believe they were talking about me!
I don’t remember when things started to change, but it feels like it coincided with the slow summer season, shortly after I turned 42. As you can imagine, not many people eat soup in July in NYC. (People say things like, “No no no, I eat soup all year round!” Yes, and thank you so much, but you all eat soup once a month in the summer and twice a week in the winter.)
I was confronted daily with the fragility of owning a small business, but also something was different about me. I felt a low level of irritability every day, with little remaining in my usually bottomless well of patience for customers. At the beginning of each workday, I was filled with dread. My sole full-time employee is a 50-year-old woman, an angel on earth, with whom I have a very harmonious relationship. But I was beginning to find reasons to be annoyed with her too.
One particularly grumpy day, a regular customer, a younger woman, asked me how I was doing. I took that as an opening to tell her how I was actually doing. After I told her how hard it was to feel my hormones hijacked by perimenopause, she was like, “Byeeeee thanks for the soup.” Later that day, another one of my regulars came by, a woman closer to my age, and I told her what had happened. She laughed and helped normalize my bad day. She was like, “Oh yeah, and have you experienced brain fog yet?”
I knew so little about menopause. My grandma told me about a hot flash so bad she had to take off her pantyhose when she was in the back seat of her friend’s car on the way to lunch with the ladies. And I watched my mom have a particularly sweaty hot flash in a restaurant in London. But no one had warned me about mood swings. Or more accurately, that a mood swing could be code for HULK RAGE.
This is, of course, completely normal, just not something I was prepared for. According to a Harvard Medical School study, “The unpredictability of perimenopause can be stressful and provoke some episodes of irritability. Also, some women may be more vulnerable than others to hormone-related mood changes. The best predictors of mood symptoms at midlife are life stress, poor overall health, and a history of depression.”
I grew terrified that one day I’d get a review like one I saw for another business, from a guy calling himself Dad Copy: “I can only describe the person who answered the phone as a psychopathic lunatic who clearly was off of her meds. Her level of rage towards me for having the nerve to call and ask if my scarf had arrived was so unwarranted and shocking.” I’ve been possessed by this kind of rage, which can easily be misdirected towards customers. Believe me when I say I’m so grateful that no one has felt the need to take to Google to tell the world about it.
Therapist Reyna Kahan, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in NYC, showed me an image with three graphs representing the estrogen and progesterone hormone levels of a woman during pre-menopause (normal ebbs and flows), perimenopause, and post-menopause (a straight line). The perimenopausal graph is completely erratic. I was that line. In addition to my hormones taking over, my body didn’t have the same capacity for ten hour days on my feet like it did when I was in my twenties.
My whole working life had been formed around the idea that I was nice. Once I finally landed my dream job, one that was contingent on my ability to be this nice person, I found I was biologically incapable of fulfilling that expectation.
I’m only a year into business ownership and even fresher on the road to menopause, and it’s just so hard to manage both, especially when I don’t know what comes next. Even so, I’d like to dive further into business ownership and hospitality, and hopefully open a cafe that includes a retail space.
The bad days are getting easier to identify. Instead of fighting it, I ask my coworker to take over the register while I head to the dish pit to wash pots and ladles. Seeing the bad mood for what it is helps me make space for it.
I’ve taken a few baby steps to cope with the challenges. With the onset of perimenopause came weight gain, so I’m trying to squeeze in exercise for both my physical and mental health instead of crushing a bag of chips for comfort. But if I’m being honest, a lack of energy makes the gym not so appealing after a long day on my feet. I do have a standing Monday night ceramics class where I can zone out for three hours of blissful creative time. Unlike the gym, at ceramics, I get to sit down.
I’ve also started sharing the realities of perimenopause with friends, so it won’t sneak up on them. Talking about it helps. So thanks for listening.