From time to time, we’ll be sharing Qualified Facts from Friends of Permanent Equity. This one comes from Kelie Morgan, Founder & CEO of 10th St. Talent, a comprehensive talent partner that emerged from Permanent Equity's portfolio companies.
If I'm qualified to speak on anything, it's queso.
Let me establish my credentials. I grew up out West, where queso is yellow and nacho cheesy. Then I moved to the Midwest and discovered the truth: real queso is white. It has jalapeños. It has green chiles. It is, frankly, a food group. If I go to a restaurant and white queso is on the menu, I will be ordering it.
So picture me at my favorite Mexican restaurant in downtown Columbia (which shall remain nameless so I don’t get sued for libel, although is it libel if it’s true? @ Taylor Hall?), with my best friend, each of us with our own bowl of queso. We don’t share.
I'm about halfway through when I notice something between my molars. You know the feeling. The tension between your teeth changes. Something is there. Then I feel it brushing the inside of my cheek. So, with very little grace, I go fishing.
What I pull out is a thick, black, perfectly straight, three inch hair.
For those who haven't met me: my hair is blonde. This was not my hair.
I laid it on a napkin and faced a choice. Would this hair ruin (a) my queso, (b) my whole meal, or (c) my relationship with this restaurant forever?
One thing to know about me is that I don't dwell on things. People around me might recommend that I dwell a little more on some things, but in general, I don’t find it productive. I process in the moment and keep moving. There’s always more good to be found ahead of us. And in that moment I thought: this is my favorite restaurant, with my favorite queso, and my best friend sitting across from me. One hair doesn't get to mess that up!
So I finished the queso. I finished my meal. I've been back dozens of times since.
Counterpoint: when I told my sister this story, she could not get past it. She had a $50 gift card to Unnamed Restaurant, decided she could never set foot in the place, and handed it over to me. A small L for a very big W if you ask me.
Tim said these little facts didn’t actually need to have a point to them, but I think mine does. I've never met a person without a hair in their queso, figuratively. Not a colleague, friend, family member, new teammate, and definitely not me. Everybody comes with something that isn't ideal, something that takes a little grace to get past.
Fish out the hair. Put it on a napkin. Eat the queso.
– Kelie
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