The Three-Course Breakfast
Barbara Dau, 64, hardly ever sits down on the job. She spent most of her life working as a community-college teacher and then as a laboratory scientist, but when a biotechnology company laid her off when she was in her late 50s, she had to begin again. Dau initially tried to reclaim her life as a teacher, applying for 18 positions and getting only one interview. "I could tell when they first saw me that they had no intention of hiring me," she says, "because of my age and because I had too much education and was too expensive." So, at 61, Dau decided to create her own job. She bought a bed-and- breakfast in Arch Cape, Ore., a town that boasts both the beach and the mountains. Now her days are filled with rising at 6:30 a.m. to cook a three-course gourmet breakfast, checking people in and out of the Arch Cape House, cleaning, grocery shopping, hosting a wine social hour, and doing laundry. "The inn makes everything feel so beautiful and peaceful, but in the background we're working really hard to keep up this facade," she says.
When Dau bought the inn in 2003, she knew nothing about business. "I thought of all this hospitality. I didn't realize you've got to be a hard- nosed businessperson, too," Dau says. After two years of running the bed- and-breakfast herself, she took on a partner to handle a lot of the finances. Dau admits that running a 24-7 business can be very exhausting, but " If you've got energy, it's a challenge and it's interesting. People at 60 are really not as old as they used to be at 60."
This story appears in the June 12, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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