Follow me this way. Laugh if you’d like...

There is a ritual in any industry in the world: the after work drink. Promoting camaraderie, inducing eachother with liquid poison only to feel like the inside of an ass the next day, rubbing on any human and/or piece of furniture that is nearby, licking substances off surfaces with the likes of port-o-john's, sticking tongues out and murmuring "BLAAAAAHHHHH" instead of complete sentences or words for that matter, and encouraging liquid courage acts of normally taboo situations like calling a woman ugly to her face or staring at body parts with great attention comparative to jet plane detailers. These are prominent in all industries, but magnified times 1 million in the restaurant industry. You don't drink and you work in a restaurant? You don't do harmful drugs and participate in illegal operations at least once a week? Well, my friend, get ready to be the absolute WEIRDO in the establishment. Shunned like Amish tradition, you WILL be muscled out in several ways with no mercy for your well being.

If you do end up meeting the qualifications of having an altered state of mind at LEAST once a day, the ability to identify shortcuts and how to get one step ahead of your teammate by immoral actions, the desire to get boldly fucked up after work and the audacity to tell the story with great inaccuracy when sober (whenever that is), and the drive to make a new employee feel less qualified than yourself, then you will have an easy time getting along after work.

The festivities are either planned statically, the same bar at the same time everyday. These are the bars that happen to be 10 feet away, have owners that are incoherent themselves most of the time, and carry the cheapest drinks in town. I feel that restaurants are sometimes set up in proximity of dive bars, the owner of the restaurant getting a cut from the bar because the bar's business WILL increase it's current business by double with the presence of kitchen beer guzzlers, martini sipping cute servers, and shot pounding bartenders.

These same rules apply to the executive chefs and the sous chefs. They endure the longest hours, deal with all the unruliness of "I need today off" and "I don't want to work with stinky-man over there anymore" demands, and have to answer to "The Man" at all times of the day. This type of stress can  only lead to one thing: heavy drinking. They make their way into the bar, arriving hours after hourly employees got there, ready with the T-Rex mentality to get rip-roaring wasted in no time flat. You think Nascar drivers have fast times around a track? Watch a chef order drinks. It's like THIS FAST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They order the finer drinks as a show drink, like Chartreuse or Patron on the rocks with a little bit of lime. These drinks are never finished by the end of the night, and only show the lowly employees that they have some class and DO know what good drinks are made of. This is only followed but numerous shots of rail tequila, that the chef and the bartender call "The Stuff", code for the cheap stuff and the employees are none the wiser. These shots are all doubles, and the hourlys look on as the chefs guzzle down 3 or 4 at a time, like a sniper firing line at target practice. They try to do the same, looking up to the chef as a role model for belligerency, but fail miserably, only to be found crapping in their pants and puking in a toilet simultaneously (yes, you have done it also. Don't lie. Seriously. Don't lie). After these so-called attempts, the chefs are praised once again in a "SALUD!" manner with drinks purchased by the lowly busser who is so high off the detergent the sous chef sold him earlier that he doesn't realize he is spending his entire paycheck.

Once the head chefs are good and toasty, the truth on how they REALLY feel about employees comes out. Who is a hard worker, who they want to strangle with an empty bag of Romano cheese, and how much they love to cook, but just not for the fuckers that actually eat at the restaurant. This leads to stories from the past about kitchen horror stories, only revealed to the innocent server or new line cook who is too nice to simply walk away or get a word in to change the subject. The chefs find these people like mice find warm places to live in the cold winters of Wisconsin. They find them, hone in on them with their drunk tractor beam of authoritativeness, and latch on like parachute hooks. Words get fumbled, random laughing from a short thought in their brain which they don't relay to the listener, arms around necks with comments like "You're REALLY HOT" or "I LOVE YOUR YOU. YEAH. YOUR YOU. I LOVE", and wrestling challenges on the open floor after moving some tables out of the way.

They then sit at the bar, looking off into space and talking to nobody in particular. This is the time when the poor employee that was tortured for the last two hours by asinine stories has to pick the chef up off the bar stool and drive him home. The rest of the employees in the bar are still going full force, grabbing eachother in all ways, the rookie's pretending water is vodka because they want to stay on everyone's "cool side" while fearing for their life at the same time, and loud bitching about guest's that come in and have this and that problem day in and day out.

The next day is mellow in the morning, everyone taking aspirin from the commercial size bin that's full of it, drinking water like it's going out of stock, and praying and hoping that nobody brings up that "thing" that you did at the bar last night. The chefs arrive late, looking like they participated in a flatliners experiment the night before and immediately yell, "WHERE THE FUCK IS THE COFFEE, YOU LOWLY FUCK FUCKS???" It continues with the weirdos asking what happened last night, not having any regard for the mack truck headaches that everyone has.

When the guest's arrive, the day turns from grey to sunny. The staff is revived, the acts and regrets from the night before stowed away in a rather large filing cabinet, and it simply becomes business as usual. Until the planning begins for the night again.

Clockwork, baby. i love this fucking industry.

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The week of veggies was relaxing. We only had to work with a few veggies per day, the recipes were easy, the Legion of Slack was a bit more productive, the amount of veggies we had to work with were not ALL phallic-shaped, and I located the secret society of 'The Free Coffee Searchers' to obtain all my coffee for free from an indiscreet brew station behind the kitchen. It served to save me a dollar a day, stuffing those sacred singles away for a trip to Cedar Rapids, Iowa to visit that loving hangout, The Lumberyard. 

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OH, THERE'S A WATCH TOO?

Growing up, I have always had an obsession with packages. I would be waiting at Christmas evening, or eve, whatever the "PC" term of calling it is. I'd wait for everyone to open their gifts so I could climb in the empty boxes and act like I was invisible. Well, not invisible, but just unseen. Yeah, that was it. They would tell me to stop farting around and clean up the boxes, so I would, but I'd store them in my secret hiding place in the basement along with my toenail clippings and grocery receipts my Mom gave me to "learn responsibilty." It was a small corner, but my hours spent playing Tetris gave me insight on how to fit everything everywhere.

So, 17 years later, my Mom finally found my stash of goodies in the basement and took it upon herself to dispose of everything! Can you imagine the devastation that I was experiencing? 17 years of storing the most important things in my life, GONE. I didn't speak to her for a month after that tragic incident, paintballing her house with bicycle drive-bys in my ski mask and mittens and prank phone calling from random pay phones in the city. I tried to rotate the phones so the same number wouldn't come up twice in one week, and pretty soon she changed her number. You think that stopped me? H to the ELL no! I started working for a telemarketing company that sold "end of the world" insurance to people on unemployment. The deal would secure them in the alternate universe that NASA was currently "researching." I found her new number, called her frequently, and convinced her to get the Simmons package, which included a free flight to Neptune for facials and the freedom to choose from 3 different color space boots. The Muska option only gave you grey boots. She made the right choice.

So, after the stalking scenario, I came across something that occupied my time to the fullest. It was the Flud Turtable Watch, in all it's glory, staring me right in the face with glimmering corners and a gripping band. My attention was focused, but not on the shiny watch. It was the sexy packaging that it came in. The little mini flight case was giving me feelings of intimacy, like how people feel when they got to Sybaris resorts, blocking out the fact that jiz and human excretions are literally EVERYWHERE. I felt a tingly feeling DOWN THERE, where Sargent Shaft is in charge of the entire nether region.

The shiny window showcasing the watch was so clear, like a small little window washer lived inside the case to actively seek water spots or fingerprints. A 24/7 window washer? A motivated one at that? What more could you ask for?

I gave the watch all the attention I could, but the case was the selling point for my very important purchase. Now I had a new place to keep my secret stash of newly collected clippings and receipts. I suppose everything DOES happen for a reason.

Hey, why do these telemarketers keep calling me? OH MY GOD! MY HOUSE IS BEING AMBUSHED! GET DOWN! GET DOWN!

What?? They're paintballs? Shit.

Karma is a bitch. Sorry Mom

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WHY DOESN'T EVERYONE HAVE THIS TIE???

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I SIMPLY CAN'T LIE TO MYSELF ANYMORE

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I am glad that soups are finally over. I have had my fair share of taste testing the shit out of them, and it made my pallate dried out and full of soupy residue. There's that word again: soupy. Has the -y addition at the end of every noun been injected unwillingly into my veins and I have to take medication to rid myself of this tumultuous journey to end of normalcy? Has my vocabulary been dumbed down to kitchen jargon? This isn't even kitchen jargon to me. If I were to say something was "soupy" or "stretchy" to a fellow co-worker at a real restaurant, she would probably cut my balls off with a paring knife and use them as garnish for a steamed fish dish. Let me tell ya though, if she were to chop them for garnish, she would have a whole lot of garnish. Volume and weight both apply to my true ballsiness, so accurate readings of measurement would be difficult. Large masses tend to do that.

I have entered the world of sauces now, the same basic principle of soup making but with a different name. The idea behind sauces is texture, making sure it holds body throughout the process and makes it to the guest without separating or running off the side of the plate. I compared the consistency to loogies, and if you don't know what a loogie is, just wait until you get sick ,hock up some of that mucus that's built up in your esophagus and let it torpedo out of your mouth with great vengeance and furious anger. The flight should be long, like flying from Milwaukee to the Philippines rather than Milwaukee to Minnesota. It should turn heads, each droplet left along the way giving innocent bystanders an uninvited light shower of mosit boogers and plasma textured snot. The landing should be monumental, similar to if Mount Rushmore were to play leapfrog in the Grand Canyon with the Statue of Liberty. The impact should create a tidal wave of bacteria, killing any insect or bug that happened to be on the landing strip at the time of touchdown. Your mood will be improved, a sense of accomplishment and pride overwhelming your body and vigorously increasing the amount of loogies produced per minute to allow relaunching as soon as possible. You see, loogies work on their own time, and if you decide to work with them, they will aid in your road back to health with constant amusement of potentially hocking a giant loogie onto someone's person or shoe. They are mainly for moral support, and don't actually serve any purpose but that. So, now you know what they are. Now leave me alone.

The loogie texture for sauces is comparable to the end stages of sickness, being a little runny and can coat the back of a spoon. I would make the sauce to recipe, and add or subtract liquid to make it right. The good thing about everything is that all the textures turn out to be about the same, well at least for the ones that we were working with. Add veloute sauce. sweat veggies. stir occansionally. Reduce. Reduce. Reduce. Repeat. BORING.

With more taste testing than soups, it is a runny situation of what's swimming around in my stomach. I try to solidify what's going around in the loogie pool party in my tum tum, eating whatever I can that has a solid texture to it. Bread, cheese, steel wool, and carrots is about all that is available. It could turn out to be a cannonball of mess later on, if you know what I'm saying. I, being the genius that I claim to be, dodge that imperviable diarrhea bullet and plan ahead. The chef always says, "Critical thinking. Just do it you idiots." Words of wisdom.

As soon as I was done with my first sauce, I asked the Chef to take a look at it. His eyes are always wandering, looking to see if there is someone inevitably fucking up somewhere in the corner and trying to dispose of the evidence before anyone sees. He makes it over to my station, breathing heavily from the 80th taste test he has done thus far. He has many more to go, so I can feel his pain. His motions were slow, easing into each taste test with a blank slate along with a poker stare. He must put himself in this state in order to not lose his sanity, a meditation practice of Chef professors everywhere in tasting obviously poor tasting materials from students with underdeveloped brains.

He tasted, looked up like cats do when you tell them to sit, tasted again, and nodded. There are never words muttered when the sauce is right on. They believe that words are wasted when something is good. Let's comment only when it is bad, so they know how horrible it is and that they have no self worth and any reason to live. This apporach I am all right with.

Later I heard the Chef making a comment to someone that the sauce should run off the spoon in a "drip drip" sort of manner. The brown sauce, coating the spoon, dripping off the spoon at a steady drip into another pool of brown sauce.

Watch that diarrhea, everyone. Watch it.

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In every industry, there is a time when people talk about their jobs. It's inevitable, bragging and boasting about how much they know, who they know through corporate ladder climbing blow jobs, and what they have experienced in basement drug driven activities. It seems this will never end, a wormhole of unfortunate realizations that you're surrounded by pompous dickheads who won't shutup. Once you have come to this conclusion, just sit back and listen. Nod your head. Gag a little. Take notes. But focus on the one thing that matters in the world: Butter. 

I half-heartedly listen to all this ruckus when cooking, trying to focus on the task at hand. One of the more mind numbing tasks is making roux. It is a catalyst for thickening sauces, made up of butter and flour. The end result is a mushy substance of baby diarhea, smelling the opposite of poopy-ness. If you don't think butter smells incredible, then you have problems. It takes you into a world of aroma novelty, one of the first aromas one smells in a kitchen when someone starts to cook. It gets the body going with a charge of a horny 15 year old boy, raising body parts from the dead and stiffening at a firm stance. It is a social giant, complementing over 3/4 of recipes out there in the world and adding it's wonderful charisma to your dish. It can get you paid, laid, and a good grade. 

I melted the butter in the pan to start the roux, stirring ever so softly as it liquified into a pool of happiness. I thought about what it would be like to swim in a pool of butter, being able to have a basket of bread floating in the deep and dipping the bread into the pool for some mid-swim snacking. But don't eat too much bread while in the butter. You may develop a cramp and start to feel pains in your rib cage area. Like a gunshot to the dome, the pain will be ruthless. The butter will turn on you and become your enemy when it claimed to be your friend at first. You will hear faint laughter from your innards, a thriller sort of laugh that the butter may refer to as "The Filler Laugh." You will then ask, "What does that mean, butter? That doesn't make any sense."

The butter will reply, "It means I am filling you with myself....

...that wasn't too well thought out, was it?"

You will not agree with him, fearing that he may turn from sad realization to harsh reality. Stay quiet. Take notes. If you can. 

Once the butter was melted, I added the flour. It became a mess right away. It seemed to me like it was a supermodel, adding too much make-up and ruining what once was a beautiful thing. Appearance is important in cooking, but only with the end result. I decided to take that into consideration, stick my nose close to the roux as it was cooking so it could take me away from all the banter and fatuity that was going on around me. 

"I LOVE watching TV...ESPECIALLY FOOD NETWORK."

"I once did it that way. Pop and go. Pop and go. Pop and go. Pop and go."

What were they all talking about? Doesn't matter. Focus. 

The roux was coming along, becoming the beginning stages of baby bowel movements and sizzling like fresh manure from a horse's ass. Why all the comparisons to shit if it's so delicious, you ask? Well, my friend, it's just how I see things. I know that this is an agent, agent zero if you will. It simply gets the high priest where it needs to be and dissipates into the shadows of other starting agents. Along with them are oil, pan spray, and margarine. They have a secret society to be loyal to their masters, which happen to be the rest of the ingredients in your dish. But the butter is always the tricky one. It wants to overthrow the dish. Become the master, the high stick in charge. Sometimes it does, and butter happens to overpower a dish in magical ways. The problem lies therein the butter's true goal: to take over the culinary world. 

The roux was finished, stirring it occasionally so it wouldn't stick. 

Remember: Butter. That's all you need in life. 

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CAN I GO HOME NOW PLEASE?

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