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.