Walk-In

When Roy pulled me into the walk-in last Friday and began yelling at me, I leaned against the cranberry beans and let my eyes glaze over.

A few minutes earlier, Tobias had sent me to work in the basement prep area while he manned our station during service. Roy was, apparently, extremely displeased with this turn of events.

“You wanna work down here?” he asked.

“No,” I answered. And in my head: Yes. Maybe. I don’t really care.

“You wanna work service?”

“Yes.” (No. Maybe. Whatever, really …)

He lost it. “So get the FUCK up there! Don’t let him push you around; this is YOUR station too, and you have to take RESPONSIBILITY and AUTHORITY for it. Don’t be a little PUSSY and let HIM do all the WORK. If you have to do prep, then you BRING IT UP to your station and chop onions or WHATEVER THE FUCK it is you’re DOING down here, at your CUTTING BOARD in between ORDERS.”

I let his words wash over me. They’d bathe most new cooks in shame, but I was pretty much just thrilled to be getting yelled at in a walk-in cooler. Probably not the reaction he’d hoped to shake out of me. I blinked my eyes, looking at him in earnest. Yes, yes, tell me more …

He left the cooler in a huff, and I stood there for a few seconds more, thinking about how awesome it was that I just got reprimanded next to a dead chicken. Somewhere along the 70 hours in kitchens I’d spent that week , I forgot why I signed up for an externship at the restaurant. I didn’t love to cook, and as my burned toast proved, I wasn’t very good at it. What had I expected to get out of this experience? Roy’s red face flashed in my mind and I giggled. All of a sudden, I couldn’t wait for service to be over so I could rush home and write. The thought propelled me through the night, and I didn’t even mind when Tyler banished me back downstairs so Tobias could work the station.

Who cares if I’m not allowed to play with the big boys? I thought. Roy might’ve yelled at me in a refrigerator, but I thought it was funny, and that made me the baddest-ass cook in the kitchen.

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