Guys

One of the first things Tobias said directly to me, on our second day of working together, was: “You all call everything ‘guys’ here, don’t you?”

I stopped what I was doing to think about that (Carl glared at me, and I quickly resumed cutting leeks into squares). Did we call everything guys? I guess I hadn’t noticed. But as the night wore on, I caught myself uttering the word again and again. “I’m gonna bring these guys to the walk-in,” I said, stacking three quart containers of chestnut soup and balancing them under my chin. “Can you hand me one of those guys?” I asked as I reached for a pile of lemons. Tobias noted it. “You’re right!” I gasped, suddenly recalling the thousands of times my coworkers had referred to various objects as such.  In fact, on my first day, hadn’t Michael instructed me to clean the grease trap of the plancha by “taking a guy, wrapping him up and sticking him in the hole?” (To be fair, he meant no innuendo, but it was kind of hard to ignore.)

On and on it went, and I thought nothing of it until last night, when I told Tobias I was going to “put this guy in the lowboy.” Except “this guy” wasn’t masculine at all – it was cod roe!

Let me be clear: I don’t think that our usage of the word “guy” is anything more than a slightly annoying verbal tick – and I definitely don’t think that our kitchen is a bad place to be a woman. I’m happy to be treated like one of the boys, and appreciate the fact that no one offers to carry heavy bus tubs or do the dirty jobs (actually, they’re a little too eager to shove those things my way.) I rarely feel feminine there – frequently incompetent and spastic – but not feminine.

That is, until yesterday, as I breaded salt cod croquettas in panko. “Yo, I’mma show you a trick for doing those better,” Tobias said, putting on a pair of gloves and separating each piece before transferring it from the egg to the breadcrumbs. “You gotta show them some love.” I nodded; it was a good idea to deal with them individually so they didn’t become clumps of sticky egg and flour. “Yeah,” Tobias said, shaking the pan to coat them evenly with panko, “Maybe you should think about treating them like you treat your hair.”

My hair? I glowered. My hair? The lion’s mane that’s lucky if it gets a comb in the morning, let alone a flat iron or styling cream?  My HAIR?  DID I LOOK LIKE THAT GODDAMN KIND OF GIRL? After all of the burns weathered from cleaning the plancha, all of the beers consumed after-hours, after all of the dirty jokes made at other people’s expense, I was still reduced to my motherfucking hair? Down the counter, Michael was laughing.

“Shut up. I hate you. I’m mad at you.”

“I’m sorry for the incon-vee-nience,” Tobias said, drawing out the word with a schoolboy’s smirk.

“He has a point,” Michael said, a taunt rising in his voice.

I just bit my lip and focused my eyes down on the tubs of flour, eggs and crumbs. “Please stop talking; I’m trying to do these guys,” I said.  I wasn’t mad – not really – but I did fume a little longer as I breaded the last of the croquettas. As I moved them from bin to bin I picked each one up gingerly and gave it a lot of love, because it was food, and I treat food like some people treat their hair.

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