Roy
Roy isn’t a jerk; not really. He just has some jerk-like tendencies. Leanings. To accurately describe his character, I’ll have to use the word “fuck” a lot and probably make my mother cry, but he isn’t a jerk. Not really.
—
My first impression of him was cemented at the end of my first day at the restaurant. After a hearty and excited “Break it down, boy!” from Carl, we were all cleaning up, packing away our mise en place and scrubbing the counters.
“So I’m not going to make you clean the hoods,” Michael said, trying to find a task for me and glancing up at the grease-slicked steel over the stovetop.
“WHY NOT?” Roy said in a sort-of bellow. “She’s the perfect size to get up there!”
Up there? I was climbing on top of the stove? I timidly patted the piano with the palm of my hand. It was still quite hot, but I jumped up on it anyway, dipping a green srubbie into soapy water. As I attacked the hoods, letting oily water fall back down on me in fat droplets, Roy regaled us with stories of his old kitchen. “We used to do this every night when I worked in a real French kitchen.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Caitlin roll hers and pull her lips in to try and keep from laughing. It seemed to me that they’d all heard about Roy’s French kitchen before, but I was new and eager to please, so I listened, rapt with attention as I gingerly tiptoed from one end of the stove to another.
Later that week, as I settled into the restaurant, Roy showed me an entry-level of congeniality. As I sliced hams, he asked politely for scraps with an out-held hand. He told stories of his kitchen apprenticeship, and his second-most recent restaurant. I began to become familiar with the phrase “At Twelve Washington Square …” He started most tales like that, and went on to describe a painfully complicated and intricate recipe or procedure that proved his prowess over the rest of us. “At TWS … I turned 300 potatoes before my chef called them shit and threw them out … I worked with carrageenans all the time … I made artichoke risotto out of ARTICHOKES cut to LOOK LIKE rice.” I was at first properly impressed, then amused by his touting. Comparing kitchens has never really been my thing, mostly because I’ve only worked in two and one of them included a daily half-hour break for lunch.
As time went on, though, and Roy realized that I was to be a permanent fixture in the kitchen, the novelty of my presence wore off. I went from pleasant distraction to an outright disaster in his eyes, and he began to find fault in everything I did – that is, if he was speaking to me that day. On some mornings, I’d wave a cheery hello only to be met with stony silence. I learned quickly to ignore him right back – no sense in asking what’s wrong. On mornings that he banged around fish tubs and hotel pans, I knew I was in for a lashing.
The first one came around noon, as I breaded croquettas. It’s a messy job, what with the egg yolk, flour and panko breadcrumbs, and I was trying my best to keep it all contained in my 2-foot workspace wedged in next to Sixto, the butcher.
“I need the Cryovac,” Roy said, elbowing in next to me and inadvertently shoving me out of the way. I stood by, hovering awkwardly, debating whether or not I should elbow my way back in when he wiped a handful of ground breadcrumbs to the ground. “You’re a fucking pig,” he said. “This place is a fucking mess, you fucking pig!”
“Eh uh umm ummm errrrrrrrrr,” I mumbled before settling on a red-faced “I’m sorry.”
When he was finished with the Cryovac, I surveyed my damage. It was pretty messy; my cutting board splattered with breading mixture. But I had planned on cleaning it up afterwards! I imagined Roy’s reaction to that insistence and already knew what he’d say: “If you work clean, you won’t have to clean up your fuckin’ mess afterwards.” I supposed Roy had a point, but did he have to be so mean about it?
A few nights later, in the middle of my first time working the garde manger station alone, he sauntered over from behind the formidable meat/fish station to check out mine. He stuck a spoon in my almond milk, licked it, and threw it in my bain with an angry clatter. “Is this supposed to be gritty and disgusting?” he asked.
“Uhhhhmmm …” Trick question? “I didn’t make it; Tobias made that one. I’ve never made this … I don’t know what the texture is supposed to be like.”
“Don’t care,” he said. “The first thing you do is check your fucking mise en place. If shit’s not right, you can fucking FIX it, but now, what are you gonna do about it? Nothing. You can’t do a fucking thing about it now.”
I gulped and nodded, stirring it with a spatula in attempt to whip some creaminess into it. He wasn’t finished.
“That’s the first thing I do EVERY day I come in. I check my mise en place. Because if something’s wrong – or burnt out – I can fix it or make more. That’s just smart. How you conduct your station is stupid and makes NO sense.” And with that, he swaggered back to his post, leaving me to stir some heavy cream into the mixture, defeated and hunched-shouldered.
Roy has a special fondness for the word “stupid.” Whenever something is done without maximum efficiency in mind, it is done stupidly, and the person doing it is a stupid person. (More realistically, a fucking stupid person.) I recently took two trips down to the walk-in cooler to fetch ingredients, and when he saw me hop up the stairs for the second time, he just acknowledged it with a quiet “Well that was a waste of time, don’t you think? Are you stupid?”
I blinked away anger, exhausted by his constant stream of comments. And besides, who was HE, the man who just told me that he doesn’t read, to call me stupid! “No, I’m not, but you’re a fucking dick sometimes,” I responded and, for good measure, ran down the stairs again.
I went through my daily kitchen motions for the next few weeks, silently cursing him and avoiding him whenever possible (not the easiest thing in a kitchen the size of a postage stamp) until one day, as I tied my apron at the bottom of the basement stairs, I felt someone tap my shoulder. I turned around and there he was, arms outstretched and reaching around my waist.
“I’m sorry for being a jerk,” he said. “I don’t hate you.”
“Oh! Uhm, err, meeeehhhhhlrmmmm,” I said, once again at a loss for how to respond. “Really? Thank you. I don’t hate you, either.” I let go of his embrace and waited to see if there was more. There wasn’t; he was done, so I just gave a salute and took the stairs two at a time.
Later that afternoon, as I performed my weekly flour-panko ritual, he appeared behind me, vying for the Cryovac.
He looked at my various tubs and opened his mouth, then paused. “Can I … show you a better way to do that?”
I looked at him and smiled, big and wide. “Yes, I’d like that,” I said. In my head, I added the words “… you big jerk,” but I didn’t mean it. Not really.