I have a fondness for animated movies. Pixar, Disney Magic, the occasional Dreamworks triumph, they all strum some sentimental heartstring I've hung on to since childhood. Perhaps in the face of adulthood reality and the dark nature of my career I need this simple, lighthearted entertainment to prevent me from going in to the brink. I need something to remind me of fearless and innocent imagination, of what it was like to jump without looking, consequences and the boundaries of reality be damned.
So that being said I had no shame in plunking down $14.00, sliding in to a leather chair and watching Frozen; classic Disney storytelling about the plights of a magical snow queen (you know, normal stuff).
There comes a moment in the film where Elsa, the aforementioned snow queen, escapes the confines of her throne to go in to self-imposed exile in the mountains. After years of restraining herself from using her powers she unleashes flurries, crystals and animated snowmen. She builds a towering castle of ice that rises up out of nothing, a wintry fortress of solitude serving as her bastion against the fearful world, "Let it go!" she sings as she finally claims her seat as the Queen of Winter.
Either this is a cleverly disguised metaphor for coming out of the closet, unleashing your pent up homosexuality upon the world in ice fortress format, or it is a more general message to the children (of which there were few in the audience, I might add) to accept yourself for who you are. Bottling up your true feelings, your true identity only leads to pain. Love yourself, accept what you have become, embrace inner tranquility and happiness.
This is a common theme in media directed towards young adults; be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind. Teenagers are hormonal, anti-authority, and not getting the sex they want, how do you expect them to figure out who they are amidst all that adversity? Not that I have the mental maturity of a teenager (though, I suppose it's possible), or am struggling with a lack of a congruent self-identity (oh wait, this is sounding familiar), or am frustrated by the world around me instead of accepting that which we cannot change (oh shit, train's pulling in to the station of realization).
So I suppose it got to me. This lovely, animated snow queen with her giant, fucking round-eyes and inhuman-standard-of-Caucasian-beauty resting on a stick frame (let alone that singing a power ballad while running up a mountain is fucking impossible; that skinny bitch ain't got no pipes) spoke to me. Why? Why was I having trouble letting it go? Why do I even feel this frustration?
And it all comes back to work.
I hate for work to define me as an individual, but it's difficult for chefs to have an alternative. So much of our waking hours are devoted to cooking, our social relationships so starved and our emotional ranges so stunted, we really have nothing else. We cling on to the hope that our meager dose of adrenaline is enough to make the time go by, that our of love of food will be pleasant company in years of solitude, and that somehow, someway this will pay off. So in all that focus and desperation, we find that this is all we ever think about and all that ever affects our moods. Good services make us ecstatic, bad services ruin our weeks. Work consumes us and finds us, rules us and in the darkness, binds us.
So when my work is not going well, I feel a powerful and debilitating sense of overall dissatisfaction. If this isn't going well for me, then nothing is.
This is in great unfairness to the people around me, especially my girlfriend. They have nothing to do with the pain I experience, and yet they are all victim to my bad moods and querulous tempers.
But why isn't it going well? I think I'm held in fairly high esteem, the resume power is palpable, I execute professionally and exceptionally. By all standards, things are going well. Why complain? Stop bitching!
And it all comes back to the Snow Queen.
I can't be myself.
Don't get me wrong, the restaurant is impressive. From my viewpoint, what goes on behind the scenes is far more impressive than anything you'd get out in the dining room. Without question, I am a part of one of the most well-run and well-organized restaurants in the world. The staggering network of farmers, purveyors, employers, employees, guests, guest relations, businesses is managed so efficiently and so pleasantly that any other restaurant is pure amateur hour, my own family's restaurant straight bush league. What restaurant will match a 401k for you? Who will allow you vacation days, paid time off, medical insurance that isn't a complete joke, and provide a constantly refreshing expense account for you to dine out? Tax-exempt commuter cards and no-questions-asked disability compensation? Company-sponsored English lessons for any and all? You cubicle monkeys take this stuff for granted. In 99% of the world's restaurants, you don't work, you don't get paid. You are hourly, everything else is nonessential. You are a rat.
And yet, despite of all that, despite of all that generous and nurturing extra mileage, I find a reason to bitch. To express discontent, to hate, to behave poorly. Like a brat.
Why?
I'm not a sociopath. I have never bitten the hand that feeds me. Why now? Why, when I have been given so much, do I become so resentful?
In the end, it comes down to a cultural problem.
An environment that cultivates such a generous and gentle atmosphere is going to be hard-pressed to perform like a "normal" kitchen. My fear is that you would interpret that as a criticism, when by all objective standards, this is high praise. No bullying, no yelling, no unnecessary abuse, expressing hospitality to one another before expressing it to the guests. No more Old World slamming pots and pans, belittling you and cursing you out. This is an evolved restaurant, we will behave like an evolved business. Professional and emotionally considerate at all times.
The company calls it the "51 Percenter." The ideal hire is someone who is almost perfectly balanced in having the requisite technical and emotional skills for the job, the ratio being 49% technical to 51% personal. The idea is simple and one that anyone would find difficult to disagree with; technical skills can be taught, while emotional skills are nearly impossible to teach. We value people who can communicate and display empathy towards one another over people who can execute flawlessly. We care more about how we make you feel than how we get the job done. That isn't to say that we skew heavily towards people who may lack the technical skills, but that both should be in a nearly synchronous high level of performance.
That's a lovely notion.
But in reality, it falls short. In my opinion, what we are left with is a whole lot of passive-aggressiveness, unclear directives and people who suck major balls at what they do.
We want to maintain high standards, but we don't want to hurt anyones feelings.
We want to crack the whip and get the team to focus, but we fear being too firm.
We really value this employee as a person, but they can't get the job done, we'll move him somewhere less impactful.
Maybe those sorts of sentences can go through a person's mind and be comprehended without raising an eyebrow, but when I read that my mind goes red. It is in direct contention to everything I stand for and who I am.
People fucking suck and in moments of desperation will show you the meaning of depravity.
In this life there is only winning and losing.
There can be no excuses only results.
Now to be fair, this is a mindset held by many Old World chefs. And this is how you get someone throwing a knife at you because you burned a sauce. This is how you get criminals, these are the people who will fill jail cells if you disappoint them too many times in life. This is how you engender a violent, abusive, hyper-competitive environment where cooks seek to win individually, instead of succeed together. This is how you get sociopaths.
I used to think I was a nice guy, but this restaurant has proven otherwise. I like to consider myself highly empathetic, but now I find I just don't care. Oh, you're having difficulty learning how to do this? Yeah, I get it, it's because you have zero self-confidence. I've already shown this to you in a gentle manner as many times as I've had patience to. You're not getting it because you're not scared enough. Get the fuck out of my face, I hope you die.
It has become severely alarming how many times a day I will say to myself, "I hope you die."
Do I miss the abuse? Am I that much of a sick, masochistic fuck? I would argue no, I just came to the kitchen because it was the last meritocracy and I miss it. It was a retreat for all those who didn't have a chance elsewhere, Asian, black, gay, ugly, pretty, dumb, it didn't matter if you could do the job. Those misfits who struggled so much in normal society could find refuge here, they could find a home where all that mattered was what they brought to the table with their skills.
I wouldn't say I miss the abuse all that much. I still have stress nightmares about a French woman, with the face and build of a bulldog, questioning everything I do, throwing all my product out and slamming my burnt soup pots in the dish pit, "Merde! Merde! Merde!". That kind of thing sticks with you for a long time.
But I will say I miss two things dearly. The clarity and the adrenaline.
What I have come to realize is that if you don't punish mediocrity, you don't reward excellence. Some will say excellence is its own reward. I say in kitchens, that's only partially true. What I see now, the purpose of all that yelling and screaming I endured is that once the yelling and screaming stops, you know you've succeeded. It's clear as day, black and white. Every day you know if you've won or if you've lost, you know if you're the hero or the villain. It sounds sick, but avoiding the hate, managing to get through a day without getting abused is an incredible reward. Would I choose it over loving praise? Yes. Any day of the week.
When you choose to forgive mistakes, forgive lackluster performance, you muddle up the standards. Things are unclear, people get by with shit they shouldn't get by with, you're suddenly forced to accept less-than-excellent product. And in a kitchen, where your success depends upon one another a great deal, this can start to grind a lot of gears. But of course, we'd never express it. You could never tell someone to their face, their feelings would be hurt.
Then comes the adrenaline. In dodging bullets, working in a kingdom of fear, your heart races at a lot of moments. I imagine normal civilians would never get nervous about putting away chives correctly, or even more scary, getting fucking hard over it, but when you've been punished for doing it wrong, fear being punished for doing it wrong, and then finally get it right? That's when it flows. Endorphins, adrenaline, stress relief, jizz, fucking satisfaction. You're going down like the Hindenburg in the middle of a Saturday crush? Your'e getting publicly humiliated and shamed for not being able to put out a butternut squash soup in a respectable timeframe? You learn quick, you never do it again, or at the very least, you figure out how not to get caught. You succeed, you win, you learn how to put it out on time and all you ever get is silence. And somehow that silence is more rewarding than any loving praise you could ever throw my way. I would take the silent, barely acknowledged nod of your respect and acceptance, over the half-hearted flowery praise you throw everybody's way, any time.
So I'm a sociopath.
I'm a sick fuck. I run on negativity and the distrust of my fellow man, misanthropy and jaded world views rewarded by the occasional confirmation bias. I do not believe in inherent good, I believe in inherent evil. The world is three missed meals away from total anarchy.
But is that really who I am?
I like to think I am not quite this visage of hatred and frustration. I have friends, I get along with people and people tend to enjoy my company, however salty it may be. I care for those who try, I would never punish a good attitude and a genuine effort.
My method seems to want to rest in the middle, the place where it is least likely to stay. You have to be gentle with people, yes, that hyper-competitive, abusive environment is not healthy in the long run. People burn out, you lose a lot of good people who just needed a little more time to figure it out, it's stressful just to walk in to that much hate and pressure every day. That's how you die early.
But you have to know when to be firm. The food matters, it improves under rigorous expectations from the chef, you can't just let bullshit slide. I don't think you need to yell a lot if you know when to use it. A little bit of anger, a little bit of unleashed fury goes a long, long way. Is it Machiavellian? Do we need a little fear to earn respect? I think yes.
But this balanced environment is impossible to keep stable. There are only so many cooks who are looking for work, there are even fewer quality cooks. Yes, you want the "51 Percenter" but do they exist in any appreciable quantity? No. You get 45/55'ers, you get a lot of 30/70's. But what if they stick around? What if you never axe these people because they really did try hard, and you had to reward their loyalty because frankly, there was no one else? Well, they stay, they get comfortable, and they get promoted, and they become toxic. They poison your whole establishment with mediocrity and unfocused skills. Or they poison your whole establishment with toxic attitudes and rampant hatred. You go really hard in one direction, you're too nice, all of a sudden you're surrounded by morons, who while pleasant, are ineffective. You go really hard the other way and all of a sudden you're surrounded by bullies, borderline criminals and pirates who inspire no faith and have even less for themselves.
I don't know what the answer is. Maintaining the balance is too difficult, especially with any restaurant of realistic size. Ten? Twenty employees? Yeah, I think you can maintain the right profile of emotional vs. technical skills. One hundred? Two hundred? Now it's getting harder.
I don't know what the answer is and I don't want to strive for an unattainable ideal.
But I don't want to feel out of place anymore, I don't want to feel like a jerk because I care about the food, and I want to do things right. I want people to care about doing it right, fear of God required or not, I just want people to have integrity and to let it be rewarded.
I want to find home and I'm terrified that it doesn't exist.
But what can I do but continue the search? My thought is that I will never find it. I will be ronin and dissatisfied no matter where I go, and eventually? The only possible outcome of all this frustration and all of this writing, and all of this thinking?
I build it myself.
EP6
