I don't do crazy

I think at this time of my life I can make a few proclamations.  I have earned them.
First, I don't do toxic. If it's at all possible, I don't ever want to work in a toxic environment again. And by toxic I don't mean working in a nuclear power plant where any minute we could  have a meltdown.  I mean a place where there is poor management and backstabbing, that sort of thing. Been there, done that and I really don't want to do it again.
Next on the list-
I don't do crazy.
I have been a boss and I have been a worker-bee but I have never been a crazy (at least not in my professional life).  Some crazies are very successful people. I do think that creativity does require a little bit of loco and that brilliance can be tainted by meshugenah. Just look at Vincent Van Gogh.
I'm talking out and out mean, nasty, infantile, bossy, crazy. The kind of people that the movie "Horrible Bosses" was about. Which, by the way I went to see the first night it was out. I'd had one of those kind of weeks with my own horrible boss.
In my recent travels I had left toxic and felt the weight off of my shoulders. I no longer woke up to nasty e-mails every morning telling me what I did poorly or did not do correctly the night before. I wasn't someones bitch anymore and that was fine by me.
When I was called to a job as a private chef, I could not turn it down. The money was good and beggars cannot be choosers. So I traded in the field-hand's overalls and put on my clean domestic uniform. If you'll pardon the expression I went from being a field n----- to a house one.
When you move into the "big house" they make you sign a confidentiality agreement so there will be no mention of names or specifics here. That's not important anyway.
What is important is holding on to one's soul and dignity. I'm a class act. I am polite and gracious. I work hard, I'm honest and trustworthy. I know that most of these people are very rich and very spoiled and they are used to being pampered. It's all part of the deal.
At first there was a coolness factor being an insider on the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Shopping among the surgically altered faces of the upper east side ladies at Citarella. Being loaded into the shiny black Cadillac Esplanade (this is the vehicle de rigeur of the wealthy now) with a cooler containing thousands of dollars worth of ossetra caviar that I had to hold on my lap on the way to the Hamptons. The famous names that are all part of this circle that you will be feeding and waiting on.
What was not cool though, was being told one thing, then something different, then different again.  Being treated disrespectfully one minute and then treated like a bosom buddy the next.  Too many rules and regulations about a lot of minutia. A lot of micro managing. Insults.
I guess the one that pushed me over the edge was being berated over a piece of meat that I had little to do with. This berating took place in front of a guest who was also someone who works at a famous four star restaurant in New York. That clicked a switch in me.
After that I realized I was not dealing with someone who was rational. She pulled a really rotten move on me last minute and took away time I was supposed to travel and work with them and gave it to another cook. She had been begging me to hold off on taking any other work while she made her plans. I had rearranged my whole life around that two weeks for her, counted on that income and on a whim, she changed her mind.  Then when I called her on it, she lied and said she had merely suggested that I hold off on taking any other jobs while she solidified her plans. This is also a person who when she walks in the door looks at me and says, " I CANNOT EVEN THINK ABOUT FOOD RIGHT NOW. I AM MUCH TOO BUSY!!"
Cooking has to be done with some love and creativity. Unless you are just emptying a box of something, adding water to it and setting a timer- your brain must be involved. When I got crazy flying around my head it sucks those abilities right out of me. I tried to be invisible. Like writer's block, I could not think of what to make. She had a comment for everything and you never knew when she would fly off the handle.
I worked for one of the most famous crazies for a long time, but she was truly brilliant and as painful as the process was sometimes, the outcome was always spectacular and I was proud of what I produced. In this case I was often embarrassed by what we put out thanks to her input. One minute she's screaming at me about not touching the special $100 piece of meat, the next she is putting her "special barbecue sauce" (read- ketchup and mustard) on it.
So when the misery factor was just getting too high, and she last minute changed the work schedule that I had counted on, I knew I was done. Just like the $100 steak that she had burned.
She was just another crazy-ass mofo.
Really, I would rather be baking in a basement somewhere. Crazy breeds crazy and the more you are around it, the more you pick it up. Everyone runs around in these households trying to keep the king or queen crazy from going off the deep end.
Being a hair past the half century mark I gotta have some principles and I think that I have earned them. Maybe I won't have a pot to piss in, but I ain't  crazy and I don't work for them either.