The Food Factory

At one point I got into a circuit of freelancers who work at some of the larger venues, such as the Jacob Javits Center, sports arenas and casinos in New York. It was through a couple of former students, so luckily I had them there to usher me through some really confusing situations. My first time at Javits was like being thrown into a stormy Atlantic ocean where someone yells out "Just start swimming!". Flailing my arms and getting mouthfuls of saltwater, trying to stay afloat until finally getting my bearings and not drowning.

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Working at the Javits Center is about as far away from working at my private chef job as possible. First of all, it is huge. I'm talking about all the behind the scenes stuff, not the exhibition area where the public goes. Because on the other side of that area where conventioneers gaze at the displays, lie kitchens, hallways, storage areas, loading docks. Like on an ant farm, a maze made up of corridors with the workers running to and fro, carrying trays, pushing carts or riding on silent vehicles that only make sounds of, "beep, beep, beep!".  I found myself constantly having to dodge and weave around pallets loaded up with cases of food.
The first time I worked there, I was given a menu to execute that included sandwiches, like a million of them. We dragged some banquet tables out of the hallway and set them up in a corridor of the kitchen to lay out all of our mise en place. This area was directly across from an enormous doorway that sent in a huge draft like a wind tunnel. I wrapped my neck in side towels and tucked them into my chef coat to keep some insulation from the tundra. Assembly line style we had our baguettes sliced open, each cook laying down the layers of meat and cheeses. On and on, wrapping them, labeling them and storing them, tray after tray.  I developed a new empathy for Chinese workers making i-phones.
It's not my favorite place to work by any means. Why do I do it then? A number of reasons. Most of the people are pretty nice. It gets lonely working in the fancy houses of the rich and famous. It feels good to work with a multi-ethnic group again. I like seeing former students, former colleagues, and making new connections. It's kind of cool to see how a place like this works that produces so much food. And, I like the car show.
This is their biggest event of the year. They knew to staff up. They brought in a ton of freelancers plus had the full staff on. We chefs were each assigned a pavilion or brand of car. This was during the week while the show was being set up and there were events for the press before it was open to the public. In the beginning it seemed nice and organized. Once we had our parties assigned we were also given a team of cooks to execute the menu. I had nothing to do with the creation of this menu. It had been predetermined and ordered by the client already. I just had to make sure that it was done.

The mornings start out pretty orderly. After going through tight security and a bag check, you make your way down the winding corridors to the nexus of operation, the kitchen. At this time of day it is relatively quiet and organized. Only a few hours later though, it will be surging with activity. Table after table of prep cooks with baseball caps and surgical gloves packing box lunches, making salads, cheese platters, fruit carvings or dessert plates. A huge conveyor belt over in the pot washing area grinds through a tunnel where the dirty utensils get washed. A dishwasher wearing a black rubber apron and gloves stands over a steaming sink with giant pots that he is scrubbing. Waitstaff in black pants and white button down shirts go by pushing carts with crisp tablecloths on them. Perhaps they are carrying coffee set ups or pastry platters wrapped in plastic. There's an office where the hospitality managers (who aren't very hospitable!) sit and look out through a glass wall and watch over their staff. There are industrial sized soda dispensers, coffee dispensers and an ice machine. The servers are constantly filling up coffee urns. There are racks with all sizes of hotel pans, pots, stacks of banged up sheet pans, fifty of each. More tables set up, with workers in chef uniforms cutting, searing, mixing or doing whatever stage they are in at the moment of preparing the task at hand.
As the day goes on, there is stuff laying around and it is total chaos. There are clogged prep sinks full of pasta, dirty used sheet pans with leftover grease on them. Food is on the floor and there is a trough of running water that is draining somewhere. Meat left to cool, garbage containers overflowing. People don't clean up after themselves here. They expect the porter or the dishwasher to do it and he is not scheduled to come in till noon. That's not the way I work, but what the hell- when in Rome. I find myself saying "when in Rome" a lot this week. I try to keep my mouth shut. I'm an ex restaurant owner and teacher so that's hard for me to do.
There are two tilt skillets near one another. These are large heated units that are basically used for anything that a skillet might be used for but for massive amounts of food. You can make 20 pounds of rice at one time in there. Or do a stir-fry for 50 easily. The bottom of it heats up and when you need to empty it, you tilt it forward hence the name. There are giant steam kettles used for everything that needs to be boiled, with a spigot on the bottom for draining. They get drained into the aforementioned trough. Occasionally that one porter comes through, dragging a cart about 10 feet long to pick up some of the dirty wares. At this rate, he can never keep up. He's yakking with the rest of them anyway and seems to be in no rush. Problem is that we start running low on equipment and before I know it, I'm at the steaming sink washing off a sheet pan or three that I need.

A line of convection ovens are side by side top and bottom, the fans whirring away noisily. In fact everything is noisy here. There are 5 walk-in refrigerators, not counting what the hospitality group has on their side. We have two walk-in freezers as well. For a venue this size, that pumps out this much food, this is actually not enough refrigeration. After the deliveries arrive, boxes are everywhere. There is no order and no organization. I could not for the life of me figure out how they could possibly keep track of inventory or food cost. If you decided that you wanted to use red bell peppers for a dish you were making, you just went and took a case of them. No red peppers? Hmm...these yellow ones look nice, I'll take them instead. Then when the cook who actually needs a case of yellow peppers (which incidentally tend to cost more than the red ones) can't find what he needs is forced to take something else. It was survival of the fittest. One party that had beef tenderloin on the menu (the most expensive cut of all) found that the whole case had been used by another team and so they had to substitute the top sirloin, which not only was not serving the tenderloin client but screwing the party that needed the top sirloin, and on and on....

There's a fat guy who always manages to be standing in a place where I need to get through. He's got a mouth on him. "Hey! Who the fuck left this here? I gotta get into the ovens!" They call him the Muffin Man because he bakes off the frozen muffins, 350  or so at at time. He's a cross between the Pillsbury dough boy and Joe Pesci.  I've got one guy working on my team and a) everything he does is wrong and I have to do over and b) he keeps touching his face or his beard and I ask him to wash his hands but he does it again right away again without thinking about it. I start giving him tasks like chopping parsley which takes him about an hour and keeps him out of my way. Tired of babysitting him after a while, I ask the executive sous chef to reassign him elsewhere. Now my team can stay focused and rock.

My assignment was the Nissan pavilion. They had two press events that we had to cater. I went to inspect the area which requires me remembering how the hell to get to the elevators which are about 5 times the size of my bedroom. If you get off at the wrong level, suddenly you are hit with a rush of cold Hudson River wind coming through an open construction area. The sun feels pretty good though since the kitchen is like a cave, but I get back on. Finally, I get off on the right floor. I make my way between black curtains and step over electrical cords. I can hear the sounds of drills and nail guns. Suddenly I am bathed in bright lights and am walking through where the displays are all being set up. Audi, Jaguar, Ford...all the signs are being hung. Some of the cars are in place and are being dusted and shined. Workmen are everywhere with their tool belts, shouting out to one another. After getting lost for a bit, I finally find the Nissan area, where I check to see the staging area in the back and check for electrical outlets, the possibility of running water and tables available to me. After I get an idea of what I have and do not have, I make my way through more black curtains to find the closest elevator.

The day of our first party we are jammed up and jelly tight. We are golden. We are ready. We start loading our warm food into rolling hot boxes with lit sternos in them and our cold food in thermal Cambros to keep it chilled. I've got a gal on my team who is awesome, she's the list keeper and we review everything we need to have.
I grab a few more bodies and we all start pushing our carts to the elevator. At this point, it's now a different kind of bedlam. There are caravans like ours that are loaded up to go serve, and in the opposite direction are the used utensils and empty vessels rolling through. We nod at one another as we pass by. "How'd it go?" for the returning warriors, and "Good luck" to the ones setting off.
The elevator is slow and takes forever. Finally it lands on our floor and we roll on. We find it's not easy to roll all of this heavy shit through those curtains and over the ropes of cords. At one point we almost lose a speed rack. As we get to our area, there is a staging table set up for the waitstaff for Nissan. There are crates of glasses, ice being scooped into buckets and of course, coffee.
We set up our spot. Order must be made and systems devised. We have to prepare the passed  hors d'oeuvres  plates first, to be followed by platters of food. This is a buffet luncheon, not a plated affair. Awesomegal speaks fluent Spanish, so she can push along the busboys to get us things we may need. I do a final walk through in the lounge where the lunch will be served. There are members of the press mulling about, sipping on white wine or Diet Coke. The show is now completely set up and looks like the Auto Show that we all know and love. There are the skinny models (when did they get so young??) with too much makeup, in their sparkly dresses and fuck-me heels standing on rotating platforms. Various voices are heard on microphones extolling the virtues of each brand of car. Everything is shiny and bright, perfumed with the new-car smell.
And we are right behind the curtain, doing our thing. Our gloved hands, expertly filling and refilling platters and bowls. Wiping off the rims and garnishing them, I nod to the waiters to pick up. I also push them to walk through and get dirty glasses and plates and bring them back. I feel a responsibility not only for the food, but for the whole look and cleanliness of the party.
Silently we empty each tray from our hotbox. When you have good people, you don't need to talk. Awesomegal and I have that rapport instantly. She also takes direction beautifully and anticipates. She's a keeper, I take her phone number for future reference.
Finally, it seems the pace has slowed down and the lunch is over. Desserts are plattered and gone. It's the point where you look up and realize that you have been in the zone for an couple of hours, totally focused. My team is now loading up the empties and dirty utensils for the trip back down to the ant colony. The racks are rattling, we try to keep them quiet and giggle when we almost spill one on the same damn bunch of wires.
Now we are returning triumphant with our spent order, passing by the fresh ones. "How did it go?", one of my fellow lead-chefs asks. "Great!", I say. Awesomegal and I smile at each other, now fully bonded in the camaraderie of the kitchen.

Here's the thing, I realize now in retrospect- even if it was at a food factory and not exactly the pinnacle of my career, that success just feels good.
Our team gelled. That was number one. Even though I had to make that poor soul disappear, I was fortunate enough to have a good group otherwise. Not just Awesomegal, but my former student, D., who knew the ropes and guided me every step. Our food was prepared on time and though it might not have been my menu per se, it was executed properly. It was a lot of work and each stage had it's own set of stresses but we took it a step at a time. We had the rush of service, which comes with it's ups and downs. Bottom line- plates looked great, hot food was hot, cold food was cold and everything was paced just right.
We had one more party left to do. This one was sent up and we did not need to go with it so it was a little less intense but we made it happen easily. Nissan was done. On the other side of the kitchen was a knucklehead that I used to work with who was totally in the weeds on a cocktail party for 700 people for Ford. Other cooks were scrambling around trying to help his sorry ass. I jumped in with a friend of mine who was taking on the guy's appetizers. After a while though, I decided it was time to get out of there and split.
On my way out, a very tall gentleman in a suit was walking briskly through the hallway and as we passed each other he stopped, "Are you Chef M.?", he asked me.
"Yes Sir, I am."
He extended his right hand to shake mine. "I'm Bob, the executive director of food operations. I heard great things about the job you did for Nissan", he said, "Thank you".
"You're welcome". I replied with a smile. "My pleasure".

And all bitching aside, in it's own way, it really was.

Why I am over catering

Recently I have found myself avoiding catering gigs as if they were an obnoxious relative who says that they love you, gives you a check for $5 on your birthday which then bounces and you get charged $25 from your bank. It ends up costing you more than it's worth and you have to deal with their annoying personality traits.

I used to look forward to catering jobs. Sometimes I had a chance to stretch my skills and perhaps get to show off a little. For a while I had a regular group of people that I worked with. I had a partner who shared the responsibility. Sometimes the client came through his connections, sometimes mine. We planned out our menus, divvied up the items, worked our asses off and always excelled. When we needed servers or helpers we had some good ones. They were dedicated to the job and were fun to be with. Nothing like that cold beer at the end of a good gig when you're counting out the cash tips.
We cooked for political figures, celebrities and some just plain old rich folks. We did Rosh Hashonah and Yom Kippur for a family on upper Fifth Avenue. The owner's brother is a famous state Senator who came into the kitchen to chat with us and compliment us on the meal. When he heard that we were opening a bakery in South Norwalk, Connecticut he said, "Connecticut-Schmonnecticut! We need you in New York!"
How many vans and SUV's we loaded up. One time my Saab  9-3 was able to hold everything for a cocktail event at Ernst & Young. Luckily the gal working with me was about 5 feet tall because there was so much stuff in that car, even she had to keep her knees bent while sitting in the passenger seat.
We laughed a lot. One time at a swank Park Avenue pad we had gotten everything prepared early. The kitchen was immaculate. With nothing left to do, my partner and I were hanging around and somehow ended up with him sitting on a chair in the laundry room while I trimmed his ear hair. We looked like apes grooming each other in the jungle, it occurred to us how ridiculous we would look if someone walked in.
We used to prep catering jobs at the television studio that we worked at because it had beautiful professional kitchens. He was always popping out a wedding cake or two on the side. He had tubs of butter cream hidden away, or ganache discreetly tucked behind a rack. We had keys to the place and sometimes on weekends literally forgot that it was not in fact our own. Even the company vans were unofficially at our disposal.
Our team made fun of the guests and teased one another. There were some incredible homes and apartments. Lots of neurotic women with designer kitchens who were terrified of anything getting messy. My crew was always good about keeping things tidy, my pet peeve is seeing glasses and used cocktail napkins laying around. I did take a little pleasure out of a drunken guest vomiting on an expensive rug though. The hostess's face was priceless!
Hours upon hours of prep work. The packing up and last minute details that had to be addressed. Always forgetting that one thing that someone had to go back to the store/bakery/restaurant or studio for. Calming the nerves of the clients. The oven that died minutes before a wedding party and the hurricane that ensued at the same time, forcing us to relocate all the outdoor setup to the basement and tent. Lugging tons of dirty and used stuff back to our kitchens and having to clean it at some point. Being so exhausted that our feet and hands ached. Somebody was usually nursing a burn or bandaging a cut. Realizing that we never ate a proper meal, and had only picked at some hors d'oeuvres and a few cookies at the end of the night.
Bottom line, we had some good times, made some good money and our reputation was excellent.

So what has happened since the days of Park Avenue and ear-hair trimming?

For one thing, I am tired of haggling with people over money. Everyone wants the best but they do not want to pay for it. If I get my hair cut, I pay for what the service costs. If I go to the dentist I don't ask if they can charge half of their price to do a filling. What if I provide my own Novocaine, would that bring the price down?
All of that food we make is hand-crafted. If you hire me it is because I make my own pastry dough, I don't use pre-made tart shells. I take very few shortcuts because of the pride that I take in my work, it's just how I roll. Even some of the wealthiest people I have worked for insisted on serving frozen pigs in a blanket from Costco, and that I did. The customer is always right. But when they started also bringing cheap-ass cakes from there and Stew Leonard cookie platters to save a buck, you are starting to hurt my reputation.
I don't want to feel guilty and have to struggle with charging you what I am worth anymore. Take it or leave it.
Gathering ingredients in New York is extremely challenging. In Connecticut where I had my own vehicle it was one thing. In the city, unless you have a driver, it can be overwhelming. To go to Union Square and handpick the watermelon radishes and squeeze the tomatoes at the farmer's market then go to the upscale fancy butcher or fish market, or cheese monger, then an actual grocery store, etc., etc.. using taxis to get around all over an overcrowded metropolis. Ugh. No thanks.
Over the years I am working with different groups of people and have found certain stereotypes everywhere.
Some examples are the waiter who never shuts up. He makes the same jokes over and over again.  He is not funny nor clever. His diarrhea of the mouth is exhausting to me. During the event, the servers that stand around and do nothing while the kitchen is sweating and in overdrive.
Then there is the overworked/underpaid martyr- in the kitchen there will be one person who when you ask them a question will roll his/her eyes and say "well, I'm not paid enough to tell you what do do/where to go/how to do (fill in the blank), it's not my job!" But it is  because he/she does it everyday so just shut up and give me the info. I'm a freelancer here and don't give a shit about the politics that go on at this place. Show me the walk-in then show me the money.
Rude party guests. Bitch, listen up- I know more about food, entertaining, travel and culture than probably most people in the room. Because I am in a uniform and you are in Versace with Laboutin pumps and Botox pumped into your forehead does not make you a higher form of life in any way. Guests who wave you away with the back of their hand when you are offering them food or rudely command you have no class. Please and thank you are still appropriate.
My bones are tired now. I run when I work. I never sit down. I don't smoke so I don't take breaks. The body does not quite keep up with it anymore. When I am looking for something on a bottom shelf and I used to bounce right up, it now takes a moment and a slight grunt to do so.
I find myself working for other people often and they don't do it like I do. They don't set up nicely, the stations are dirty. The waiters and everyone are picking off the trays in the kitchen and not washing their hands. It disgusts me. Recently I was handed a wrinkly, stained chef coat to wear at a party. I was mortified.

Overall, I think that basically I moved on in a new direction. Yes, my team was probably cleaner and more professional than many that I work with now.  Chances are though, that our jokes were stupid to other people and were only funny to us. Money was always a hassle.
Catering just does not come to me naturally anymore. I always preferred to be behind the scenes anyway. As I get more and more into teaching and mentoring young cooks, I find that my experiences are a tool to pass on to them. If I teach them strong skills and values, maybe they will work clean and make beautiful food. When they get to a point when they walk through a room and see a cocktail plate with crumbs and a crumpled napkin on it they must pick it up. I want them to count those wads of cash out to their servers, pack up the greasy hotel pans into the coolers- organize the rentals for pick-up and feel pride that they did an amazing job. It's their turn now. That's just how I roll.

A Turkey of a Job

It's Thanksgiving time again, which always reminds me of a job I had at a little "gourmet" store in New Canaan for a few months. Between leaving my first business and building my new one I was introduced to a guy who was in dire need of an executive chef. I went to meet with him and told him that I'd help him out for a few months. At least through the holidays (this was early September).
The front was a pretty little room with a few tables, lots of high end merchandise stacked on shelves on the wall. On the opposite side were refrigerated cases where food was displayed for takeout or eat in. It was cute and a direct rip-off of a very successful business in Greenwich.
The boss-man was tall with a bald head that shined like a beacon. He showed me the kitchen, it was the size of the average closet, pre-McMansion. However, that never bothers me, as long as it's efficient and clean. It was efficient but sure not clean. The convection oven hadn't been maintained at all, so the glass windows were black instead of clear. The gas stove was so dirty that it was almost impossible to light it, the pilots were so blocked. On the other side of the prep area was a tiny dishwashing area, a puny walk-in and a desk.
My first clue to how clueless Baldy was about food was when I tried to introduce some new items. He had a monotone voice that he used in a way where he pretended to be agreeable but somehow he always got his way. Hey- ultimately he was the boss but why have a real chef there if you don't want to use their brain? Basically he wanted everything the same as it had been. Even though I didn't know the previous chef's recipes and sales were atrocious, some new stuff might have perked things up a bit.
Luckily I had a sidekick. I will call him "Slowpoke" here. A really nice guy who was very helpful but he worked another job, had a high maintenance wife, thus was always tired and moved like a friggin' snail.
Slowpoke and I would listen to music back there as we did our daily prep. I'd made cd's full of eclectic music and he had an i-pod full of new stuff. We swayed to the rhythm while we cooked side by side.
Slowpoke was supposed to make sandwiches everyday. They put about a dozen out on the case that were pre-made. It took him literally about an hour to do this. Meanwhile I whipped up all kinds of salads or meatloaf or chicken. Baldy always hovered in the morning, very anxious to fill up the front cases. First drill of the day was filling up platters with food, mostly leftover from the fridge. Baldy would hand something to me or Slowpoke and say, "you want to bowl this up"? I'd heard of "plating as a verb, but when did to "bowl" become one. I think he was trying to speak kitchen-ese.
Baldy insisted that we make roasted whole chickens, just the way the previous chef had. That was okay, they were stuffed with oranges, lemons and herbs and finished with a nice shiny glaze. They almost looked like those fake chickens that you might see in the kitchen of a house for sale, so you will be able to imagine your own real dinner there. What was not okay is that sometimes that chicken did not sell. Day of, next day, or the next. So Baldy had us continually re-glaze them, rearrange them with new garnish and put them right back out in the case again. I'd cringe when on a Friday afternoon some lady in her fur coat would be thrilled to see that we still had chickens available, even if unbeknownst to her these babies had been prepared on Monday.
As a chef, I understand food cost and having as little waste as possible. But Baldy would come out from the walk-in with some little remnant of ham or 2 wilted carrots and say, "is there anything we can do with this?" or "I noticed that we had two chicken breasts in the walk-in...". He had no respect for food, for freshness. Only money.
He was very proud of his "pastry chef". He was referring to a Mexican guy who could bake a decent cake, was a clock-milker and liked his cerveza, making him a little unreliable. I'd had a bakery (in fact Senor Pastry had interviewed with us once and never showed up for his tryout) and I knew a thing or two about baking. Again, Baldy wanted no part of my contribution. It had to be his way, the same way. And so it was.
One day a couple came in to talk about a catering job. The man was incredibly obnoxious, loud, rude, cheap. His wife looked like she wanted to melt into her chair with embarrassment. On our team was me, Baldy and his girlfriend, Freckles. Again, I was hired to do a job. I was very experienced. I had worked at one time for one of the most famous caterers in the country quite frankly so I was more than happy to do my part. Baldy and Freckles kept talking over me. Between them and the loud-mouthed Israeli I stayed quiet. Until at one point they were discussing dessert and Freckles was boasting about Senor Pastry. They told him that he would make mini-tarts for them and she held her hands about 6 inches apart. I couldn't help myself. "Those are not minis", I said, "minis are bite sized, never that big. You would have to cut those and that defeats the purpose of passing them". Freckles snapped at me, "yes they are!". I shut my pie-hole about the tarts.
Slowpoke told Baldy that he was going to Chekoslyvakia with his Chek wife for three weeks over the holidays. Not asked, but told. Baldy gave the okay but proceeded to bitch and whine about it constantly to me. What was he worried about? I was the one who had to cover Slowpoke's slow ass. We got a guy in for a while. He always wore a pork-pie hat so that's what I'll call him here. Pork-pie was a blabbermouth but at least he was funny and he could make a dozen sandwiches in 15 minutes like a normal person. Pork-pie had worked at the place back when it was brand-new and the original chef-partner had been there. He could not believe how far the place had fallen. How dirty, how unkempt. And how Baldy ran it, especially those old-ass glazed chickens.
In any food service business the most vile and disgusting thing is the grease trap. Because of all the grease, oil and various food garbage that goes down the drain, there is a mechanism that separates it with a holding tank that must be emptied. If not on a regular maintenance schedule, the grease trap will let you know it needs cleaning by emitting a smell so putrid, imagine vomit, shit, death and garbage mixed together. He who has the job of emptying the grease trap is an unfortunate man indeed.
Usually the grease trap is cleaned after hours because of the stench. The strong exhaust fans will suck in the smell and it will permeate everywhere.
Not good ole' Baldy. Not wanting to pay the dishwasher overtime he had it done at midday.
This was an older grease trap, the kind where the top comes off and the tank is below the floor. The poor dishwasher then gets to scoop out the soup from hell and put it into a garbage can. Pork-pie and I gagged as our fan in the hood pulled the stench toward us. We tied dishrags over our nose and mouths. The dishwasher had a bandanna over his face. When he was done he proceeded to wheel it toward the door leading from the kitchen to the dining room.
Oh- this cannot be, I thought. Pork-pie and I looked at each other. His big brown eyes had the same look as mine.
As there was no back door the dishwasher, mask and all wheeled the offending garbage pail through the dining room, past customers eating their lunch and out the front door. Like in a Pepe LePeu cartoon, you could almost see the putrid aroma following him.
When Thanksgiving came around, again it was his way or the highway. Last year Baldy took orders for organic turkeys, not to cook thank God, but to sell to his customers. He rented a refrigerated trailer to hold them behind the store because we had no room for them. When the trailer arrived it smelled pretty bad so first we had to sanitize it. Then the turkeys came in. Loads of them. They were wrapped in individual plastic bags with their giblets and instructions. As expected there was a little blood pooled in the bags. These were once living creatures of course.
Baldy decided he did not like the way the blood looked and that we should rinse out every last turkey and re-bag them.
So there we were on a Sunday when we were closed, the two Peruvian dishwashers and I with 75 Goddamn raw turkeys, one by one, taking them out of their bags, rinsing them out- they were freezing cold and it was easy to get pricked on errant sharp bones. Then patting them dry, re bagging them and labeling them
Come Monday morning all the turkeys in the trailer had not only drained a little more blood in their, but some water too. They looked even worse.
Then the menu for the holiday. Didn't need my suggestions, just do it the old way even though I had no idea how they had been prepared before.
Slowpoke was still there at the time. He left promptly at 5 o'clock. Had to get to his other job. I had to complete virtually a mountain of Thanksgiving side dishes for all the orders. Sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, celeriac, soup, on and on. And of course, this was Tuesday night, and everything was to be picked up, next day- Wednesday and then the customer had the privilege of serving this nice 3 day old food to their guests.
I plowed through. I say what I do and I do what I say. At one point Baldy's father, Baldy Senior who'd never spoken a word to me came over. "You're really something", he said, "you just put your head down and keep going. I'm impressed." That was the highlight of my evening, that was for sure. And, I got it all done.

Christmas was coming around. I had a huge order from a good customer of mine for cookies. Not through the store, but on my own, done with ingredients that I had paid for, in my own kitchen and my own packaging.
I needed to make a delivery about 11am to them. Baldy had been watching me like a hawk lately. He was so paranoid, perhaps he knew that Pork-pie and I had been having a few laughs at his expense. And though I did my job every single day, he was constantly lurking around.
This being the case I decided that I was not going to tell him about my little delivery. Since it was unseasonably warm I kept a window open on the back of my truck so that the cookies wouldn't melt as I went in to work.
Around 10:45, the bulk of my work was done. I told Pork-pie that if Baldy and Freckles were looking for me just tell them I had to run out on a quick errand. I clocked out and took off to make my delivery. I was paid $500 for that order from a very happy client.
When I returned and clocked back in Pork-pie told me Baldy was pissed. They knew I was up to something. Freckles had looked through that open window this morning and saw all the bakery boxes.
"She did what?!"
Spying on me! The nerve!
So I faced Baldy down. I let him have it. I'd done my work, I'd done this job on my own time, including delivery. You guys are looking in my car. There's no trust. I've done nothing but work for you. I never sit down, I never take breaks. I don't talk on my cell phone, I've never had a sick day. And then I did a real diva thing that I'd never done before.
"DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?, Do you know who I have worked for? The great places I have worked at including my own! I am a professional and should not be treated like a criminal!"
Baldy slithered to the other side of the kitchen and pouted at his desk.
A week later he looked shocked when I reminded him that Dec. 31 would be my last day. I'd told him I'd get him through the holidays. And I did. I was rewarded with a nice empty Christmas card.
A few months later while I was working as a private chef in a swanky house in Greenwich I called Slowpoke just to say hello. He told me that Baldy had gone out of business. He said he'd spent the last few weeks cleaning the place out.
I sarcastically asked him if he'd gotten any severance. Slowpoke said yeah, a handshake. Not even as much as a case of raisins.