Food Fight (file under being A Good Sport)

I really like A. I know I’ve said it before and I’m sure to say it again. In fact I will say it right now. I really like A. He is super talented. Has a great head on his shoulders. Is fun to be around and has a lot to teach. Today A and I got into what I thought was a rather pedantic fight the details of which follow here.

So I was going about my day as I always do when I rubbed (jokingly and definitely in good humour) some tomato paste on the Garde Mangers Commis. She took it as a joke and thought it was funny. A got involved and the retribution was that I got hit with some oil and then salt on the back of my neck. Well I am not going to take that lying down. Who would? So naturally I responded. I went and grabbed an egg and then went to A’s station and cracked the egg on his back. I also got some on his station.

He immediately went all sour and did not take it jokingly. It was all downhill from there. He responded by first hitting me with some lobster juice and flour. No biggie and I found it quite humorous. But he was not having any of it and started spitting all kinds of vitriol in my direction. Really mean spirited and in fact if anybody else had been the recipient they would probably have broken down right there.

As I was plating canapés he would spill them over forcing me to start again. I would get something ready to be put away and he would open it and flip it on the table. Basically just stuff that is a nuisance and nothing more.

It escalated from there despite the fact that I cleaned the mess created at his station. He proceeded as I was cleaning to throw Mushroom reduction wherever I was cleaning. Salad dressing and pepper on the floor and me. A steaming tomato saffron butter sauce and many other things. He also took my knife and in its box decided to write me a “nice little note,” as he called it along with some sausages wrapped in my box. The note read; “Stick to what you know.”

I refused to change my jacket and wore the foodstuffs with a sense of humility and pride. I’m never going to break at the whim of some twenty five year old guy. A kid really, at least in my understanding of the world. But again I am a good sport and I will take anything he throws at me. I like him. And while it is a little humiliating to walk around the kitchen covered in that stuff and to have him belittle and degrade me… I can take it. I will take it.

Ultimately I believe that I have brought myself intro the lions den. Oddly enough my middle name is Daniel so I am not quite sure what that means. But I am coming to believe that maybe, just maybe, none of the people in the kitchen (with few exceptions) actually thought that I could do it. That I could survive and thrive in that environment. And I firmly believe that they thought I would quite or be fired.

A has assured me that he will make my life a living hell. He will mess with my mise, he will throw it out. He will do whatever he can to mess with me. And I say… YOU DO WHAT YOU HAVE TO. Because I am too.

Well, I have given them absolutely no reason to fire me. AND I CERTAINLY AM NOT GOING TO QUIT. So, hit me with your best shot. Fire away. I am where I am because of hard work and diligence. I am who I am because I know who I am and what I have to give to this world.

I really like A. I am firmly convinced that the next few weeks, perhaps even months are going to be very difficult for me. At least as it relates to him. But I believe that there is a lesson to be learned here. And knowing that he sometimes reads this I am not going to say what that lesson is just yet. Although I will. What I will say is that no matter, in my life, at any point, that things have gotten tough, people have been vitriolic, my surroundings have not been friendly, have I ever, ever QUIT! So, in the annals of food fights, which tonight was kind of one sided, I guess you could say that I was France to A’s Germany.

I did ask to leave as I knew that tonight it was only going to get worse.

For some reason this popped into my head as my last thought;

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Are you dreaming big and inspired?

A la prochaine

SDM