Unemployed Ben

Sleep is an interesting thing, when you want it you usually don’t get it and when you need to stay awake you end up sawing logs within minutes.

I have never really been a big sleeper, even when I was a kid. Sure I tried to get my 8 hours when I was in grade school but once I hit about 7th grade I never really got much more than 6 or so hours. I would usually just listen to the radio for an hour or so and maybe read a book but it was rare to be asleep before midnight. This continued into my foray in the work force, much of my family worked very hard and I was always instilled with a great work ethic. It was rare to even hear anyone in my family complain about work unless it was about some extraordinary circumstance like pulling a double shift. For that reason when I started working in the kitchen where I got my first job, The Yacht Club, my boss saw how hard I worked and moved me out of the dishwasher pit within 4 weeks. That was a tough job because the volume of dishes was so great that at times you had to work as fast as humanly possible just to be able to get your job done. Not to mention the obvious nasty smell that stayed with you after getting off work. So when I was promoted to prep cook I couldn’t have been happier but I also remember that 2 other dishwashers were upset because I was the low man on the totem pole and somehow got promoted ahead of them. It caused some friction for a little while as I had to work along side them in my new job, but I decided that I would show them that I deserved to have the job and busted my ass. I took it upon myself to learn and volunteer for new duties that the cooks didn’t seem to like to do.

One of these jobs was shucking oysters… now this was tough for me because when I was 6 years old I had some bad oysters and got really sick. But I was determined to overcome this obstacle. Now this was a menu item, on the half shell on a platter with shaved ice and lemon crowns but those were prepared by the pantry chef per individual order so it was on Fridays when I learned how to shuck those bad boys. Friday was the Seafood Buffet and it was extensive and drew about 200-300 people and that is a lot of oysters. So my first Friday after I volunteered, the head chef took me aside and showed me his technique. He had a unique way of doing it as he held them up on end with the bottom on a butchers block, he then used the point of the shucker tool to pry open the shell and as he brought the shell parallel with the ground he slid the blade under the shellfish and cut the foot (The muscular part that keeps the bugger in his shell) and then popped off the top. He used a towel to grab the little bugger as they can get a little sharp and are a little dirty. After a few attempts of my own I got the hang of it and was doing it at about half his speed, which he thought was pretty damn good, so I was pleased. Then he brought out the bags and bags and even more bags of the critters that would be needed for the night. I began to realize why no cook or chef would want to do this as six or even a dozen wasn’t too bad but what they needed on Fridays was about 35 dozen. That’s 420!! That was about 6 sheet pans and if your not familiar with how big a sheet pan is than imagine about 8 large dinner plates. It took me over 2 hours to accomplish the mission and when I was done I was a mess, my chef coat was covered in dirty shell grime and I smelled like bottom of a crab boat. But not matter how hard it was it was amazing seeing all of them lined up in the walk in, we covered them with wet towels and each time a new cook saw them they started grinning because they knew that they didn’t have to do them this week. They congratulated me as if it was somehow almost an initiation into the restaurant biz. The strange thing is that when I did the math that meant that every person that came in was having about 1.5 oysters each and that amazed me. It wasn’t that so many people loved them just that the ones that did would eat a dozen of them. That night at about 9 pm we actually ran out and I bolted to the reach in where we kept the fresh shellfish and began to shuck like a wild man. They were completely out and some big wig that was a huge oyster fan wanted some post haste. Then as I had about a half dozen or so done and the headwaiter ran them out to Mr. Big Shot, something weird happened. The rest of the cooks and chefs all grabbed shuckers and helped me finish the last 3 dozen…it was amazing to see all of these guys that I looked up to and wanted to emulate, pitch in and help me out. They had my back and I soon learned that is how a great kitchen staff works, they always are looking out for each other. It was almost like the way a team or family reacts, everyone pulled together to ensure that everything was perfect.

Of course this was a big moment in my young career and that is when I knew that I wanted to be a chef. I worked myself up the chain and even attended classes to help me advance my skills and develop my talents.

One thing that happens when you work at a high end demanding restaurant is that you are literally giving it everything you have, there were weekends that some of us would literally sleep on a sofa in the employee break room between day and night shifts. There were just some days that you knew you would be working 14-16 hours shifts but the rest of the rest of the crew would be right by your side, our successes were sweetened and our failures lessoned because we were in it together.

The weekends were always the most demanding especially in Nov-Dec (Holiday parties) and the summer (Weddings). But the toughest was when I moved to the night shift and then had to come back on Sunday morning to prepare for brunch. This was pretty brutal as we never got out of the kitchen on a Saturday until about 11pm and we had to be back work the next morning at 6am. It was brutal because as most people know that you just cant go home and sleep after work, your all keyed up and need to have a drink or two just to relax. So most of the night would be spent in some bar with the crew unwinding until about 1 am. At the most we would get about 3-4 hours sleep and when got to work there was a lot of groaning and labored steps until we got the blood flowing along with a double espresso. Brunch ran until about 3 pm and we usually did about 400-500 people and upwards of 800 on a Mother’s day or Easter. This was without a doubt the most extensive buffet I have ever seen, so when it was over and we did the tear down it took about 60 minutes to take care of all the food and cleanup. When we got done this was the one time that we could actually go into the bar as employees and have a drink. Sunday night was the only time that the club ever closed and as it was a private club so employees weren’t allowed to use the facilities. So as all the cooks sat around the bar we all looked severely wounded from working 21 of the past 28 hours. Pretty much everything hurt but it was your feet that throbbed the most. As we had a beer or two the wait staff would tear down the room and set up for Monday morning. When they were done they would join us in the bar and it would just be the staff, which was about 20 or so. It was almost as if we had this special bond because we had survived yet another weekend, at this point we would usually head to local bar shoot some pool and watch the Sonics.

Even on Monday after I rarely slept for more than 6 or 7 hours and I would still bounce back pretty quickly. Working in a kitchen is pretty demanding, you putting away food shipments, lifting, pulling, flipping, bending over and all of it is under a far amount of stress all while standing for long periods of time. I remember that most days we rarely had time for a break let alone a minute or so just to sit down. It was something you just got used to, you built up a tolerance and you rarely even thought about it outside of Sunday afternoons.

After some somewhat bad experiences in the business, I moved on to a desk job. The odd thing was that when the topic of sleep ever came up most of the people I had worked with mentioned getting 8…9 or even 10 hours as mandatory. I was shocked and when I told them that if I got 4 solid hours I was happy. they couldn’t believe it. I explained that I rarely fell asleep before 3 am and that it was a pattern that I had to adhere to in a restaurant. I tried to defend this as I always got a lot of stuff done while others were sleeping but they all thought I was crazy. But a strange thing happened, over the course of the 5 or so years I worked in that desk job I started to sleep more and more and almost started to rely on sleep. I would blame a sluggish day or mistake on not getting enough sleep even though I had gotten about 6 or 7 hours. Over time I began to embrace sleep, most likely to avoid my boring existence and reticent job. At one point for the first time in my life I got insomnia and had a rough time getting any sleep over the course of about 10 days. I would just lie in bed for hours and hours getting no rest whatsoever. I eventually got some melatonin and was able to get some zzz’s, but I still dont know what caused it.

Not until recently had really thought about my sleep patterns but the more and more I was dissatisfied with life or my job the more and more I slept. It wasn’t about being depressed it was more about not being challenged, not having the adrenaline rush of the kitchen. Teamwork is often the buzzword in the corporate landscapes of America but the truth is that most people are just looking to get ahead and will stab you in the back just so that they can get a cup of coffee quicker. Its odd because I dont ever remember discussing teamwork in a kitchen as it was just there, it didn’t need to be discussed, but in this corporate place where they had teamwork posters on the wall, seminars and workshops all built around developing the team dynamic it was almost devoid of actual teamwork. It mostly existed with your friends and the occasional manager but over the course of my tenure even that deteriorated.

But that brings me to being unemployed now for about 7 months and one of the most rewarding experiences I have is sleep. 8 hours is not unusual and sometimes ill even hit the 10 hour mark. It’s an escape from my normal life, a place of pure fantasy. I don’t worry about my bad back in my dreams, I don’t worry about how ill pay rent, no concerns about my lack of transportation. Some days all I want to do is sleep. 7 years ago all I wanted to do was wake up so that I could make the most of my life and today all I want to do is enter a place that doesn’t resemble my current existence. I never imagined how much my environment would affect me and it happened so gradually I hardly noticed it. 6 years later I am a totally different person, I mostly communicate through emails, text messages and phone calls. One thing that is different now is that I tend to question my life a lot more; you don’t have much time to do this when all you do is work. I read a lot more and am generally a smarter person, im not sure if this is because of getting older or because I have the time to contemplate life.

Still though when I look back to my kitchen days I long for that feeling of knowing I belong to something special, knowing that when you did a good job it wasn’t reinforced my some manager with a employee of the month award but by the instant feedback of a customer. You always knew you were doing a great job and it was always apparent by the amount of people that wanted to eat the food you created. With food there is a comfort factor that I can’t imagine is evident in many other professions. A truly great meal is amongst the most satisfying things on this great earth and providing that experience was very demanding but also incredibly rewarding.

Plus we got to wear Chili Pepper Pants