I’m absolutely lying when I say I don’t care what people think about our food, and I’ll tell you why:
It’s because my hands locked up a few weeks ago while rolling beef patties (at last count, I’ve rolled at least thirty thousand). I can hardly look at raw meat anymore, but I cackled psychopathically that night as I tried to take off my gloves with T-Rex hands. To laugh at your cow-induced paralysis in an empty commercial kitchen is as comedic as it is tragic.
It’s because my MacBook rejects my fingerprint now. Touch ID doesn’t like dry, calloused fingers. This happens because I don’t wear Korean mom gloves when I do dishes, which is totally preventable; mom and dad remind me every week on FaceTime, but I forget on Sunday nights, and by the time I remember, what’s the point?
It’s because my calves are pulsing every morning when I wake up, swollen from standing for eight to twelve hours a day. I’m hardly the only person who lives this life, but for some reason the pain is pronounced. I exercise now to keep my body from breaking down, but the running makes the leg problems worse, which makes it harder to work, which makes it harder to exercise… I suppose this is life in your thirties.
It’s because I can’t seem to get a grip on my days or weeks - three days as a barista, three days as a prep and line cook, one day to catch up on sleep and all the emails and texts and other shit that owners are supposed to do. That leaves the scant hours in between to be a brother, friend, uncle, son, boss, business partner. Yes, I have the time, but no, I don’t have the attention span or the angelic personality. I’d rather vacuum the apartment with ten free minutes than pay that toll road fee that has already incurred late charges, or text the friend that lurks in the corner of my brain. How the hell do restaurant owners do it? How the hell do parents do it?
All of this to try to make food for a living, to make (what I think is) my passion, my profession.
So, yes, I care deeply about what people think about Softies, and it pisses me off to know that some people think our food is mid, or expensive, or “not worth it,” or say they’d rather go to In-N-Out, or be upset at a twenty-minute wait and think to themselves, how hard could it be?
I think it makes me angry because deep down, I know that all of that is partially true.
We don’t always put out the best product, rushed to crank out fifteen patties on a griddle that should really only handle ten at a time, to catch up to the twenty-six that are on the board.
You can get two Double-Doubles Animal Style for the price of an Aji single (although, to the friend who said our burgers are “smaller” than In-N-Out’s, I’d love to deconstruct and measure and weigh their burgers against ours… fucker).
Making a burger, to their point, shouldn’t take longer than two minutes. It doesn’t matter that we’re two ticket rails are filled and we’re ignoring the last spot that signals we should “PAUSE” new orders; that’s our fucking job.
It upsets me because, for all of Sam and my physical and mental ailments, and our cries for validation, that is what this business is, and in a profoundly sick way, that is what life is. Our customers don’t and shouldn’t care. Time doesn’t care, money doesn’t care, investors don’t care. Fuck, our team shouldn’t even care. It’s no one’s responsibility to coddle us about how hard it is to cook in bulk for a living.
Everyone is apparently a food critic now. Drho asked me the other day if I think Yelp Elites know what they’re talking about. Fuck Yelp Elites, I said. All they do is write about every restaurant they went to, when literally no one asked, and then they get celebrated for it?
But why is this adversarial relationship between chef/cook and customer/guest so prevalent? Isn’t the point of hospitality to serve, to spend hours unnoticed to offer a few minutes of simple pleasure?
It’s that purely human feeling, notice me, acknowledge me. I got into the wrong business in this regard; my skin thickened from burn marks but still a fragile man-child on the inside - still craving ego-strokes, still wanting wound-licks, still wondering on a primal level what he is truly worth.
There is little excitement as we get ready to sign our lease next week; I can only identify the anxiety, and nerves, and daunting fear that we’ll close as quickly as we open. I dread the thought of writing that last caption, thanks for everything - Softies.
In this regard, though, it is the perfect business to get into. The one that challenges every cell in my body, every instinct to get angry or impatient or moody or sad; the one that teaches me every day,
Stop fucking caring.