service
9:57am - three minutes to service
For the next five hours, I will not give a flyyyinngggg fuck about your feelings.
I’m giving myself permission to be an asshole, knowing full well that I will care deeply about your feelings around 7:36pm, when I get home, unload my car, and eat a leftover burrito while sending apology and thank you texts to everyone I ignored. While I do so, I will wonder if I’m a fake motherfucker for talking about our why on Instagram, and briefly consider taking all those videos down.
But, whatever. Right now, all I care about is that I and the team don’t shit ourselves.
They are my priority, because then, they are able to make you their priority. By transitive property, you are my priority as well, even though my face would suggest anything but. It’ll make sense in a few hours.
11:12am - slightly in the weeds
I take a quick glance to my left while letting the wet dredge drip off this cod filet, and all I see are tickets. Our data says that spicy fish outsells our burgers until 12pm, so I don’t need to ask the line to know that most of those are for me. My eyes shift slightly more left, and I see ten pairs of eyes and crossed arms and cranked necks, watching our every move, evaluating our urgency in getting this food out, or maybe they’re checking out Paul in the back. I know this is a possibility because sometimes I check him out too.
You have fourteen fish all day, chef!
Okay, let’s see - I need to season/flour/dredge/panko seven right now. The oil temp is 322, fuck. Crank the heat, by the time I drop it’ll be 350, prob drop down to 315 when the fish go in, but if I keep the flame there it’ll creep back up in no time. I need more wet dredge, goddamn it. 220g flour to 22g salt to 2 bottles of Topo Chico. Kiki, can you grab me two topos? Measure, pour, whisk. Shit, did I salt these filets???
I’ll watch the first batch peripherally as I prep the next seven, and then I’ll be caught up, maybe I can hop on buns after.
Ordering, five fish and two large tots!
Okay, that’s fine - by the time those first seven come out I’ll drop the two tots and then the next seven fish and then I’ll prep five more, maybe eight to get ahea-
Josh! Josh! Hi!
I look left again. Oh, hi! Good to see you!
So, if my friend comes after church, will you be sold out of fish? He’s asking.
1:16pm - still in the weeds
I need to pee so badly, but Chris just got here, which means everyone else needs to take their 30-minute breaks. If I ignore my bladder it’ll go away.
Sheena, go. She later tells me that she was feeling anxious, which is, like, totally valid.
We need two small tots followed by one loaded tot, chef!
Yeap.
As I’m seasoning the tots I look at the patties that are resting and notice the onions aren’t caramelized enough. No no no, that’s not right. I’m being anal but then the onions will be stringy and not sweet enough. The thing about food is, every single fucking dish that goes out is an audition, and every bad dish reflects badly on Sam and me. It’s like Randy Jackson saying it’s a no for me, dawg, and I cannot let myself be an Idol reject.
Hey Chris, let’s go a little longer after the flip.
Paul looks tired, should I send him on break too? I don’t want Chelsea to feel overwhelmed though. Damn, I miss Sam. I hear Kiki laughing up front so I assume she’s okay for now.
Josh, you doing ok?
Yeap.
7:36pm - no longer an asshole
I didn’t ignore you because I don’t care. I ignored you because every ticket is a deadline. Imagine if you had a very important project to submit in seven minutes at work, which determines whether you’ll get a promotion. And then, imagine if a kinda-friend starts asking you about whether you can send the PDF to his email, like now, because his kinda-friend wants to see your project after church.
I ignore you because every second I spend taking off my gloves and giving you a hug is another second that the stranger right next to you is watching me neglect my station, which means I’m neglecting my team, which means I’m neglecting my project and giving Randy fucking Jackson a reason to not send me to Hollywood.
Six minutes to get a fish sando out is really good, but five is better. It can always be better, and it always needs to be better. So, it is easiest to treat everyone exactly the same, so that six can become five and five can become four; in a douchebag-y way, that is actually my way of being hospitable. You don’t come to watch me cook and applaud my technique, this isn’t omakase. You come to eat a burger, and I am the obstacle between you and your food.
A couple weeks ago, a random dude came up to Michelle and asked how we sold out of fish so quickly, as if to say we were lying.
In her typically kind manner, she said, I guess people were really excited to try it!
He said back to her, or you guys just didn’t make enough.
I tried to go find that motherfucker, because the team is my priority, so if he has something to say, he should say it to me, and not Michelle of all people.
Except I couldn’t, because I can’t afford to waste thirty seconds. Right now, I have to make eight patties, each with perfectly caramelized onions, in three minutes, so that the next guest is happy, which makes me happy, even though I really fucking need to pee right now.