Rush Hour

It's one of the golden rules in a work setting--particularly in food industry. What happens in rush hours stays in rush hours. Nothing is personal. Also, your privilege of having personal space and boundaries is temporarily provoked in those hours. It is a true twilight zone, a fever dream that you must forget once it's over.

Gather here, fans of tv series The Bear. Remember the scene where they get non-stop tickets that are due in 15 minutes or so because Sidney (one of the mains who recently got forced to be a sous) left the pre-ordering screen open over night. Even you haven't watch the show, folks who work in the industry can picture this scene fully flinching, shaking with the gutty feelings. You may hear the haunting noise of the tickets from miles away.

Imagine, this for twice a day and for hours non stop. Lunch. Dinner. Repeat. My condolences if your place serves breakfast. As they say, "Fuck brunch."

Dante's inferno is definitely missing out on this juicy little space of hell called: kitchen. Plus, kitchen is multi-purpose hell: [4th hell] greed over Cambros, [5th hell] anger towards FOH and customers with build-a-bear syndrome, [7th hell] violence among line cooks over shared green mix between two stations, and [8th hell] fraud of putting 86 on today's special during the rush. This is only a brief summary of hell's kitchen--not the show, but the real life threatening industry.

I've committed a crime once. I took a handful of mixed greens from other station for the burgers I was plating. I was calling bills, plating for 6, doomed to face the faith of no greens on my side. My left hand reached out for neatly secured greens from the other station. Did it feel wrong? No. There was no such capacity in me, mentally nor emotionally. There is no time to be rational. I don't care the other station is all cleaned up when my station is still running and getting beat down. Long story short, the cook of that station and I got into a heated argument--f words flying over our heads--he was sent home, forever. Now, this may sound ridiculous and total banana to fight over the mixed greens to some of you non kitchen residents. Remind you, kitchen imitates life, the system we've got going in this society. I was totally violating the ownership, the privatization of goods, and my fellow coworker's rights to crash out over their missing greens. I would turn myself in if the criminal code allows.

Our tendency to privatize everything that is under the capitalist culture is embedded in every little niche aspects of life. We also enjoy being outrageous, dropping all the professionalism (one of the biggest corporate scam) as destined to be free-range chickens. Rush hours bring out the free-range workers, they thrive in the chaos as the mother nature intended us to be.