I was thinking the other day, literally yesterday, that most line cooks don't have girlfriends. I don't know if it's just something about us, but none of us usually have steady girlfriends. There's this one guy, Antonio, who has a seventeen year old girlfriend (who works here too), and he's 26 or so, but that's the only exception. It just reinforces to me why I love these guys, and why I work at the jobs I do even though I don't have to.
Today Petra, the Culinary manager, asked all six of us line guys [ed.-It's unheard of to have a six man line on a Wednesday night] if she was interrupting any of our Valentine's Day plans. We looked at each other to see if any of us did, and then we realized it was a joke.
Of course not. Line cooks fall into several predictable categories: those who despise Valentine's Day because it's a neo-fascist corporate holiday designed to sell greeting cards, those who could get a girlfriend but don't because they'd rather "play the field," and those like me who just don't care one way or the other. We're a noble breed, we line cooks. An entire generation of man-children raised by corporations. We drop-outs love food, and the camaraderie of working together, but we need direction. It's ironic that the love of a good woman could provide some tender care when needed. Someone to admire our cuts and our burns, someone to cook and clean for us because we're just too damn tired from doing it all day to do it ourselves.
And that's why we don't have girlfriends. Women think we're sexist, but most of us are just simple-minded males who haven't had anyone direct them. A few of us don't need direction, a few like to play the field. And a small minority of us wonder why he ever chose to work with a bunch of monkeys in the first place.
But I love my job, I do. But please, don't patronise me with a "HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!!!" today because I don't want to hear it. I'm too busy cooking your food to care what day it is.
Peas.
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