Other People Are Having a Much Better Time

I am supposed to be in New York. I was driving up with my friend MB. We were going to watch Jon Stewart. And eat food! And go to the restaurant supply district! But then, my boss's wife decided to have a baby. So now I am watching Top Chef after my 14 hour work day and feeling bitchy. So this guy I know, the DK, makes this sound when he is unimpressed with life. It's sounds like a sad duck. He calls it Indignant Duck. That is the noise I am making now. Mahhhh!

Management is as management does.

So, at work, I am not officially in charge of anything yet.  Nothing.  I am doing the in-charge kind of work, but there has been no announcement.  Nor any sort of uniform change.  I feel I should get a special hat.  Or a star.  I think I am supposed to be wearing a black apron, but I don't know where to get one and it feels sort of showy, and also I am the sort of person who wears power lightly.  Or not at all!  Since, and don't tell anyone this, I have never been anyone's boss.  Ok, so full disclosure:  I used to be in charge of a lot of things that needed to happen, and people had to do them for me, but no one ever worked for me.  And now people do.  And today I learned why people bitch about having employees.

So, I am the only one in the kitchen who speaks Spanish at a sort-of-approaching-useful level.  Everyone else yells out verbs in the first person and then follows them up with English.  Which creates directions that would confuse even the most intrepid of linguists.  Seriously, what would you do if your boss yelled "And I cut for the potato into the future!"  You would weep.  That's what.

Today, one guy was very concerned about his vacation pay.  And someone else wanted to know if their sister's friend could come in and start being a dishwasher.  And another guy wanted me to fix his paycheck problem.  And the thing is?  I don't know what to do about any of these things.  So I just translated, and realized that being in the middle of other peoples problems sucks, because you have to be the face of bad news to two parties in a matter that you don't care at all about.  Not even in the least.

Sigh.  Pasama otra cerveza, porfa.  La merezco.

Engineering by the Gays

Our apartment was assaulted by the rain this weekend. No, not rain. A monsoon. Of Indian proportions. I felt like we needed a wedding to qualify for this type of deluge.

And our apartment is worse for the wear. A lot of water decided to come through the window casement and pour all over the floor. Hurray! I was at work, so J. had to do some emergency rigging to keep the water off of our precious and ever-soluble Ikea furniture. Seriously, I fear that our Poang chair would melt into a pile of paste if we let it moisten. J. did a fantastic job using nothing but trash bags, blue painter's tape, towels, and some buckets. Impressive.

Art posing as Form.

And as a reward, now begins a long process of repair in which builders will demolish the front wall of our apartment and mess up our beautiful paint job, while simultaneously forcing us to live in a cloud of plaster dust. Excellent!

How much do we REALLY need to fix this? Can't we just ignore it? You know, throw a towel over it or something?

Insane Month Ends With Insane Reversal Of Role. Audiences Stunned.

So, I'm the intern. Or I was. Now I am the boss. What do you think of that? Yeah, it makes me queasy, too.

It's like if you were working hard at your place of employment and then all the sudden the guy they hired as a temp became your boss.

Let's hope that you really like that temp, because I am that guy.

That. Guy.

I work with about fifteen really talented cooks. They are all Hispanic. Only one of them speaks English well, and he is almost finished studying to be an electrician. He doesn't want to be a sous chef. So, because I never had to crawl through the desert to make a better life for myself, and my parents were born here, speaking the English, I get to be the boss. Blah blah blah, managerial experience, blah blah blah, computer skills, blah blah blah. Let's be honest. Those things I have because I was born here.

Don't get me wrong, I am going to do a fucking awesome job of being the boss. But don't think I don't know why I got where I got.

But for fifteen minutes, I am going to celebrate going from intern to sous chef in the shortest time ever. Ever! When I started this whole culinary world experiment I promised myself I would stop trying to micromanage fate, and I would just let the universe provide.

Hurray Universe! Hurray! HURRAY!