A Biohazardous Beginning

Here’s something else that ended up happening to me not too long ago. As if the whole ketchup/catsup thing wasn’t bad enough, right? Anyway, I’m sharing this story in the hope that whoever reads it takes it as another reminder not to let the same stupid mistakes happen to them that I let happen to me. A lesson not to stand back and watch as a series of idiotic events dominoes out of control around you. A warning not to let yourself end up as the one who, at the end of it all, walks away with everything having blown up in your face.

Literally.

But I guess I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Ahem. Let’s circle back and start off where all good cautionary tales do: at the beginning. It all started one typical day at work. I was up to my elbows in swilly brown-ish water and greasy plates, just like usual, when someone just so happened to order a steak. A steak that just so happened to be the most expensive one on the menu.

Word spread across the kitchen like butter on hot toast, and suddenly a game of soccer had kicked up. Everyone joined in all at once. Line cooks and prep cooks, servers, dishwashers, bussers — all of us. Naturally, I joined in too, hands and arms raining water so filthy I’d seen clearer mud. I didn’t have time to dry them off before the game got going, and I didn’t want to miss out. My team needed me after all. I was a defender. Or maybe I was a forward. It was kind of hard to tell in all the commotion, people slipping on the pots and pans and ingredients all over the floor, not to mention the cloudy dishwater puddles I was greasing the tile up with wherever I went and the smushed roach remains griming up the grout.

I’ve never been much of a sportsman, truth be told. I just did what my old baseball coach always told me to do — keep my eye on the ball — hoping it would work even if the “ball” in this case was more of a flabby, overpriced, oblong meat puck.

Just as my team was about to score — our target was the freezer with the borked hinges, its lazy doors swiveling like a pair of slackjaws and framing our goal — the boss walked in. All the sound and commotion all died all at once. We all froze in unison and looked. And we all knew in a second that she had seen what we were doing. Seen what she was never supposed to have seen. What we would have given anything for her not to see. We knew we were in for a chewing out from her. A chewing out so chewy that if any of us lost our job over this, they’d at least have enough professional experience to start a new career as a stick of gum.

Al — that was the boss’ name, Allison, or Al for short — blinked. Her ears twitched, the cigarette she had tucked behind her right one squirming right along, wedged as it was between the ear and a graying tuft of short hair. We all watched in abject terror as her whole face seized, as if in slow motion, into a disapproving scowl.

“What the hell do you hooligans think you’re doing?” she asked, voice like dry ice, so cold it was actually kind of hot. I always did have a sort of inexplicable crush on Al. Especially when she got angry, for some reason. I guess that says more about me than it does about her. “Well? Is anyone going to answer? What in the hell do you unwashed chimpanzees think you’re doing?”

Silence.

Until my best friend Fence decided to open his big stupid mouth. Fence was working there at the restaurant along with me, as a fellow dishwasher. We had both gotten the job at the same time. He figured it was something to do, he told me, since we had also both gotten kicked off the baseball team together. Why’d we get the boot, you ask? For a lot of different reasons, but mostly for accidentally scoring 3 and ½ runs for the opposing team in the playoffs last season. Don’t ask me how that happened. I’m still confused about it myself. Fence didn’t know either. As I found out after coach cut us, Fence never even knew the rules of the game to begin with. Anyway, ever since then we’d been spending most of our free time scrubbing scraps off plates, shooting it with the cooks, and getting under the boss’ skin in exchange for minimum wage.

And “getting under the boss’ skin” was exactly what Fence did when he decided to talk back to her that fateful day in the kitchen. “A-al, i-it’s not what it looks like!” he stammered, basically confirming that it was, in fact, exactly what it looked like.

Al’s scowl deepened. She scanned the mess of ingredients and utensils littering the filthy, scummy floor, the piles of stuff already crawling with roaches. Her eyes landed right on the “ball” we had been kicking around. “A steak. You ingrates were playing soccer with a customer’s steak.”

“Ma'am, I can explain. It was all their fault.” Fence used all ten fingers to point at everyone in the room except himself.

“For shame. That’s not how you punt a steak, for crying out loud. THIS is how you punt a steak!”

The next thing I knew, Al’s foot connected with the meat, sending the raw red slab sailing with a wet slap, followed by a satisfying plunk as it landed in the sink I’d been working.

“Now that? That’s how it’s done.” Al strolled over, fished the steak out, threw ‘er on the grill, and let us all take turns spitting on it as she blasted the thing to roasted tire rubber. “Order up!”

Word from the customer was it was the best steak he’d ever had. Or so I heard, anyway.

#

So yeah. Basically a typical day at work.

Until that evening. Just as me and Fence’s shifts were ending, Al called us into her office along with the rest of everyone else on staff at the time. “I’ve got some bad news. Two words,” she said grimly as we filed into the small back room and she placed some official-looking documents on the desk for us to see. “Health inspection.”

“What?!” Lou, a line cook who always wore a big, bristly fake mustache, shouted from the back. “But that wasn’t supposed to be for a ‘nother month!” The word “another” was always a little tricky for him.

“I know,” Al said, brow knitted, thumb and forefinger forcepping the bridge of her nose. “Believe me, I know. But look here.” She tapped the printouts. “It says we’re being subject to a pre-inspection before the actual inspection.”

“A pre-inspection?” I wondered aloud.

“It says here that it’s not as extensive as a normal health inspection. The inspector won’t be checking the kitchen or anything. Basically, we have to serve them a meal, and they’ll address how clean and safe the food is and all that junk.”

“That doesn’t sound very productive,” said Rachel, another line cook, sensibly. “Spending extra on a secondary inspection that doesn’t even cover everything a normal one does.”

“Nice of them to tell us in advance, at least,” I offered, knowing that these things were usually just off sleeve, the inspectors showing up unannounced. And if they caught you on a bad day, that was that. Restaurant closed.

Al agreed, but it was a cold comfort for her, apparently. She was looking kind of sickly when we all filed out of the room. And something told me it wasn’t cause she made the mistake of drinking another fruit smoothie out of the blender we had plugged in in the employee bathroom. That night she sent a text to all us employees saying that we would have to turn things around before the pre-inspection. The first thing that meant, she explained, was no more steak soccer matches in the kitchen. The next thing it meant was getting everything else in order. At least enough to pass the pre-inspection. Really cleaning up our act was what she was getting at. Cleaning it up by literally cleaning the restaurant so that it wasn’t such a biohazard anymore.

We had nothing if not our work cut out for us.

To be continued!