Closing in on the drain..

Job hunting is frustrating. Maybe not as frustrating as actually working with someone you hate, but I digress.

From what I've found, the best way to look for a job is to keep a close eye on Craigslist. Specifically the Milwaukee postings (The Anchorage postings aren't going to help a lot). Sifting through the listings and applying for every job that sounds even remotely appropriate. This means I got to a lot of interviews for chefs (which I'm not) and try to bluff my way through. It generally doesn't work, and it's surprising how many places think they need a chef rather than a decent cook.

The real frustration sets in when you stumble upon jobs that you actually want. I want a job, let's be clear. However, the place that's like a hipster diner two blocks away that has the best burger in town, I want to work there. The restaurant run by the top chef in town that just happens to be looking for a cook, not a chef, but a cook, I want to work there.

Not being able to find a job and spinning down the whirlpool to the drain that is the fast-food industry sucks bad enough. But applying for awesome jobs and sitting around vainly hoping that they call before you resign yourself to a horrible fate just makes it so much more hopeless.

Gotta go, gotta go check my e-mail and Craigslist. Something may have happened in the last 15 minutes.

Heroes

I once fell down some stairs carrying some hot oil. I got burns on 17% of my body, my legs and foot. I spent a month in the hospital. I could barely move, I slept very little because I couldn't roll over, when I finally didn't have a catheter and could walk to the bathroom I still had to have someone come and help me "clean up." As painful as the burns were, the skin grafts were even more excruciating. They took skin from my upper legs, and grafted it to the burned, lower parts. It was horrible and if it wasn't for my family and the woman who would become my wife, I don't know how I would have made it through.

Today I read about this guy.

I had burns on 17% of my body. He had them on 97%.

They had to take skin from the few places on his body that weren't burned to grow skin for grafts. Then when the donor sites healed, they had to do it again.

From what I read and learned in the burn ward, this guy should have been dead. But he fought. Fought till the end.

This guy is what a hero is. This guy went to Iraq because he was a Marine. He was doing his duty. Regardless if the fight is right or wrong, he was doing his duty.

Memorial Day is when we remember heroes. Men and women that gave their lives for their country.

People like Merlin German.

College is Made Up of Brick Walls

Ah, the college years. Those halcyon days of our youth filled with meeting new friends, learning new things, and discovering what a keg stand is. That is unless you're in your late 30's and going back to school to avoid being stuck in the service industry till you die. Then you don't make many new friends as you're "that creepy old guy", you still learn new things, and you're far too old to be doing keg stands.

I have to say, parts of college I really do enjoy. Learning is fun. I enjoy taking classes where I learn things I didn't know before. I enjoy having thoughtful discussions with my professors and take pride when one of them points out that I made a good point. I haven't made too many friends, but I am beginning to see evidence that I have made an impression on some of my fellow students. A few even wave or smile at me when I walk past.

However, the faceless, heartless bureaucracy that runs the college makes me feel like running full steam into a brick wall would be time better spent. I am elated when they decide to change a policy that will enable me to declare my major in the field I want to major in. Unfortunately, they make the policy not go into effect until a week before the next semester starts. Which makes it hard to get classes. I have been fortunate up until this point to meet a few people willing to help. I have also met many people that seem hell-bent in making my life harder through general incompetence or just plain spite. Still I must press on, rattle cages, and plead for help from anyone in a position to give it.


My head hurts but I think I'm putting a dent in the wall.

Licenziato

I'm only a cook. And when I say "I'm only a cook" I still mean that I'm a damn good cook. I take a lot of pride in my job and I think I do it well. I also believe that for any job, especially cooking, the whole team has to pull together and work as one. You need to know that the guy next to you is doing their job. You also have to have the guy next to you doing his best, everything that comes out of that kitchen is everyone's responsibility.

They hired a new guy at work about a month ago. They were looking for a line cook and this guy came in with good qualification, maybe a bit over-qualified. They hired him and I assumed he was part of the team.

This was not the case.

The first night we worked together it came time for the end of the night clean-up. Food has to be put away, utensils have to be taken back to the dishwasher, floors swept, etc. This starts in earnest after the kitchen is closed. The faster it gets done, the sooner you go home. When it's time to clean-up, this guy makes himself some food and goes and starts eating. It's acceptable to eat while you work, but stopping to eat is bad form. I went up to him and politely asked him to help finish up so we could get out of there. He ignored me. The next day I said something to the owner. Before I knew it I was in a meeting with the owner and this new guy. He informed me that he was a chef, not kitchen help. He had accolades and skills and didn't do clean-up. He said I had a bad attitude and I better change.

To be clear, up until I met this guy, I was the happiest guy at work. I loved my job, I loved the food I made, and I enjoyed everybody I worked with.

I did my best to get through the meeting and try to put it behind me. That night he told me that I talked too much and I needed to concentrate more. I've always been a proponent of work and talk. The idea goes that you can talk as long as you keep working while you do so. It's an acceptable method in any kitchen. Apparently only he was able to talk, I had to shut up.

So I shut up and fell in line like a good German. I didn't like it, but I liked my job so much that I would do what I had to do.

A week ago I came in early and I was working with the other cook and the owner. We were joking and laughing, just like old times. Then the chef came in. I tried to put on a glad face and continue being gregarious. Apparently this pissed him off because he took me aside and said that if I didn't shape up I was going to get fired.

Needless to say I was upset.

When the other cook and the bar manager asked me why I was upset, I told them. They both said that was unacceptable. You can't go around threatening to fire people without reason. They both said they would talk to the owner about it.

Last night I went to work. The owner asked me if I would go and talk to him in the back. He told me that he was sad that I wasn't happy. He said he had to stand by the chef, no matter what a bad person he was. He said that maybe it would be best if I looked for a different job and that he would give me a good reference.

I was "let go" because I liked my job too much and got upset when someone with no skills came in and started wrecking it.

No Time To Rock Out

So I had been bugging my wife to let us buy Guitar Hero for a while. Some friends of ours have Rock Band and Guitar Hero. After we visited them the other night, we ended up getting in an argument about money and household responsibilities. We're still paying back people for our wedding and reception and our house needs to be cleaner. However, my love of video games and rock and roll music made me desire Guitar Hero since the first time I played it. So last night the wife asked me if I would go with her to Target to pick up a few things, I said sure.

As we were walking past the Wii section, I didn't slow down. I didn't want to torture myself, but she headed over to it. She looked down at Guitar Hero and then looked at me with that look in her eye.

"Well... it is on sale."
"Are you sure? Don't mess with me."

It should be noted that in the kitchen business, when your co-worker tells you to leave early and that they'll do the cleanup, etiquette demands that you ask them "Are you sure?" at least once. You can do this while running out the door, over your shoulder, not waiting for any response or you can stand there and ask a few times. The idea being that you're giving them one last chance to change their mind without penalty.

She was sure and we got the clerk to get it out for us.

Unfortunately, I have a paper due next Tuesday that will require a fair amount of effort on my part. Having Guitar Hero sitting in the living room doesn't make it any easier to work on it.

I can't wait until Tuesday afternoon.

Meeting New People

My good friend and I have been getting together on Mondays. We tend to get together during the day and have some coffee and talk about work and stuff. My friend is a chef and I'm a cook so Monday is one of the days we both have off. Considering that it's Monday, I like having him to hang around with because no one else has off on Monday.

I called him early in the day, late enough so that he'd be awake but early enough that he wasn't doing anything else. He was already doing something else. He said he would call me when he was done with the stuff he was doing. Long story short (too late) he ended up falling asleep and didn't call me until late in the afternoon. He asked if I wanted to come over at night and have some beers and play some video games. He said he was going to have some other guys over as well. I said sure.

The other guys that he had over are friends of his I don't completely know. The one guy lives near me and is a pretty nice guy. He's pretty mellow and nice. I had never met the other guy though. He talked a lot. The kind of nervous talk that people tend to do when they're not completely comfortable and they're overcompensating. That's not really too big of a deal. It was more what he talked about.

Like a lot of guys, I look at porn. Sometimes I'll even forward something I've seen to a friend. The desired response to something like this is usually something like "Thanks for the e-mail. That woman was hot." Or something to that effect, if anything. However this guy decided to go into excruciating detail about what kind of porn he liked, what he liked about it, why porn on his high-def tv was better than being married, etc. When we started playing video games he decided to narrate what might happen to the characters in the fighting game after the game was over. And it tended to be graphic and excessively misogynistic. What really frustrated me was that he had brought his sketchbook and he was a really good artist. I had been hoping to find someone to work with on a comic book and I was excited to have finally found a good artist.

Then he opened his mouth.