Dec 16

Dec 16 Sometimes You're the Karen

We all have those times when a dispute comes to a head. There are several ways to resolve conflict, each with its own positives and negatives. There’s no one correct answer, and hopefully, you can come up with the best solution for the situation at hand. I bring this up as our party is fractured, with two of the characters at odds with one another, and the rest are trying to figure out whether they should take sides or just stay out of it. I thought it was a bit of goofy fun that will probably end up with my character dying because he’s being an idiot to prove his point. The friction between them reached a climax last session, and if my wizard survives, it will be a miracle.

It turns out what I thought was goody fun is actually causing stress and tension for members of the party. We’d been planning for a fight for almost an entire session that went about as poorly as it could have. We retreated and were now spending another session licking our wounds and started to make new plans. My wizard decided he had finally had enough and took decisive and bold action to resolve the situation at hand. Ok, some people may say it was actually reckless and selfish, but let’s not split hairs. The point is that everyone has a time when you have to say enough is enough and take firm and concrete action to put the issue to rest.

The overarching problem in our group is how everything takes an hour of planning and discussion when it should only take 10 minutes. Everything is talked about repeatedly so much that we lose valuable playing time going down the rabbit hole talking about minor details. Some people are embracing the crunchy side of the current PF2 campaign, and that’s great if you’re into that. I’m not, and when I’ve had enough of the droning on about what we should do next, I have a tendency to go in the opposite direction of whatever is decided upon. I know, not very mature, but I don’t always do the right thing when I’ve been pushed to the edge. It has, however, reminded me of a great story from my restaurant days.

In my previous life, I worked in the restaurant industry. In fact, I worked in food service in some way for 30 years of my life. Before I left that life, my final stop was owning a couple small restaurants. Nothing big or fancy, just simple breakfast and lunch places. It was a culmination of my time working 12 hour days for the previous two decades.

I am not a chef. I have worked as a line cook, front-of-the-house manager, prep cook, steward, general manager, dishwasher, director of operations, and warehouse manager, just to name a few. That was one of the things I love the best about working in the industry. There are so many things you can do that are critical to a smooth-running restaurant. And if you don’t think each one is crucial, just ask anyone who ever worked in a kitchen what happens when the dishwasher calls in.

Knowing this, I leaned on my friends to develop a simple but solid menu. The single biggest influence on the menu was chef Dan. He spent days with me arguing over menu items when he wasn’t running the kitchen in a restaurant across town. I wanted great food, but since every penny spent was mine, I also wanted to spend those pennies to be spent wisely. That sometimes got in the way of Dan’s artistic creativity, but he too understood the importance of keeping costs down. It took a month of vendor meetings, prep, food tastings, and spreadsheets, but we finally came up with a menu I was proud of, making great food at reasonable prices.

By the time I got around to opening the much smaller second restaurant, chef Dan had needed a job. Chef Dan is one of my closest friends and probably the only person I still speak with from that part of my life. He’s fun, gregarious, an insanely hard worker and everyone loves him.

He’s also crazy.

There’s a line in the movie “Bull Durham” when Crash Davis arrives at the Durham Bulls stadium and meets with the coaches. Wanting to know why his triple-A contract was bought out to play in lower A ball. The coaches tell him they need his wisdom to help their new prized pitcher, Nuke LaLoosh. They describe LaLoosh as having a million-dollar arm but a five-cent head. That’s chef Dan.

I say that with love, but it’s true. He’s got more talent in his little finger than I do in my entire body when it comes to the culinary arts. He’s got his degree from one of the finest culinary arts schools in the country. He’s worked in top restaurants and high-end country clubs. Some of the best food I’ve ever tasted were things he just whipped up when we were bored. My wife and kids still talk about his cheesecake. We cooked for New Year about a dozen years ago, and my neighbors still talk about the food.

For as talented as he is in the kitchen, his life outside it is a constant shit show. Right when I was running around trying to keep my head above water, Dan had an “incident” that got him terminated from his job and basically unhireable for the foreseen future. That’s a whole different story, and it did not involve theft, harassment, or violence of any sort. It was just chef Dan making stupid life decisions again, and this time the consequences were severe. So he desperately needed a job, I needed help, and we once again started working together. I couldn’t pay him 1/10th of what he was worth, but he didn’t care. He just wanted to work.

About 6 months later, we are working the line on Saturday. We had just started doing weekend brunch, and it was a huge hit. There weren’t any real brunch options in the immediate area at the time, and we had a constant line of people out the door. The restaurant set up was simple; order at the register, take a number, and we’d bring the food to you. It was an open kitchen behind the register, so we worked the line in full view and earshot of all the guests. While we had our backs to the front counter and the guests, we could hear everything going on.

About halfway through the brunch rush, a lady we’ll appropriately name Karen approached the register to order. She stood at the reguster for a good minute or so, looking it over and probably another minute asking general questions about the menu. This drives me nuts since she had plenty of time to read the menu while waiting in line. Little did I know it was about to get much worse.

I kid you not. This conversation actually happened.

“I’d like the bacon and egg sandwich. Where do your eggs come from?”

“Excuse me?” the cashier said, confused. Delia was a bright young woman, but the question caught her off guard.

“The eggs. For my sandwich. Where do they come from?” she asked again.

“Well, I’m not sure,” she answered.

“Are they local?” Karen asked.

“No, I don’t think so. They usually come in with our regular food order.” Delia replied. We got our food from three main purveyors; Sysco, Piazza Produce, and a local bakery, Cornerstone Bread.

“I see,” said Karen. “Do you know if they are farm-raised?

At this point, the orders had slowed down a bit since Karen had effectively stopped the ordering process. I was listening to the conversation and now had a chance to go rescue Delia.

“Hi, my name’s Chris. How can I help you out today?” I said to Karen. Delia gave me a thankful little smile and slid out from behind the counter to bus tables…and be as far away from this lady as possible.

“Well, that young lady doesn’t know if your eggs are farm-raised. Do you?” Still to this day, I don’t think Karen wasn’t trying to be rude, even if her tone and posture said otherwise. She just really wanted to know.

“No, I’m afraid they’re not,” I said.

“Cage-free?”

“No,” I said.

“Free-range?”

“Again, no,” I said.

“Well, do you know where your distributor gets them from? Like which state?” Karen asked.

It was about this time I heard a knife slam down on the cutting board. I knew that sound, oh too well. Chef Dan was starting to lose it. He had been listening to the conversation as I had been earlier, and I could feel the anger coming off of him in waves. Now I’ll admit I have a temper, but Dan’s is legendary. By now, about 5 minutes had passed, so she’d been up at the counter for close to 7 minutes total. Chef Dan doesn’t mind being in the weeds with orders fifteen deep. What did bother him was watching the line snaking out the door at a standstill and no orders coming through to the kitchen printer because of this one woman. I knew I had to put this to bed fast, if not for potential lost sales then for the possible loss of life.

“I think I understand where you are coming from,” I said to Karen. “While I would love to source such eggs from a local producer, I just wouldn’t be able to afford them.” That’s the truth since, at the time, an egg cost me twelve cents. Any egg from a local farm would have run me around fifty cents. You can do the math. “I’d love to use all local companies, and we do when we can. Our bread is local, our coffee is from a local roaster, and during the summer, we are part of a local farm share, and we use those vegetables in our specials.”

Karen looked at me, her face earnest as she nodded to my words. Thinking I had gotten through to her, I asked, “So a bacon and egg sandwich. Would you like that on bread or a bagel?”

“So then you don’t know where the eggs come from then?” she asked.

I heard the knife slam down again as before I could turn around, chef Dan had spun around, looked directly at Karen, and in a loud voice yelled,

“THE EGGS COME FROM A CHICKEN’S ASS. ANY MORE QUESTIONS?”

It got real quiet. Dan turned back around and went started prepping food. The earnest look on Karen’s face was gone. It had replaced with one of red-faced anger and embarrassment.

“Well, I never! I don’t want your food, will never eat here again, and will tell all my friends about the horrible experience.” She kept looking at me as if I would say or do something to apologize or take it back and make it all better.

“I’m sorry you feel that way. Have a great day,” was all I said.

Karen grabbed her stuff, and after yelling a few more vague threats at me, started walking out. I know as a business person that everything about how I handled this was wrong. I was already picturing the 1-star review on Yelp, a black stain for all to see. But I didn’t care. I needed to get people moving through again and didn’t have time to worry about the consequences of our actions. Plus, I’d had enough.

Karen made it about 5 steps from the register before people burst out cheering. Because of Dan. Because he had had enough and now she was leaving. People were hooting, clapping, waving goodbye, and practically serenading her out the door. Apparently, enough was enough not only for myself and chef Dan but for everyone else in the restaurant. Karen scurried out, never to be seen again.

I was hoping that in writing this, I would be able to portray myself as the brave chef Dan, pronouncing ENOUGH! and everyone would cheer me on when I made my bold statement. Turns out, the more I wrote, I couldn’t escape the fact that I’m actually the Karen. What started out as earnest in my initial questioning and pushed back has become me being a complete jackass with everyone wanting to throw me out of the restaurant.

Looks like I need to make some apologies.

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