your fucking meez, or I come back there and fuck you in the culo" means
"Pardon me, comrade, but I am concerned with your state of readiness
for the coming rush. Is your mise-en-place properly restocked, my
brother?"
Pinche wey means "fucking guy", but can also mean "you adorable
scamp" or "pal". But if you use the word "pal"—or worse, "my friend" in
my kitchen, it'll make people paranoid. "My friend" famously means
"asshole" in the worst and most sincere sense of that word. And start
being too nice to a cook on the line and he might think he's getting
canned tomorrow. My vato locos are, like most line cooks, practitioners
of that centuries-old oral tradition in which we—all of us—try to find
new and amusing ways to talk about dick.
Homophobic, you say? Sub-mental? Insensitive to gender preference,
and the gorgeous mosaic of an ethnically diverse work force? Gee . . .
you might be right. Does a locker-room environment like this make it
tougher for women, for instance? Yep. Most women, sadly. But what the
system seeks, what it requires, is someone, anyone, who can hold up
their station, play the game without getting bent out of shape and taking
things personally. If you are easily offended by direct aspersions on your
lineage, the circumstances of your birth, your sexuality, your
appearance, the mention of your parents possibly commingling with
livestock, then the world of professional cooking is not for you.
But let's say you do suck dick, you do "take it in the twins", it's no
impediment to survival. No one really cares about that. We're too busy,
and too close, and we spend too much time together as an extended,
dysfunctional family to care about sex, gender preference, race or
national origin. After level of skills, it's how sensitive you are to
criticism and perceived insult—and how well you can give it right back
—that determines your place in the food chain. You can cover your ears
all you want, pretend they're not calling you chino or morena or indio or
gordo or cachundo . . . but they are. Like it or not, that's your name, your