cutting board with Beth dry-humping him from behind, saying, "How do
you like it, bitch?" The guy almost died of shame—and never repeated
that mistake again.
Another female line cook I had the pleasure of working with arrived at
work one morning to find that an Ecuadorian pasta cook had decorated
her station with some particularly ugly hard-core pornography of
pimply-assed women getting penetrated in every orifice by pot-bellied
guys with prison tattoos and back hair. She didn't react at all, but a little
later, while passing through the pasta man's station, casually remarked.
"José, I see you brought in some photos of the family. Mom looks good
for her age."
Mise-en-place is the religion of all good line cooks. Do not fuck with a
line cook's "meez"—meaning their set-up, their carefully arranged
supplies of sea salt, rough-cracked pepper, softened butter, cooking oil,
wine, back-ups and so on. As a cook, your station, and its condition, its
state of readiness, is an extension of your nervous system—and it is
profoundly upsetting if another cook or, God forbid, a waiter—disturbs
your precisely and carefully laid-out system. The universe is in order
when your station is set up the way you like it: you know where to find
everything with your eyes closed, everything you need during the course
of the shift is at the ready at arm's reach, your defenses are deployed. If
you let your mise-en-place run down, get dirty and disorganized, you'll
quickly find yourself spinning in place and calling for back-up. I worked
with a chef who used to step behind the line to a dirty cook's station in
the middle of the rush to explain why the offending cook was falling
behind. He'd press his palm down on the cutting board, which was
littered with peppercorns, spattered sauce, bits of parsley, breadcrumbs
and the usual flotsam and jetsam that accumulates quickly on a station if
not constantly wiped away with a moist side-towel. "You see this?" he'd
inquire, raising his palm so that the cook could see the bits of dirt and
scraps sticking to his chef's palm, "That's what the inside of your head
looks like now. Work clean!"