“Business isn’t Hard, it’s the People that Fuck it up”–my boss

< Designing kitchens should be easy: once under contract, we obtain information, design the kitchen and/or bar, price the equipment, hopefully get another contract for that portion of the project if the client doesn’t go to some low-ball outfit. We then order the equipment, do some field coordination and install said equipment when the kitchen is ready. Once everything is connected and inspected, we fire everything up, do some training and the place is ready to crank out some food. Simple, right?

No, Because along the way, there are a multitude of land mines to step over with possibly an occasional grenade tossed in for good measure. What should be simple brain, office and field work becomes a quagmire of Cover Your Ass.

Why? Because of people, you guessed it. There are a lot of people who touch what we do: Architects, Engineers, General Contractors, Sub contractors, Inspectors who can potentially throw us under the bus, but most important are the clients. There are the Uninformed clients, the Hurry Up clients, the I Know Everything clients, the Ego clients, the Spreadsheet clients and the Cheap clients to name a few.

Today I’m going to focus on the Spreadsheet client. This client is numbers only, all straight line, black-and-white, no thinking outside the box. Here’s a conversation between me and a new board president of a country club I designed, who’s trying to get up to speed to send the bid packages out. I’m guessing he was an accountant in his Up North life, before retiring to sun and golf. What’ he’s been doing, it became evident to me after a few emails, is trying to apply mid-design budget numbers to the final equipment list on, you guessed it, a spreadsheet.

Me: “Hey I decided to call to answer your question about item 17.1. But you know, trying to apply those old numbers to the new list is a futile exercise. You’re in budget now, we went through that exercise before finalizing the design, no need to worry.” (Trying to be diplomatic.)

Spreadsheet guy: “Well, there was an item 17.1 on the old list but not on the new one.”

Me: Looking at my equipment list and seeing I dropped off a gas hose from the existing range and salamander-broiler combination, “Well, I probably determined upon further inspection of your equipment that the two pieces were tied together and only had one gas connection.”

Spreadsheet guy: “But do I need it?”

Me: “No, not as long as both pieces are tied together.”

Spreadsheet Guy: Dead air.

Me: “Look, there’s a gas pipe in the wall, right? Each of the two pieces can either tie in into the wall or they can pipe together first, then into the wall with a single connection.”

Spreadsheet Guy: “Well, how will I know for sure?”

Me: (A four hundred thousand dollar project and he’s worried about a 165 dollar gas hose.) “You’d have to look behind the equipment to see if they’re piped together.”

Spreadsheet guy: “I don’t know, you’re speaking tribal to me.”

Me: “Okay, look, it’s like the two pieces of equipment are married. And we don’t know for sure if they’re sleeping together, or in separate beds.”

Spreadsheet Guy: Dead air.

Apparently Spreadsheet clients also lack a sense of humor. I’ll have to remember that.

Am I a Groupie? I am a Groupie!

Blame my husband.

Sitting at the sleek Hyatt bar at McCormick Place in Chicago, resting our weary bones after walking the National Restaurant Show for hours, I’d all but given up going to Anthony Bourdain’s book signing the next day. The guy at the book store had said only 100 wristbands would be given out, starting at 8:30am and oh, there would be a line at dawn, and pointed outside toward the steps. In the dark? While I’m usually sleeping? So much work to see . . . a person. A fucking person, that’s all.
But, Hubby said, that’s why you came, right?

With an audible sigh, I pulled from my beer and picked up cell phone to call Daughter, who would have good advice in this matter.

Voice Mail. More sighing, more beer. Harrumph.

I gave in though, Hubby convincing me I’d regret not making the effort and giving himself credit for doing anything for me,(and he is correct there, the great guy that he is) especially waking up at four to go see a guy talk about food. Hubby’s idea, the four AM thing.

So what kind of city cab is waiting outside the Intercontinental on Michigan Avenue at four in the morning? A race car driver wanna be, that’s what kind. Thankfully my stomach contained nothing ––not even coffee––as our foreign cabbie sped toward red lights, our necks whiplashing as he slammed on brakes, to take off again. I wasn’t in that much of a hurry, really. So in a blink we arrived at McCormick Place’s front door, dawn still around a corner somewhere and there, along the dark entry steps stood . . . no one.

My early morning dreams of campers, like those poor goofs at Wal Mart on Thanksgiving, were wrong, apparently.Luckily the revolving door was unlocked and we cruised right on into the building. 4:45 AM, and not a soul around. A few bleary eyed janitors, that’s all.

Well, I’ve always liked being first.

Hubby scrounged two chairs and we parked our weary and coffee-less butts at the very front of the stanchion set up to keep everyone in line.

And there we sat, for three hours. Eventually Starbucks opened and we had coffee, and the line began to form around seven thirty, and I read Bourdain’s Medium Raw, texted Daughter and friends and I felt kind of dumb. While optimistic Hubby kept saying, well we’re here, you’ll get in now, see?

Yes, yes. But you see the motivation here was not to simply see a guy talk about food. I wanted to talk to HIM. About MY book. I know, how many people do that. But when I’m driven to do something I follow it (even though the four AM thing nearly derailed me), lack of sleep and caffeine be dammed. Hey, I was first in line, move the hell over.

Proudly wearing my wristbands, at eight we rushed off towards the ballroom where his talk would start at ten. More waiting, more reading, more dread, what would I actually say to him anyway? And how would I say this thing that I wanted to say but didn’t know exactly, being the nervous little Nellie that I can be. Was it too early for a beer?

His talk was great, funny, right on and everyone howled with laughter. Then, hugging my copy of Medium Raw, I lined up without Hubby at the airport security style stanchions for the 100 person-only signing. The thing I was waiting for. I would talk to Anthony Bourdain!

I saw how fast things were moving and formulated a sentence––a question––he’d have to answer a question, wouldn’t he? My turn, the book ripped from my hands by one Bourdain worker bee and put on the table in front of AB, my camera grabbed by another worker bee, then I was next to him, frozen at first––I was Ralphie manhandled toward Santa in A Christmas Story. But wait!! I have to ask my question!!! (Gripping the slide) And like asking for a Red Ryder BB Gun I said: What advice do you have for a former chef in the eighties––I was in New Orleans while you were in New York––now a kitchen designer writing her memoir called Mis en Place: Memoir of a Girl Chef? (Breathe now.)A picture snapped while my mouth was open. Wait, I didn’t smile! And it was time to move away from the table, the next kid pushing up to see Santa.

As I walked away with book, my camera being handed back over to me, Anthony Bourdain said, “Take no Prisoners. Write it like no one will read it. That’s what I did.”

Okay then. I’ll do just that. And off I dashed to rejoin Hubby and get a beer.

I Used to be a Chef, now I’m a Kitchen Rock Star

The other day I was on a jobsite––well a kitchen that’s adding on some walk-in coolers and freezers, so for me it’s a jobsite –– and out from the main kitchen walked a cook who used to work for me. Way back when. “Eddie!” the dormant chick chef in me sang out, like I was prompting him to hurry up with that prep list. But. . . that was nineteen years ago. Eddie smiled at me demurely, nodded and wandered past, carrying a hotel pan covered with plastic wrap.

And I thought, is he jealous that I’m designing the damn kitchens instead of working in them? Or is it my ego thinking that everyone who works in kitchens feels as trapped as I once did? Hm. . . .

I loved working in kitchens once. Then I hit that greasy ceiling or something with nowhere else to go. Eventually I did go but not too far because I’m in or around kitchens every day. I talk to chefs about their new kitchens, I design kitchens, micromanage the construction of kitchens, manage my crew who delivers, starts up and tests the equipment. Sometimes I go to grand openings, feeling proud of my work, that this efficient kitchen will see many days and nights of rocking food production. I’m leaving my mark all over the place in the form of kitchens. Yeah, satisfying. And I get to go home at night, drink a glass of wine and watch crime shows with my hubby.

So this is why I’ve been absent from the blog-o-sphere: I’m writing a memoir about this old life of mine ––Mis en Place-Memoir of a Girl Chef. I’d spent many years writing about surviving sexual child abuse but it’s the kitchen that saved me. Every morning at the computer all those crazy cooking tales flow from my fingers: the hot, tunnel-like kitchens, the snide managers, the drunken and leering cooks, the sweat-filled nights on the line listening to the Doors sing L.A. Woman, the travelling with World’s Fairs (my Carney years), the physical and culinary stamina I put forth to prove I was the best. All this made me who I am now: Kitchen designer, alpha chick, whatever. So Eddie? Eat your heart out.

(Oh and the egoist title of this blog? My husband said it after we went to an opening of a snazzy restaurant downtown I designed and was lavished upon with torrents of great compliments, “Wow, dear, you’re a rock star.” Bon Apetit!)

A High Wire Act

Okay the pic is from my stupid phone, it’s the best I could do under the circumstances. Living in Sarasota, a former circus town, I’ve always been pretty jaded about the ambitious offspring of circus folk who populated this place when John Ringling had his residence here. Yeah they walk high wires between buildings and stuff and for the past 21 years I’ve been rather ho-hum about it all. There’s just something so weird about high-wire-walking, fire hoop diving and all that circusy stuff. But yesterday I was at a construction meeting for a restaurant I’m doing and downtown was a-buzz with residents and tourists, cameras and chairs in hand, there to watch Nik Wallenda walk a wire from a crane above the bay front to a condominium above US 41. And I was only a half a block away from the thing. So I thought what, get into the car and drive to the office, or stand in the sun and watch this nut? Where’s the beer truck anyway?

No beer truck (this is Sarasota, after all) but waiting fifteen minutes with the buzzing crowd, a collective sense of anxiety built. When’s he going to start? Let’s get this over with! What if he falls? (No capture net. Splat) How can he do this? Did you see when he walked over Niagara Falls? It was so misty. Look at the wind down here. It’s windier up there. For those of you who don’t live in Sarasota, we can tell the wind by how much the palms fronds sway. Sorry, didn’t mean to rub it in. Yeah I did.

Finally, a bucket was hoisted up to the top of the crane thing to the west containing Nik Wallenda and the crowd cheered then hushed. Nik waved to his fans when he got to the top. The balance pole was handed up to him, he took a few moments and began to slowly, slowly, slowly put his first foot on the wire. Then the next one, slowly, slowly, slowly directly in front of it, repeat. Each step purposeful and direct, his body erect but not tense, his balance a thing of beauty, actually.

Once he was a third of the way across, the knot in my stomach subsided; he proved to me he could do this, he wouldn’t fall after all. I began to think of human determination. The little engine that could. If you put your mind to anything, you can do it. In my case, becoming a female chef in a man’s world, becoming a sales person when I stuttered and writing every morning for the past 13 years, no matter what. If you put your mind to anything, you can do it. Then (he’s halfway across now) I thought of all the writing blogs I skim over about how to motivate yourself to write, how to alleviate ‘writer’s block’, how to overcome rejection from agents. Geeze, look at that guy in the air! If he were to slack like that, focus on why he couldn’t do his wire act, he’d die! If you put your mind to anything, you can do it! There are things I still want to conquer even though they frighten me, public speaking for one. I can do that if I put my mind to it, right?

As Nik Wallenda neared his white balconied destination in the air, he knelt on the wire with one knee and waved to the crowd. Yeah, you are the Determination King, baby, I love ya! Yes, I cheered too, along with the masses. Woop! The balcony sucked him and he was gone. Sigh. Cool stuff.

As I walked back to my car, thinking about my own drive and that spec in the air (see picture) who was a man, one more thought entered in: Know your limitations!

Does Shopping at Wal Mart make you Ugly?

Or do Ugly people shop at Wal Mart? You’ve all seen the photos circulating on the internet of those demented looking people and you wonder, “Gee, how do they all show up at the same place?” Well, I am convinced shopping there makes you that way. Beware.

You see, I have Wal Mart-a phobia, and before there was Wal Mart, I had K-Mart-a-phobia. In full fits of cognizant stereotyping, these places creep me out because they remind me of where my parents would have shopped if we had had these stores “back then.” I won’t go into detail insulting my parents, suffice it to say I grew up raging against their lifestyle and consequently am somewhat a snob now along those economic lines, and damn proud of it too.

But last January I suffered a melt-down; sitting in Captain Tony’s bar in Key West, I met a guy who said he’d chucked everything to move to Key West and that he was really happy he did it. He was poor but debt-free at least and happy. I envied this guy for he had a look of peace on his face, not the crazed I-have-to-go-back-to-work dementia that I was trying to drown out with copious amounts of cold beer. At home after a week of wondering what life would be like if I could chuck everything ––foreclose on it all you goddamn banks ––and suffering great back pains of fear at the prospect, I called up my old therapist and made an appointment.

“But then I’d have to shop at Wal Mart,” I meeped out when she asked me what would be so wrong with making less money.

“We all shop at Wal Mart, Marisa,” she smiled.

And so, I compromised, I kept my job, house and various underwater rentals, and began to shop at Wal Mart once a month or so. A smaller step, I know, than chucking it all and moving to Key West, but hey, baby steps, ya know?

Sometime in the Summer, I noticed that almost overnight, my teeth were stained, much more than the red wine and coffee stains I usually get. It was curious but I thought well, over fifty, okay. . . and waited for my teeth cleaning appointment in December in hopes of a remedy.

December finally rolled around and my dental hygienist dug, scraped, polished and cleaned and gums swollen, I emerged with pearly white teeth. But she was curious too, why all the staining? That afternoon she called me. Another patient of hers had the same problem and she’d been using Crest Pro-Health mouth rinse, which has a chemical in it that causes staining.
And that was it! For when I shopped at Wal Mart, they didn’t have my regular mouth rinse in the white bottle so I bought this other mouth rinse in a white bottle. And this stuff is not just displayed on one shelf, but all over the place in the dental aisle, in such a way it’s telling you “buy me buy me buy me!” Sure enough, when I read the fine print on the back of the bottle (if you get your glasses at Wal Mart, you probably can’t read this):

. . . antimicrobial rinses may cause surface staining to teeth. This is not permanent or harmful and may be prevented by adequate brushing or removed at your next dental visit.

Now WHY would you want to rinse your mouth with something that makes your teeth turn brown? And why is this so heavily marketed at Wal Mart? Because they’re trying to make you ugly, that’s why. Brown-toothed lemmings happily shopping at Wal Mart. So now I’ve had a relapse, the one thing I did to simplify my life has back-fired on me.

Now I need to check the other things I buy at Wal Mart. Will the chapstick make my lips turn purple? Will the cotton balls infuse some drug into my facial pores that makes me want to wear Spandex? Will the vitamins make my boobs drop to my knees? I’m afraid now. I need to call my therapist again. Or maybe I should chuck it all and move to Key West. I don’t think there’s a Wal Mart down there.

It Does NOT Taste like Chicken

Frogs legs taste like chicken.
Rabbit tastes like chicken.
Sometimes the other white meat tastes like chicken.
Snake tastes like chicken (so I’m told).
But CHICKEN does not taste like CHICKEN. Any More.

This realization coming to me fully at a restaurant called El Espia in the Dominican Republic a while back, when I ordered pollo frito from the all Spanish menu. “Hm, yardbird,” my workmate said and I realized, yes, chickens were pecking all over outside. Well I’m for farm-to-table as much as the next gal, so sidewalk-pecking chicken for lunch was fine with me. Besides, I’d had their goat the day before and, although tasty, it had been a little rich on my stomach.

My lunch arrived; a big round white plate with shredded iceberg, sliced tomatoes and wedges of green avocado in the center, with six or so boneless chicken breasts arranged symmetrically from there. The breasts were thin and crisp around the edges, with a slight chewiness and a rich flavor. Like chicken you might say, my taste buds having been dulled over the years of eating our hormone-pumped, yellow-hued, over-sized, cage-contained, spongy junk we call chicken at home in the US.

When I was cooking in restaurants in the Seventies, chicken resembled chicken. Typically we kept flat boxes of boneless breasts, sized from six-ounce half-breasts for lunch portions, to eight-ounce double breasts we’d split in half for two four-ounce filets. They were opaque, petite and tender, and lightly flattened with a mallet, could be seasoned, floured and cooked in olive oil for the basis of a nice meal.

Now, a chicken “breast” from a grocery store has such a heft I can get two meals from one. I hold one up with a meat fork and say to my husband, “I wonder if this one wore a bra.” It’s too fat to flatten; if I want to make Marsala or Piccata, I need to cut slices from it like a pork loin. And of course it doesn’t taste like chicken. It tastes like. . . nothing at all.

So after a few years of complaining and whining how American companies are feeding us crap in the name of profits ––this is not at all news; buyer beware ––I now buy organic free range chicken. A LOT more money, unfortunately, but cheaper than say, flying to a third world country to get chicken that tastes like chicken.

Time for a Change

 

Sometimes a theme can be too limiting. And after a year-and-a-half musing about healing from child abuse, I am mused out. I’m going to muse about other things now. I’m going to dig into my culinary, travelling chef past, because that’s kind of interesting and it makes me a food snob, something I like to brag about. Of course I’ll always write about writing because that’s what I really like to do. And the “other stuff” in my new blog description allows me to do whatever I want (hear me whine now: “It’s my blog and I want to do what I waaaant!”). “Other stuff” may include some interviews of local people I find interesting, a little internet journalism if you will. A chance to dabble in something I would’ve been doing had I been attending to my studies in my formative years instead of gallivanting through kitchens, wielding a chef’s knife.