Kitchen Confidential_ Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly - Anthony Bourdain [132]
Temptation, of course, is everywhere. When you're a hungry, underpaid line cook, those filet mignons you're searing off by the dozens look mighty good. Pilfer one and you're bent. Ask for one, for chrissakes! You'll probably get one. If they won't let you have one, you're probably working in the wrong place.
Faking petty cash vouchers, stealing food, colluding with a purveyor or a co-worker is extraordinarily easy. Avoid it. Really.
I was bent for the first half of my career, meaning, I pilfered food, turned in the occasional inflated petty cash slip, nicked beer for the kitchen. It didn't feel good. Slinking home at the end of the night, knowing that you're a thief, whatever your excuse ('My boss is a thief . . . 'I need the money' . . . 'They'll never notice') feels lousy. And it can come back to bite you later in your career.
Recently, I agreed to meet with the representative from a major seafood wholesaler. I met him at the empty bar of my restaurant, during the slow time between lunch and dinner, and told him that I'd done business with his company at another restaurant. I was inclined to like the company. The products and services had, in my experience so far, been first rate, and what he needed to do to get my business was simply provide the same or better-quality fish as my other purveyors - and do so at a lower price. I meant it, too. I am absolutely tone-deaf to criminal solicitation. It bores me. And for all my misbehavior over the years, I have never - and I mean never - taken money or a thing of value from a purveyor in return for my master's business.
'Junior' (that was his name), from X Seafood, seemed puzzled by my apparent obtuseness that day. Thick-necked, crew-cutted, but oh-so-friendly, 'Junior' seemed to think that maybe we were talking about sex, when in fact all the while we were discussing the internal combustion engine. There were long silences as his gentle, cheerful probings and expressions of non-specific good will were left dangling in the air. After a while of this - me wanting only to know how much he was charging for Norwegian salmon today, and resisting his unspoken entreaties suddenly to muse aloud about how, maybe, it would be nice if I could afford a hot tub for my apartment - he gave up in frustration and left.
Minutes later, a waiter drew my attention to a plain white envelope on the floor. Opening it, I found a stack of 100-dollar bills and a list of nearby hotels and restaurants with some names checked off. 'Junior' had apparently dropped it. I have to tell you, I felt pretty damn good calling up 'Senior' down at X Seafood and breezily informing him that his son seemed to have left something behind by mistake at my restaurant: could they please send someone to come pick it up? A red-faced functionary picked the envelope up within minutes, and I never heard from that company again.
All sorts of scumbags will offer you every variety of free stuff if you entertain the prospect of doing business with them, slipping them food, or looking the other way. Screw them all. Don't even play footsie with them, meaning, 'I'll take the case of Dom - but I don't know if I can always do business with you.' Don't even do that. There are a lot of scumbags in the restaurant business, people who will let the Gambino Family decide who gets the fish order or the liquor order in return for Knicks tickets or a lap dance, and these are people who you will have to deal with, sometimes adversarially. How can you win an argument with one of these people when you're a scumbag too?
4. Always be on time.
5. Never make excuses or blame others.
6. Never call in sick. Except in cases of dismemberment, arterial bleeding, sucking chest wounds or the death of an immediate family member. Granny died? Bury her on your day off.
7. Lazy, sloppy and slow are bad. Enterprising, crafty and hyperactive are good.
8. Be prepared to witness every variety of human folly and