Kitchen Confidential_ Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly - Anthony Bourdain [41]
I fondly recall how once, after a long-time waitress arrived back late from vacation, claiming her flight arrived fifteen minutes after scheduled time, Bigfoot called the airport to check her story and then fired her for lying. Treating Bigfoot like an idiot was always a big mistake. He lived for that. In the man's three or so decades in the life, he'd seen and heard every scam, every bullshit story, every trick, deception, ploy and gag that ever existed or that a human mind could conceive - and was always happy to prove that to anyone foolish enough to try. If Bigfoot asked you a question, and you didn't know the answer, he always preferred an 'I dunno' to a long-winded series of qualified statements, speculation and half-truths. You kept Bigfoot informed of your movements. He would never allow himself to fall victim to 'manager's syndrome' - constantly watching the clock, wondering if and when his employees were going to show up. Where Bigfoot ruled, he knew when they were showing up: fifteen minutes before start of shift. That's when.
Bigfoot understood - as I came to understand - that character is far more important than skills or employment history. And he recognized character - good and bad - brilliantly. He understood, and taught me, that a guy who shows up every day on time, never calls in sick, and does what he said he was going to do, is less likely to fuck you in the end than a guy who has an incredible resume but is less than reliable about arrival time. Skills can be taught. Character you either have or don't have. Bigfoot understood that there are two types of people in the world: those who do what they say they're going to do - and everyone else. He'd lift ex-junkie sleazeballs out of the gutter and turn them into trusted managers, guys who'd kill themselves rather than misuse one thin dime of Bigfoot receipts. He'd get Mexicans right off the boat, turn them into solid citizens with immigration lawyers, nice incomes and steady employment. But if Bigfoot calls them at four in the morning, wanting them to put in a rooftop patio, they'd better be prepared to roll out of bed and get busy quarrying limestone.
Purveyors hated his guts. They'd peel the labels off the cartons they delivered, out of fear that Bigfoot would simply cut out the middleman and order directly from the source. He was an expert in equipment. I recall him getting a leasing company to guarantee a certain number of cubic feet of ice production from a machine he was contracting for. Two minutes after signing, he had his Presidential Guard measuring and weighing ice. When it turned out that the machine fell short by a few pounds or cubic feet, Bigfoot found himself with two new ice machines for the price of one. He loved playing purveyors against each other, driving the price down. Every once in a while, if a meat company, say, promised him the lowest price they could give, he'd have someone call them up, pretending to be their largest account - a 300-seat steakhouse, for instance - and ask for a copy of their last invoice, as theirs had gone missing; could they please fax another one? God help the poor meat guys if Peter Luger was paying two cents less a pound than Bigfoot was.
Nothing made him happier than discovering fraud or deception or even a simple white lie. Once, after years of ordering frozen Bee Gee shrimp from a reputable seafood purveyor, Bigfoot discovered a hastily applied label indicating net weight. When it peeled off, he realized the company had, for years, been printing their own fake labels, heat-sealing them over the actual weight printed on the box, and cheating him out of a few ounces of shrimp every 5 pounds. Next time the company