Lady Bits

There aren’t many professions in which men and women are treated differently anymore. That’s because most businesses have an HR department. In the kitchen, you’ve got five people on shift who don’t give a shit about anything except finishing the night intact. Words are said. It’s always awful. You still don’t tell anyone anything, because it’s not that they’re gross, you’re uptight. If you don’t act like one of the guys, you can’t really survive in the kitchen, because there’s no respect for women except mothers. Not you, of course, but their own. The one who stood over them and taught them how to cook. Men treating women with respect in the kitchen has never been a thing. Julia Child was not a trailblazer because she worked for OSS. She’s a trailblazer because she made it through culinary school at all.

I have had the idea for an SNL skit for years (take it if you write for them) because of Julia. I read in the newspaper that Julia kept her phone number public long after her books were published and her television show was airing. The idea for the skit is that someone calls and she thinks it’s a home cook, but it’s CIA needing help on an old op or something. The entire conversation could be had because the information CIA needs is actually in cooking jargon.

She did make a shark repellent recipe. It’s a start.

The fun part is thinking about what “cassoulet,” “bechamel,” and “eclair” might have to do with spy jargon.

The writing prompt came from someone in my lady line cooks group who asked how to get men off her ass when she’s on her period, because she didn’t have enough to tolerate their bs today.

I said, “I compensate by being a complete bitch all the time so they can’t tell.”

It’s funny ’cause it’s true. I’m just not loud about it. Kinkaid can tell what I need with a look.

One of the reasons it’s so easy to get in the weeds is that so much of communication does become rote that you don’t talk about it, so you can’t recover from a mistake as fast. If you forget to drop a burger first and they want well done, there is no possible way it’s going to be on time. That’s throwing your waitstaff to the wolves, something I try very hard not to do. I will say that for all the waitstaff I’ve worked with, I’ve never dated any of them so they all remember me fondly.

This is generally the case in kitchens. Waitstaff jobs attract pretty actresses. The kitchen draws queer people to a moth like a flame, mostly women and men who won’t admit it because the homophobia is just that bad. Or there’s the alternative, the honey badger don’t care sexual assault. That dude does not care whether you like women or not. Whatever they’re packing is better than anything you’ve ever had and they believe it like Pete Davidson.

Chefs are known for thinking that they’re God’s gift to dick, and they lord it over female employees in the most subtle of ways as not to get caught. It’s bad for the women who reject them because there’s 20. It’s worse for the ones that think he’s serious and actually likes them.

People break up the mojo of the team all the time by sleeping together. Basically everyone pretends not to care, but they do. It’s not that our coworkers are boning, it’s that they do the job differently. They’re not as careful because they’re tired and they know fuckboy will excuse them, but he’ll beat hell down on us.

So, people are bitter and talk shit. If you can keep your relationship under wraps, it’s fine until you break up. Then all hell goes with it.

Dana and I could work together because we were both line cooks, but I gave her the authority of a chef because she had her stripes and I didn’t. That’s not true of most couples, and a few times it wasn’t even true of us. But we did a hell of a lot better than most couples. It didn’t get messy at work until after we left the kitchen.

Most of the time, two line cooks dating each other doesn’t happen because queer men aren’t on the line very often and neither are lesbians (we make up a disproportionate percentage, but still very small). It’s not that straight couples on the line don’t exist, it’s just not as prevalent for a straight woman and a straight man to cook together. Most of the time, when cooks are together, they work at different restaurants. When Dana and I had different jobs, I hated it. Absolutely hated it. This is because if we weren’t at work together, I didn’t see her.

My kitchen life doesn’t have room for anyone else, and everyone feels the same way. We all lead two lives. The one on the line, and the one where we’re helpless against the tide of people asking why we haven’t been to X or Y in a hundred years. God forbid someone actually takes in in that we’re sorry and we mean it, but you meet at 6:00 PM.

Mothers hate every holiday ever, because you’re not going to see us without three years’ notice. Moms do not understand when yes, they’re important, but so is having your ass on grill by five. It affects your future to a much larger degree. It shouldn’t, but it will. It’s a meritocracy.

Also, no one talks to anyone. So if you miss a shift and the manager isn’t there to tell everyone you died or someone close to you did, we will bitch the whole time about your absence and how you probably had brown bottle flu, but when we find out what really happened, you have never seen a team motivate faster in your life.

Being agile as a female cook is harder than being male once you have children. You can put up with all the shit until then. But no restaurant in the world is going to like it if you have a hard out, no matter what time it is. If you’re on day shift, you might be done by three, you might not. Roll with it. If you’re night crew, you might be done at 8:00, you might be done at midnight. Roll with it. That’s because restaurants have a system. If we’re not busy, no owner wants to pay labor. So, you might get three hours of work that day. You might get 12. You need to be prepared for either eventuality. People who show up for morning shift prepared to bust ass all day are worth their weight in gold because a hundred things could conspire to ruin dinner, and having a day crew that can cover prep while we chase down a problem saves everything. Because waitstaff makes tips and we make salary, I prefer being on day shift because it’s the easiest way to get paid more…. not in terms of salary. In terms of the number of hours you can get. It adds up.

I remember once I was worried that Supergrover didn’t have a job and I told her I could set her up with a sweet dishwashing gig in Columbia Heights. That’s funny on two levels. The first is that she’s buttoned up tight like Lindsay. Not because that’s who she is, that’s who she plays on TV. Just like Lindsay.

Therefore, the image of her washing dishes in Brooks Brothers was priceless, as was the thought of her washing dishes at all because I know her quite well. She doesn’t like cooking. She likes to have cooked.

What I do know is that her executive style rubbed off on me. I learned to stand up for myself easier. To notice when I had seniority and order people around like they did to me, because they didn’t have any more reason to tell me what to do than I did them. When chef isn’t there, you have to be loud and assertive, otherwise people will run right over you.

There’s never a way to be a “good” woman in a kitchen. You’re either going to get run over or seen as the biggest twatwaffle known to God and man when you try to flex. The hard part when you’re intimidated (if you’re me) is being 5’2 and arguing with someone is bigger, stronger, and generally angry at me because I’m a woman and my opinion means nothing.

I am lucky in that I have only had one job like that, the one in Silver Spring. It was no small consolation to learn that the owners had run the restaurant into the ground, just like I knew they would, seconded by my chef.

The rest of the time, it’s just been random comments and not constantly.

Most of the time, no one has noticed my lady bits.

The sad part is that it’s not because I wouldn’t want people to see me that way. It’s that in order to stand out, I have to blend in.

If you want to throw down in a kitchen because you think you’re being treated unfairly, focus on the food you make for yourself. Let everyone see what you’re doing. Let them have a bite. Cooks don’t listen with their ears. Respect will come from “how did you do that?”

The motto of the international brotherhood of line cooks is “we don’t have to talk about it. Just eat it.”

If you study hard, at least one of those times you’ll walk away feeling like God’s gift to something…… probably Pete Davidson.