Toxic Workplace.

Losing your job is difficult. I was almost unafraid that I could find a solution to start again, but all of us know that that is not how things work. I know who and how, but I don’t know why. I thought I was an amazing cook. (Until I was without a job, obviously) I was an assistant to many top cooks, always indoors and working all day, crafting a dish that world-famous cook Gordon Ramsay would find hard to call “shit” or “an insult to culinary arts.” With that all said, I was still without a job, and that truthfully hurt. Cooking was my craft. Cooking was fun. It paid my bills and was my only satisfaction for my stomach. It was a childhood passion, a job I took without any institutional instruction, and a way of sharing my gifts with hungry mouths and thirsty lips.

As I thought of any kind of justification, many didn’t follow through. Was it tomato soup that was too cold? Ham that was too dry? My thick, black hair found on a pair of pork chops? I had nothing. How could my boss find out about why a young man, who had just had my pumpkin ravioli, had to go to a hospital? I had no doubt that tracing a trail of rat poison was impractical. I had watchfully bought and put such hazardous poison onto his food, knowing I was killing a man who was fucking a woman I was going to marry. A woman who I couldn’t satisfy.

I had to call. I found his card lying on a chair. I’ll admit I was slightly afraid, as my old boss is not a happy man, to say, but was stuck with only a handful of words: my ham was too dry.