Apprentice Anonymous #02: Tunnel Vision

  It goes without saying that those of us that thrive in the kitchen habitat have a few screws loose. More often than not everyone on the line, and the dishdog - especially the dishdog - suffer from some breed of social or psychological malfunction. I say malfunction because you can't catch them from the neighborhood tramp behind the nearest Dollar Tree. Whether it be mild to chronic depression (not the glorified television version - Zoloft is a sugar pill for attention whores), bi-polar disorder, or in some extreme cases mild schizophrenia, almost every line cook I've met leads their lives dealing with these ailments. I say especially the dishdog because we all know the first person to go postal and blow the joint up by adding Lime-Away to the Chloraid is that quiet little bastard.
  Why is this so often the case? Are we like this as a product of our workplace? Or is this our workplace as a product of our lives outside of it? While I have no doubt that the kitchen is the cause of some people's insanity, I find more often than not that people like us end up here because of life's experiences leading up to our employment in the kitchen. I did enough whining about that in my last article, and I don't need to tell y'all what happened to you either. This is about one of the many reasons we come to work everyday and strain ourselves to the point of exhaustion both mentally and physically. This, this is about therapy.
  Any self-respecting person in this business suffering from the aforementioned conditions has far too much pride to take numbing pills or lay on an oddly-shapen couch crying to a stranger about our bullshit. We keep all the pain and stress and self-loathing inside (most of the time anyway, we do tend to be the heavy drinking sort after all). But nobody can live that way without an outlet. As much as I'd like to say drinking is a good outlet for stress, I must admit it's an absolutely terrible one. Numbing the senses is not the same as working out the frustration through sweat and blood and tears.
  For the past 12 years or so I found that my outlet was rollerblading. But after so many years of wear-and-tear on my body, a number of serious injuries, and a whole shitload of permanently implanted surgical steel, I can't do that anymore at the level I used to. After I destroyed my ankle, depression absolutely ruled my life for over a year until I fell into this cooking gig. I found a new outlet; one just as self-destructive and self-gratifying as what I had previously used to cope with my issues. I found "Tunnel Vision."

  The thing that's drawn me into blading, for over half my life now, is Tunnel Vision. When you're so focused on every miniscule movement your body is making during any particular trick, you completely forget about everything outside of that individual moment that you were worried about before. That's Tunnel Vision. That's Friday night service when the thirty-five open covers you just had all came through the printer at once. Everything you'd been staring at your feet about on the way to work  - your bike just got stolen, your mother's sick, the girl you like just ain't that into you, and/or the liquor store wasn't open yet and you won't be out in time to get to it - none of it is as bad coming out as it was going in. It's that "I just laced the shit out of that very difficult, very physically hazardous situation (read 'trick'), fuck all that other bullshit, I rule" feeling.
  It needs to be self-destructive before it can become self-gratifying. Sometimes you just have to get lost in what you're doing, to the point that you're running more on instinct than conscious decisions and you just go, go, go. When you're focused on making the twenty-five top pre-fix menu identical while your fellow garde-mangier or sous is handling the other ten to fifteen a la minute customers by him - or her - self, painstakingly aware that this isn't a turn-'em-and-burn-'em establishment. This isn't Chili's. We must take pride in presentation under any amount of pressure. And when you come out of the tunnel on top and the servers are reporting smiling faces, all the other shit on the outside that's got you down is long gone. You've been redeemed by your own hard work and the support of those around you that understand the way your mind works.
  Reassurance about life's problems from a "normal" friend and from a friend who lives in the same mindset is a very different thing. It just means more somehow when coming from people that know the way you really think, deep inside, without ever really being able to express it properly in words. We hold each other up in this business. 
  I can come into the kitchen feeling as grim and morose as ever, overthinking the outside world and taking it all too hard like our type so often do, and I can keep being miserable if I want. I just burry my face in my prep, cutting vegetables, or, more recently as apprentice, braising short ribs and pork shanks, and I don't have to put on a happy face for nobody. That's why we're in the kitchen not the FOH. There's a reason we don't work retail or office jobs, we're not content "faking it til' we make it." We're a "no-bullshit" breed of people, and I think that's something to be proud of. (Certainly no offense to FOH, more power to you for being able to put a smile on everyday to make that paper).
  Likewise, everyone suffering from their own brand of psychosis in the back of the house never tends to be on the same cycle. So when you're down, somebody else is up, and you can't help but snicker under your breath and through your commitment to your own depression at the antics and comedy of your fellow line cooks. By the end of service they've got you laughing, relieved, and generally optimistic even.
  On my days off I often find I'd rather be in the kitchen, at home with my new family. Even on slow days - and there is a certain zen to be found in just doing prep all day, or cleaning grease traps, rather than much plating - I've found I always come out feeling much more relaxed and optimistic about the outside world. I wonder if a Bhudda ever cleaned a grease trap.
  So please, embrace the Tunnel Vision, it is the single greatest therapy available to our kind of miscreants. And guess what, you're getting paid to go to it.

I hope this makes sense in the morning,
Kleb Tuckkett

p.s. Upon further slightly more sober review, and some confusion about the title the first time around, this column will henceforth be known simply as "Apprentice Anonymous." I'll still be drunk every time I write though. Cheers you heathens.