Imperfect Perfection

Here is the thing about working in two different worlds...they bleed into each other, creating this muddled mess of rules and food and habits.

Old job is regimented. It is strict and clean. The food is uninspiring. It is monotony and routine. It is unpredictable and predictable at the same time. It is sweat running down my back. It is rip your hair out stress. The language is muted, tongues are bitten. Political correctness runs rampant. Dick jokes are told in the corners of the walk-in. Cell phones are checked in secret. Camera's watch all the rules that are broken. It is customers paying high prices because they think organic means healthy. It is 100 chickens a day, 100's of quarts of rice, 150 quarts of fries. Eight hour shifts last an hour. It is the rush, the sweat, the camaraderie. It is family.

New job is relaxed. It is laid back and often dirty. The food is original, created daily. It is local ingredients, brought in buckets from farms. It is making mayonnaise from scratch daily. Fuck this, fuck that. Do your fucking job. It is laughter and jokes and inappropriateness. It is about the food. Not the rules. It is easy, barely breaking a sweat. It is finding stuff to do to keep busy so the shift goes faster. 

I clean too much at new job, they look at me like I am crazy. I find myself forgetting to put on gloves in the open kitchen windows at old job. I hesitate to say fuck this at new job, and say fuck that too much at old job. The lines are blurred. Between two imperfect places, two imperfect points in my life. Two places I know I will not be in 5, 10, 15 years. Because all of this is finding my perfection, my perfect place. Where I run the kitchen my way, I make the food my way, and I say fuck all I want.