Pizza Chef
Maria walked into the Main Street Kitchen at one PM on the dot. She was met by a large, flustered-looking woman, covered in flour. “Are you the new hire?” she asked. “You’re just in time. I hope you know about making pizzas.”
“I’ve made a few of them,” Maria said, “but I haven’t worked in a pizza place before.”
“Oh,” the woman said. “Well, I’ll show you. Jeff doesn’t tell me anything. Come on, I’ll get you a T-shirt and apron.”
Dressed in a garish red Main Street Kitchen T-shirt, covered by a stained white apron, Maria was initiated in the mysteries of making pizza. The dough was done for the day—that’s how her new supervisor, Rhonda, had gotten covered in flour—and now they were baking pizzas.
The kitchen felt like a million degrees.
Instead of the large staff Maria was used to at the Virginian, there was only Rhonda and a skinny, surly boy named Tyler who looked about sixteen.
The kitchen wasn’t impressive. The work stations were messy, pizza sauce splattered the floor, and Maria had an idea the place hadn’t been mopped in a few days.
Well, she was here, and she was working, and that was the important thing.
Maria ladled sauce over pizza dough, careful to get a thin, even circle.
She sprinkled cheese on it, checking the order ticket for the list of toppings.
Rats, tickets were coming in fast, both from online orders and from impatient-looking customers at the front counter.
She’d better get this in the oven pronto.
Where was Rhonda? She had questions, like cook times and how much of each topping to put on each pizza, but Rhonda was nowhere.
“Hey, Tyler,” Maria asked in desperation, “is there a sheet with the cook times for these pizzas?”
He pointed to a grubby laminated sheet on a side wall. “Right there.”
Maria frantically tried to decipher the instructions.
Why were there so many types of pizzas? By the time she had figured everything out and put in the first pizzas, a bunch of other tickets had stacked up.
Not all of them were for pizza. This place had subs and loaded potato skins and a myriad of other random things.
Maria had to switch back and forth from the pizza area to the area with the other foods, manning both stations.
Tyler was taking orders at the counter. Rhonda was still gone.
Why had Maria thought it would be a good idea to work here?
The place was in trouble unless they hired more people.
At least today she was only working part of a shift.
The manager had said that Maria’s usual shift would go until four-thirty, when somebody else would replace her.
She could manage for another few hours, as long as she kept her mind on what she was doing.
It was a learning curve putting together the pizzas and sandwiches. Maria’s glasses slid down her nose from the heat. Meanwhile, Tyler was checking his phone, and Rhonda was wrangling with someone on her own phone about some ingredients that hadn’t been delivered when they were supposed to be.
Maria was getting ready to clock out at four-thirty when Rhonda bustled by. “Hey, I just heard from Jeff,” she said. “Heather, the girl that’s supposed to come in after you, is out sick. Can you work her shift until ten?”
Oof. That wasn’t good. This place must be seriously short-staffed. But Maria didn’t want to upset people on her first day.
“Well,” she said, “I guess I can. But I’d better call my grandma to let her know I’ll be home late.”
It wasn’t any later than Maria’s job at the Virginian had been.
But the atmosphere wasn’t anything like it.
Hopefully this was just an off day. Maria would scrub the floor and clean the counters when she got done, so she’d come in to a clean kitchen tomorrow morning.
It looked as though the walk-in fridge hadn’t been cleaned in a long time, either.
Yuck, moldy bread? Gross! She hated to think of what the health inspector would say.
Well, maybe this place just needed a capable worker, and that was why they had been so excited to hire her. Clearly, they were desperate for help.
She kept telling herself that through the dinner rush.
The front of the house was crowded. This place at least got a decent number of customers.
Wasn’t there any way they could afford to hire more kitchen staff?
Tyler languidly took phone orders, and Rhonda made subs so Maria could concentrate on the pizzas.
Pepperoni, sausage, black olives. House specialty pizzas with a laminated sign listing the toppings.
Maria’s first incident happened as she took a pizza out of a high-up oven. The pizza slid off the peel and landed with a flop by her feet. Dismayed, Maria looked down at the splattered mess. At least she hadn’t tried to catch it. She’d have been burned. But Rhonda was probably going to be mad.
“I’ve got a problem,” Maria said. “I dropped a pizza. Where can I get something to clean it up?”
Tyler was checking his phone again. “Check the janitor’s closet,” he said without looking up.
That boy needed to get off his phone and concentrate on his job. Maria hustled to the janitor’s closet, bumping into Rhonda.
“I’m so sorry, I dropped a pizza,” Maria said. “It’s a mess. I’ll clean it up.”
Rhonda swore. “Who’s making pizzas then?” she demanded. “It’s the middle of the dinner rush. I’ll make Tyler clean up the mess. You get back in there and re-make the pizza!”
Maria scuttled back to her area, her stomach tied in knots.
This was not her day. What was wrong with her?
She was used to high-pressure environments.
She was even used to the chef yelling at everybody.
But it didn’t seem the same. There was a difference between a strict supervisor and an unkind supervisor.
She’d have to find a job at a better restaurant. This place might be popular, but they could get a teenager to do her job. She hadn’t gone to culinary school for this.
Unfortunately, it was the only job she had at the moment, and she’d better stick it out until she found something else.
§
Maria got back home at eleven-thirty PM, around the time she used to get back from the Virginian. Inside, she flopped on the couch, heedless of the sauce and cheese and flour covering her clothes. Dad was reading. Grandma was nowhere to be seen. She must have gone to bed already.
“You look exhausted,” Dad said, looking up from his book. “Rough first day?”
Maria sighed. “I hate it. They made me stay way late because the next girl couldn’t come in.
The kitchen was filthy. There was hardly anybody working.
It was just me and the supervisor and a kid who was on his phone all night.
There was spoiled food just sitting around in the kitchen and the walk-in.
I don’t think they have good management.
And I don’t think they’re very friendly. ”
Dad whistled. “That doesn’t sound like a good environment. Are you going back there tomorrow? Or are you quitting?”
Maria sighed. “I think I’m going back. I cleaned the floors and counters and threw out all the spoiled food I could find.
It’ll be a little better tomorrow at least. But I’m going to see if I can find anywhere else to apply.
I don’t think I’m being snooty—but I didn’t go to culinary school for this! ”
“That makes sense,” Dad said. “Well, do you need any help? You want me to look up job descriptions online?”
“No, thanks,” Maria said. “I’ll do it. I’m going in early tomorrow, so I should get out earlier, and I’ll have time to look for jobs online.”
“Sure,” Dad said. “There must be places you haven’t thought of. Have you tried any restaurants a little farther away?”
“I could,” Maria said. “I don’t want a super long commute, but if I found something good, I wouldn’t mind driving half an hour.”
“Now don’t forget, there’s still that job at the Rocker A,” Dad said. “Your Grandma Austin runs a pretty tight ship. No chance of spoiled food sitting around. She only hires the best.”
Maria hadn’t considered that angle. Cooking for a big, well-run ranch had to be better than working at the Main Street Kitchen. And presumably her coworkers would be other hired help, not the relatives she couldn’t get along with. After today, a job in a ranch kitchen seemed a lot more tempting.
“How do you know so much about the way the ranch is run?” Maria asked. “I thought Grandma Austin never talks to you.”
“She doesn’t,” Dad said. “But your Uncle Russell posts on social media. He helps Patricia run the business end of things.”
“You’re friends with Uncle Russell on social media?” Maria sat up on the couch. She would have assumed Dad and Uncle Russell wouldn’t be able to stand each other. “Do you ever talk?”
“Not too often,” Dad said. “But he doesn’t dislike me as much as your grandmother does.”
That explained a few things. Maria had wondered how her grandmother learned she had lost her job. Maybe Grandma Austin had heard about her working at the Virginian from Russell. Maria was pretty sure Dad had mentioned her working there on social media before.
“Russell’s got a couple kids your age, you know,” Dad said. “Annabelle and Elijah. And a younger daughter Savannah. If you went out there, you could get to know your cousins.”
He suggested it like it was a fun family event, not an awkward gathering of feuding families. What was going on in his brain?
“Are you trying to make me go out there?” Maria asked. “You want me to spend my entire summer across the country? What about you and Grandma? What would you do without me?”
“We would manage just fine,” Dad said. “I want you to think about what works best for you. You’ve gone through some rough things lately.
And you’ve kept a stiff upper lip. Seth breaking up with you, the Virginian closing, starting work at a place you don’t like.
But sometimes you gotta step back and ask yourself, am I doing what I’m supposed to be doing with my life? ”