Mo' Pepperoni, Mo' Problems

Today I'm going into work at the ol' pizzeria for what should be the last time for a long while.  This of course necessitates a "rebranding" of my blog and personal website as I am no longer "one of the most over-educated pizza cooks in the world," but rather, a "textbook editor with just about the right amount of education, maybe a little light on experience, but with a plucky can-do attitude." Career-wise, I'm just about where I ought to be. 

Unfortunately, there's nothing funny about that. 

Previously, I was a tweed-jacketed bow-tied professor type forced to labor in a menial job for low wages, and that was hilarious because of course I'd gone to college and gotten all stuffy and was like "I say, I simply do not fathom how to go about these many and sundry labours," and all my coworkers were all like "no, you gotta relax and be cool man, and learn how to let your hair down and dance, DANCE!" and along the way I made some friends, drank some colorful and fruity tequila drinks, and then we all rode a five-person tandem bicycle down a hill, kicking our feet out to the side and shouting "weeee."

In short, i was alive with flavor. 

I'll never forget my time as a cook, mostly because I can never shake the feeling that I might someday have to be one again.  I've said goodbye to restaurant work many times in the past - in high school when I went to work in the video store, when I left college to become a security guard, and then when I went to grad school.  In all of those cases, some pizzeria somewhere had its door open for me when I had to come back, and for this I am genuinely and sincerely thankful.  No there's no joke there.  Here, have some horse pop.

We all fantasize about quitting a job in some big dramatic fashion, like telling our bosses what we really think of them, or finally sweeping that hot girl in HR off her feet, or burning the place to the ground and dancing on the charred skeletons of those coworkers who mocked you, mocked you, for so very very long but who will never mock again because with their slaughter you have appeased Vorgoth, black lord of the east, and when you hear the siren's wail you know that it is the dire bleating of Vorgoth's immortal flock, his dread goats of murder who come to release you from this sickly mortal coil, yes, by the seven moons of Hadleareath, it's working, IT'S WORKING, I CAN FEEL THE POWER! - but so few of us do. 

No, mostly we hope for a good reference, or a safe port to which we can return should the need arise. I think instinctively most of us know that any job, whether it be one we despise, one we love but have to leave, or one we just tolerate, might not seem so hard, so poor, or so boring in the future.  I myself spent a lot of time at the end of summer applying for help desk jobs when I would in fact rather cook - a truth reflected in the fact that I cooked rather than fix computers for the last few months.  Also, I'm an MCP in Windows NT 4.0 - who even uses that anymore?

My old man has this wooden placard hanging in his office, engraved with a quotation from Elbert Hubbard (himself a rather interesting character worthy of more mention than I'm giving him here), and the quotation reads:

"Remember this: If you work for a man, in Heaven's name, work for him. If he pays you wages which supply you bread and butter, work for him; speak well of him; stand by the institution he represents. If put to a pinch, an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness. If you must vilify, condemn and eternally disparage - resign your position, and when you are on the outside, damn to your heart's content, but as long as you are part of the institution do not condemn it."

It took me quite a while to learn what that meant, despite reading it at least once a week since I was old enough to do so.  I used to think it was a lot of corporate yes-manism, a lot of "ra ra go work for the moneyed classes as they break the backs of the poor," but that was then, and as I get older I'm sympathetic. 

I think back to bashing the people at one of my old employers for being middle-class drones, to badmouthing and then quitting one company in a huff because the man the next desk over was paid more for the same work, and to numerous petty thefts against the people that basically kept me from starving, and though I'm hardly ashamed, I certainly feel like I've got some bad karma coming my way some day. 

I don't burn bridges.  I don't storm out. I do tell the boss what I really think, because if you don't respect someone, if you can't get along with them, and if you can't vest some sort of interest in your work, then you shouldn't be doing it.  I say this pretty much every week about writing, but it's no less true for the butcher, the baker, or the candlestick maker. 

Now, I'm going to spend the remainder of my morning editing textbooks, and then I will go to make pizza - once more unto the breech!  If you are in Royal Oak tonight, go ahead and drop by: Buddy's Pizza, Woodward, just north of Normandy.  I won't "hook you up" as a matter of principal principle, but I'll make you some good food and I'll appreciate the thought. 

Also, there's a tip jar - don't act like you don't know what it's for.