Saturday, March 31, 2007

Cookin No. 43 - Honesty is the Best Policy

Call me crazy, call me old fashioned, but I truly believe the honesty is the best policy. If you lie about it, you’re going to get caught eventually. If you try to cover it up, they will find out. And when your little rouse gets sniffed out, the consequences get to be fiercer. No one likes to be lied to. Not only do lies hurt, but they play on the emotions, because they always spin out of control. And what was once something that could have been fixed easily now has become a fiasco, a web of chaos, that you will look at and just shake you head thinking, “what now”. Here’s a story about honesty being the best policy:

This evening, after the rush of dinners at the restaurant, the head chef, Chris, and I were sitting outside polluting our lungs with tobacco and tar, when one of the waitresses, Allie, came running out of the door and towards her car with one of her shoes in her hand. Half barefoot she acted like a skittish animal when we asked her what happened. She said, “Don’t worry about it”. Someone in the kitchen told us that she spilled soup on herself. Immediately my mind flashed to the large pot of, made this morning, mushroom soup that was sitting in the back room. I started to shake my head. I knew that Chris was thinking about the same pot. Chris said, “I don’t think I want to know.” I agreed.

Again we asked A what happened, again she said not to worry. Chris and I put out our cigarettes and headed into the back room, to look at the foreboding pot. There was visibly 3 inches of soup missing. Again Chris asked A what happened, again she said not to worry. I didn’t have to look to know that Chris’ face was beginning to turn bright red with anger. He said, “I will only ask you one more time, what happened, if you tell me I won’t be angry, but if I have to ask you two more time, I will be ******* pissed.” A, then told us that as she was standing talking to another waitress, her foot slipped into the pot of soup. She also said that the other waitress told her to hide the “evidence”. Oui.

A very mad head chef went outside to smoke another cigarette, and I stayed behind to tell the two girls that if something happens to just come out and tell us, to not hide it, because what is done is done, but if you hide it, and we found out later, then bad things would happen. We would have ended up selling shoe soup instead of mushroom soup. Regardless of the food cost, we can fix the problem now. They didn’t seem to understand. Rather, they didn’t want to listen to me, instead they wanted to throw the blame around to other unforeseen forces. I understand that Chris is a formidable guy at times, but he understands mistakes, I understand that they didn’t want to get yelled at, but the yelling would have been worse if the lie continued.

My pearls of wisdom fell on deaf ears. I suppose that it was right then and there that these two young girls showed their age to me. I just wish that I could have made them understand. But I suppose that there are people who would rather push the blame around and create scapegoats, instead of saying, “my bad”.

So I send out this pearl to all of you… even though the truth hurts, the truth is less painful than the lie. A lie is salt that rub into the wound. You will loose credibility and respect if you sling lies.

Other than that, all is well in my world. My birthday is on Sunday, and I am looking forward to that. A nice meal with my family, and a little bit of relaxation is all that I need. But this is the big 25, I am becoming aware of age suddenly. You know what though, bring it on baby, I think that I will look good with grey hair ;).

Until next time my friends, Buone Appitito

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

and i hope i live long enough to see you in grey hair...and yes, you'll look great!

M

5:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

OK.....how does a shoe wind up in soup?

3:25 PM  
Blogger lai said...

pure stupidity

11:11 PM  

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