I’ve been meaning to write another post for three weeks now, but several events have transpired that left me tumbling down a steep hill, and progressed to what feels like falling into a dark ravine.

So I swear to Tell the Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth So Help Me God.

I quit my job. I wanted to quit it as soon as I started it, actually. My first day wasn’t so bad, but I was being trained by my manager who was leaving to care for her new baby. The next day, I was “trained” by the main boss, who had as much experience with this particular kitchen and the way things were supposed to be done as I did. Then came the only coworker I had who put me on a three day training schedule. Shadow and Teach, Shadow and Help and then Do it Yourself, were my three days.

I didn’t have experience cooking for large groups of people in large quantities, especially sixty people who ate cottage cheese and tuna fish sandwiches every single day. It was like a mix of a high school cafeteria and a sit down restaurant. I would have to make large quantities of food, by myself, and serve the food in a restaurant like style – with tickets.

This particular coworker, when she was training me, was not nice. She decided she didn’t like me. She decided I was an idiot. She decided I was inferior, and would amount to nothing. She decided I was lazy. Those things she also told my new boss, whom had worked there before, with her.

My new boss was skeptical of me. She hadn’t been a manager before (I’m assuming) and had no idea how to do it. She didn’t train me. She didn’t offer solutions when I made mistakes. She didn’t buy the necessary ingredients for the menus. She didn’t print out the recipes we were supposed to follow, for me. When I had questions, I got looks. So I didn’t ask questions if I could avoid it. I didn’t ask for help either. I would rather fail and dig myself into a deeper hole than admit that I made mistakes to people who would judge them to the harshest degree.

In my first month, I burned soup on five different occasions. Each time, I beat myself down, knowing how it would turn out the next day when my coworker would ask with a smirk on her face.

I burned soup because I was cooking two entrees, a pot of soup, and two to three sides at the same time.

Five times, I wasn’t offered a solution, until a manager from a different department told me to stack soup pots with the boiling water underneath like a double boiler. After that, I never burned soup again.

The residents still complained. They complained that I made the Tilapia too spicy with too much Old Bay, they complained that my Beef and Potato Skillet tasted metallic because of the red wine it called for, they complained when there was too much seasoning or not enough, the meat was too tough, they complained about the noodles I was supposed to use, and the menus I didn’t make. Some, if not most of the comments were hurtful.

One woman in particular said she hated my style of cooking. During the waitressing part of my job for lunch, one woman discovered I was the dinner cook and glared at me and threatened to give me a lecture. A man almost completely refused to eat anything I made and instead took sandwiches when he could help it. A couple at one of the back tables, disliked my cooking so much that they made every little comment they could and sent the food back sometimes three times in a night. At one point the man came into the kitchen to look for me to curse at me for not making the bacon on his BLT crispy enough. Then, they both told several managers that I’d severed raw, uncooked food.

Testing my abilities, my boss gave me more and more complicated dishes. I started to settle into a routine.

Most things, like pastas and breaded chicken or fish, I couldn’t taste due to a gluten allergy, so I had the dishwashers or waiters taste the dishes. I explained this to my boss when she told me all of a sudden I needed a doctor’s note for my allergy.

I’d had to go to the walk-in clinic before for a physical and a Tuberculosis vaccine to get this job. I waited at the clinic for three and a half hours that time, I didn’t want to go back and waste a whole morning for them to confirm something I already knew in writing.

The next day I was presented with a write-up. The first one I’d ever gotten in my entire life. For burning soup and not tasting my food.

I’d done worse things at other jobs. I’d intentionally be rude to people who were rude to me in the drive-thru when I worked at a Taco Bell. I broke safety protocols working for the California Conservation Corps. as well as dress code violations. I watched people steal from Jcpenney’s, and just sighed and walked away because I knew the local police would do nothing and because of that my boss almost no longer cared. I did all these things and yet I never received a write-up, I never got so much as a talking to, because the good outweighed the bad.

At Taco Bell I was the most reliable employee they had, when someone called in, they called me and I’d drive twenty minutes for a bigger paycheck. I got moved into the head line cook position, since I hated working the customer service positions. One time I worked nine days in a row.

At the CCC, I started off not doing as well as I could have because I wasn’t used to manual labor, but I pushed, and I became a Sawyer.

At my restaurant job, I got moved from Hostess to Prep Cook, but I was moved back to Hostess due to an unforeseen issue, that had nothing to do with me.

At Jcpenney’s I was moved from Cashier to Pricing & Signing Captain to an Operations Supervisor.

I didn’t have a poor job performance, or so I thought. It was poorer owing to the fact that I would be put down from all directions, so it made trying seem pointless.

After I’d cried in the bathroom (and the walk-in), I decided I wanted to quit. At that time, I was still going to wait to have another job lined up.

Then later that night, at least six plates were sent back (unusually high amount), and one of my disapproving guests came in to curse at me for not making the bacon on his BLT crispy (as I’d mentioned before). Since I was already on the edge, I snapped and wrote my official two week notice on a pad of paper on the desk for my boss and my coworker to find the next day, while I’d be relaxing on my day off.

My last day was the seventeenth, and I lied about having a back-up plan, but I didn’t want more of their looks.

On a day when I had time I complained to HR about everything that bothered me.

The residents never being happy and telling the managers lies about “raw food”, my boss not training me, my boss not helping me fix problems, lack of recipes, lack of ingredients, lack of respect from my coworker, occasional lack of respect from my boss, scheduling me or not scheduling me without letting me know, complaining about taking time off when my dog died, ruthless comments from my coworker about my job performance, lack of respect from other managers, the write-up, how my boss LEFT the write-up at the front desk for the receptionist to see, etc.

When I was done, she nodded and waved all of my problems away with a “that’s just how it is” attitude. Then she told me in a threatening way, if I didn’t stay two weeks I wouldn’t get a good reference.

The job was hell at every turn, but I stayed two weeks, did my job and went home.

I didn’t say good-bye to my boss and my coworker said a lame and what seemed underlyingly sarcastic, “good luck”.

I left, officially and my boyfriend’s mom turned my work shirts into rags.