I’m reporting to you now from the breakneck dog show of sensory overload and machine conversation that is post-COVID America. Sitting here, on a Sunday, I have a decent amount of energy. Part of this, though, stems from me only having two jobs right now, instead of the three which I really need in order to make enough money to pay for my apartment, bills, and hopefully, some savings here and there. I live in northern Indiana.
So now I’m looking for a new “third job,” hopefully one where I’m not the oldest person on payroll in the entire restaurant.
Last year, in 2025, I had four different line cooking jobs. The first one I procured, somewhat luckily, in the wake of my position at The Armory, from which I’d been laid off, for seasonal reasons. This prep cook position had paid $18 an hour, so it was an extra sort of bummer to have to part ways with it.
Anyway, the first cooking gig I lined up in ’ 25 was at the Oakwood Resort Hotel in Syracuse, Indiana, full-time. If you can believe it, the kitchen was pretty much all run by Jamaicans. I expected them to be really laid-back and stoned all the time but they were actually some of the worst micromanagers I’ve ever encountered in my life, and their kitchen closing routine would sometimes take up to an hour, with all of us back staff having to spray every single surface with two different chemicals, and wipe, even the areas down in the cooler drawers, and surfaces which obviously wouldn’t touch food. To top it off, the chef, this Jamaican dude, was a total horn-ball, and had this Hooters mouse pad with which your wrist sat on a set of two big foam boobs.
A lot of us cooks were white in there, anyway, and I got along with most of them pretty well, although I sensed some jealousy from one of them when this April girl would smile at me and press her whole body against me. Again, it was a surreal experience of way too much physical contact with back people, and dealing with Sadistic fronts, sometimes old lady servers who just seemed He**-bent on disliking you, like react-walking-away every time you accidentally glanced at them for a nanosecond, etc. I ended up quitting when I was afraid I was going to get into it with one of the front-of-house servers, who’d do things like telling me she farted, and stuff. By this point, last March, I’d lined up my job doing grocery resets, which actually I’m still doing and only pays $13/hour, hence my needing to work three jobs.
A little while later came The Reserve in Middlebury, a swanky little place whose chef was this friendly chap from Connecticut who’d lived in my hometown, South Bend, for a while, working at random places and being, as he called it, “a downtown South Bend degenerate.” By this time, anyway, he was dating the other chef, Sylvia, who was also really nice, and an awesome cook. It ended up being a really cool place to work, in the tiny little Amish town, full of unbelievably, gorgeous and friendly servers, this real nice bartender dude who kind of seemed gay but definitely rocked, and a bunch of amenities like being allowed three or so five-minute breaks in one four-hour shift, and a free beer by the end of the night. (Actually, they gave me free beer every shift, but not food, which is kind of disconcerting, when you think about it.)
Anyway, matters came to a head when, from what I gathered, I ran into more tension from co- workers which was related to a female on the premises paying close attention to me. Actually, it was the co-chef, who was dating the chef, and along these lines, I will say it does get kind of annoying working with a couple, especially when one, or both of them, actually, seem a little bit into you. My last night there, there were two teenage dudes working, and they wouldn’t talk the entire time, or smile at me, or anything, but they’d be watching me like a hawk, watching me plate, and everything, so that my hands started shaking. When I got off that night, I hadn’t yet made the decision to quit, but I decided to go to the strip club down in North Webster, Nightshift, which I’d heard about from a dude at the Oakwood,
which about 10 miles north of it. I went in there and, within about 15 minutes, my shakes were gone. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.
I ended up quitting on no notice, about a week later, like a chump, kind of, admittedly, and then soon scooped a job at the Shortstop Inn in Wakarusa. Now, obviously, given the size of this town, I expected the people there to be pretty conventional and by-the-book, so I was very surprised to get there and find a trans-gender girl (as in a person who looks like a girl and has a girl’s butt but a guy’s name and who makes you refer to them as a guy), and a dude who listened to Stevie Wonder, Al Green and all this stuff that impressed even me (I have a minor in music studies from IU), but still I think was missing teeth and driving on a suspended license, in true Wakarusa style. It’s hard to believe, but that little trans girl actually yelled at me for rotating the pretzel bites. I’d tossed the old ones out into a bowl and was going to put the new ones on bottom, for FIFO, and she said, “You’re not supposed to do that… Just put them on top.” I was going to keep working there, anyway, but they ended up firing me for calling off one time, after working me five shifts per week for two weeks. I’d worked 68 hours, total, the week before, and was through 62 that week, when they let me go. On Sundays, I enjoyed getting off my job stocking beer for United Beverage, which I’m still doing on Saturdays and Sundays, getting home, getting into my air conditioning and putting on “Keeping awake” by The Innocence Mission.
After that, it was a long dry spell, and I couldn’t really find another third job until November, by which time we were on a month-and-a-half blackout period from grocery resets, hence putting me in quite the bind. I slid into Wings, Etc. as a line cook at $13 in my darlin’ hometown of South Bend, on the north side off of Portage Rd. Again, it was a sensory overload of all these girls in booty pants talking to me, their identities seeming less and less differentiable from each other with every explosive passing of the planet around the sun. I got along with most of the guys, except for one, black, who’d constantly listen to mumble rap (he had easily my least favorite music taste of any of the black dudes there), who was on house arrest and had been shot. At first, he said I reminded him of an “undercover boss,” which I played along with, replying that, “Don’t worry, I’ll give you a good review.” He ended up calling me a loser and saying “You have to listen to ME,” to which I said, It takes one to know one. He was insinuating that I was going to get fired (I hadn’t even been written up for anything and did a good job and got along with all the guys on the line great) and then his punk-a** got locked up. But I was still sick of being the oldest person on payroll in the entire place, including management, so I quit, again with shi**y notice, like a fag, somewhat, for peace of mind, rest and relief, which, as we know, is sure to be short-lived.
Now, I have an interview at Antonio’s, and the only thing I know to expect is the unexpected.