The Bile Piles Higher

I either have time for the briefest of notes, or I have time to write a novella.

Welcome to my see-saw.

Yesterday the 'chef de cuisine,' someone who was once an ally (I thought), engaged in a completely unprovoked, very personal, verbal attack against me that very nearly turned physical.

Kudos to me for avoiding the assault train.

I was in the bakery, back to the room, beating egg whites with a frenzy, when I hear this chef say "Are you done fucking over my friends?!"

What?
Is she actually talking to me?
Jeezus, she is talking to me.
What the fuck is it this time?
I thought she was in a good mood today, and I could slip out largely unnoticed as soon as my work load was finished.

Wrong.

She has apparently set it in her mind that I am in league with the Devil and have been doing my all-fired best to screw over everyone she knows. Her initial question, followed by my repeated queries of "What are you talking about," followed by a string of accusations of a purely personal sort (I've gotta stress that through this whole confrontation, not a single word about my job performance was uttered), quickly escalated to her pointing at me and yelling, "Fuck you! Fuck you!"

At that point, I realized that this was never going to evolve past vituperation into an actual conversation, so I started packing up my things to go. For the record, I never leave my necessary jobs unfinished, so, y'know, I was pretty upset. I've worked straight through 14 hour days, with a vomiting migraine, without leaving my work undone. However. I had told the executive chef, last time this happened, that if it ever occurred again I was gonna walk. Fair's fair. So, I get almost all the way out to my bicycle before I realized I'd forgotten to clock out. I returned to the kitchen and clocked out, with her sending up high-school style taunts of "Oh yeah, that's a good idea, fuckin clock out, you stupid bitch."

Fed up, tired, and...well, just fed up and tired, I sighed, "man, fuck off" as I was walking out the door. I heard her behind me, heard her anger building in her voice, say, "What did you just say to me, you little bitch?" as she's stomping, trotting, running up the ramp behind me. As she exited the kitchen, 10 feet behind me, in full chef's whites, she yells in full view of incoming clientele, "Do you wanna fuckin GO?!"

"No, Martha. No, I don't (just keep walking, get on your bike and go, go find Niki or Otter or anyone who will let you be calm and help you think)."

"Fine, then! Get the hell outta here! And don't come back!"

sigh.

Now, the fucked up part was (yeah, more fucked up than all that), she waited until everyone had exited the kitchen to unleash her vitriol...everyone except the three illegal immigrants who work with me, the three people who could never in a million years stand up for me in any legal sense because to do so would be to endanger their families and their livelihoods. She did that the last time, too.

Diabolical.
Absolutely diabolical.

I talked to the head chef on the phone, after I had calmed down considerably, and briefly explained what had happened. He's such a sweetheart, and I truly love him as a fine and very funny, warmhearted human being; he is also even more averse to confrontation than I am. When he told me he'd "try to get to the bottom of this," I understood that she would likely run roughshod over him the same way she does over everyone else. It's a lose-lose situation.

So, now, right now, I'm looking at the clock, know she's done "working" and is outside drinking at the bar by now, and I am absolutely sick at the thought of having to return to that place. Absolutely sick.

I'm looking for alternate employment, but, let's face it folks, this is the off-season, the hurricane season, when most places are shuttering up for the first few weeks of September. Ain't nobody hiring right now. My weekly checks are a full $500 less than they were in the winter months, so it's not like I've got a big ol' pile of cash to support me. Otter has a lovely new job, but he, too, took a massive cut in pay when he went to a smaller, more "respectable" restaurant. I mean, we'll get through. It's not like we're in a war zone, not like we're in Mexico having to kowtow to NAFTA-endorsed slave labor. We can still feed ourselves and we still have a roof over our heads (and a rare-as-emeralds sweetheart of a landlord). We have a wide base of beautiful, wonderful, openhearted friends who have shown their willingness to help us in whatever ways they can.

...But, goddamn.

Goddamn.

I think I've shown myself to have some pretty good willpower, some no-small-power to put up with a lot of psychically damaging nonsense, but...

...but goddamn.

I'm holding monetary struggle in one hand and my sanity in the other. I know what's most important to me. But how many other people are gonna have to pay for my decision? Otter, of course. But also the executive chef, who will have to take on all my baking work until they can find another freakishly-rare baker/pastry chef (and why is that? why are bakers so goddamned rare when bread is, and has always been, the acknowledged Staff of Life?). How many people have to pay for my sanity?

I say, goddamn.