The Doe’s Latest Stories

I grew up with a somewhat ambiguous idea about what I should be as a gay man. I came out in 2003, at age 16, and only because I had a huge crush on this guy in my German class who would rock up in shorts, while his tanned, muscly legs taunted me from across the room. Not able to keep the thirst to myself, I vomit-confessed everything to a girlfriend, who ironically had sent me love letters just a couple of years before. Poor Sarah.In a way, I was finally at peace with my true self, relieved to finally not have to live a lie. The years of pretending I fancied the most popular girls in school—when really I just wanted to be them—was exhausting. But I had nobody like me—an introverted, working-class gay youth—to look up to, especially in the public eye.While there have been gay characters on American TV for decades, their representation has been broad, colorful and often messy. In the 1970s, Hal Holbrook played a divorced dad who hid his sexuality from his son in the made-for-TV film That Certain Summer, which is believed to be one of the earliest sympathetic depictions of an LGBTQ+ character on our screens. In the 1990s, we had landmark moments like Ellen coming out in her self-titled series, plus the U.K. and U.S. versions of Queer as Folk, before probably the most famous of all, Will & Grace.It was seen as radical at the time—and it is certainly still groundbreaking—to have gay protagonists. Will & Grace’s lead Debra Messing has been quoted as saying she didn’t think they’d make it past three episodes, which is extraordinary considering how successful the sitcom was and still is, two decades later. But shows like this and Queer as Folk dealt with stereotypes and cliches that made their characters difficult to empathize with. Don’t get me wrong, I love Will & Grace; in fact, I’m binge-watching it right now. But the gays are either rich (Will) or infantilized and have zero cares in the world (Jack). These weren’t exactly healthy or realistic goals for someone like me, who was just looking for something real.

These weren’t exactly healthy or realistic goals for someone like me.

LGBTQ+ People Are Still Not Accurately Portrayed in Media

We’re still told that richer is better, that money makes us complete, that this is the only way we’ll be accepted. According to a 2019 report by the Williams Institute, 22 percent of the LGBTQ+ community live in poverty, compared to 16 percent of cisgender straight people. This is, of course, extremely nuanced. Lesbian cisgender women and the transgender community fare worse than cisgender gay men, and if you’re an LGBTQ+ person of color or someone who identifies as disabled, the odds against you are even more stacked. Though white cisgender gay men like me are significantly more privileged than some of the other members of the LGBTQ+ community, the way we’re portrayed on screens and in the media is still unrealistic. As we are, thankfully, granted more rights—like being able to marry and being able to have our own children (if we’re out)—this utopian view of us living long, fruitful, easy lives is becoming more and more difficult and dangerous to digest.Take having children, for example. My husband and I desperately want to start a family, but the amount of money it can cost, especially if you go down the surrogacy route, is kind of revolting. I’m in the U.K., and after pulling my hair out researching, I found that it can be as much as £50,000. In the U.S., you’re looking at between $60,000 and $150,000, though there are organizations that offer grants if you’re a citizen, like Baby Quest and helpusadopt.org. When I’ve told friends and family how hard it will be, they’re shocked. Why? Because all they see is "poster gay parents," like Neil Patrick Harris and Ricky Martin, who, on the face of it, seem to pluck children out of thin air—or, at least, this is what the non-LGBTQ+ people I have spoken to see.I blame the “pink dollar,” a marketing term coined in the 1990s, which singled out cisgender gay men and women in particular and the need to take advantage of their supposed disposable income. The positives of this were considerable, creating an opportunity for these groups to legitimize themselves through their purchasing power and demonstrate their value to mainstream companies. It may now seem frivolous but great strides in equality were made through this initiative. Trouble is, the pink dollar came to represent all of our community, with no subjectivity.

The pink dollar came to represent all of our community, with no subjectivity.

The LGBTQ+ Community Just Wants to Live Like Everyone Else

As we have gained more rights, our priorities seem to be changing. When Will & Grace aired, its titular gay character was able to lend his friend, Jack, thousands of dollars without a moment’s hesitation. Now we’re starting our own families and, dare I say it, worrying about the same things that our cisgender heterosexual counterparts have been for centuries.Such people still represent the minority of the LGBTQ+ population. The reality is, we’re not all millionaires who can have designer babies, and many of us are unable to even purchase a house because of the discrimination we face. According to research published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, 73 percent of same-sex couples were more likely to be denied a mortgage than financially similar heterosexual couples.Though many of us embrace our uniqueness, we are starting to strive for "normality" and conforming to this idea of settling down. Perhaps things are gradually changing. On TV screens, we’re starting to see a wider range of experiences and, more significantly, storylines that don’t center around our sexualities. In Euphoria, the lead character Rue is a complex, beautiful queer human. Even cartoons are getting in on the action, with She-Ra and the Princesses of Power as a glowing example. Finally, it seems like we have role models for young LGBTQ+ people to look up to—and more importantly, relate to.I want people to stop making assumptions about me and my community. I want to be seen as a person with my own journey—not just somebody who stands under a large, colorful umbrella. At the same time, I want acknowledgment for how much harder our journeys are, especially when it comes to having kids. Is that so much to ask?

I was an ableist for most of my life, and I had a very arrogant view on health and little patience for people with chronic illnesses. I was asymptomatic with glandular fever; I’ve never had the flu; and no one close to me has ever been seriously ill. I once even got annoyed at my ex-boyfriend when he came down with a cold. “Perhaps it’s all that meat you eat,” I launched at him as he lay languid on the bed, pumping nasal spray into his Romanesque nose. There was so much living to be done! My precious time could not be spent on sickness.And then I caught COVID in the first wave of infections back in March 2020. I got sick. And I didn’t get better.

I got sick. And I didn’t get better.

The Trauma of My Long COVID Lasted Longer Than the Illness

My initial two-week illness was mild, and I remember answering an Instagram poll stating I’d give it a “4 out of 10” for pain. I made a decline at the one-month mark and was left frantically wondering how on earth I could get worse instead of better when I was so young (26) and fit. I spent the next eight months relapsing and recovering with different symptoms abating then intensifying. There were times I thought I was fully better but shortly after, I’d fall desperately ill again. Dizziness, chest pain, muscle spasms, brain pain, numbing, cognitive issues, loss of smell and taste and heart palpitations ravaged my body for months on end. People underestimate long COVID as a persistent cough and the occasional ongoing headache. They can’t understand the multisystem hijacking that does go on, invading and dominating each organ until you wake up one morning to find your whole body ransacked. I’d sign up to have a cold every day for the rest of my life if it meant never having to go through long COVID again, but unfortunately, no health angels exist that I can make such a trade-off with. I considered myself mostly recovered in November 2020 because apart from ongoing smell, nerve damage and heart issues, I could resume my normal life again. However, even though I am physically much better, my trauma stalks me at every turn. My future feels tethered not to the “what if” but the “when” COVID reinfects me and I might have to go through the debilitating illness all over again, perhaps worse the second time around and, like so many other long COVID sufferers, without an eventual recovery. I am vaccinated but it’s not known how much protection that offers those of us who had a bad immune response the first time around.I’ve always vowed to make my choices reflect my hopes and not my fears. I used this vow as an internal compass in my early 20s when I hitchhiked and couch surfed around the world. People would tell me I was foolish to ride in randoms’ cars and sleep on strangers’ sofas, but I was proud I could offset their ignorance with my confidence. I desperately want to continue living in this manner, but illness shakes you from yourself and erodes self-trust.I feel indulgent for not bouncing back and living my life as fully as I had promised when I was in the depths of illness. “When I get my body back…” I would wish day in and day out. Now that I have, guilt intersects with fear and I’m stuck between not there and not here. As a cis, white, middle-class law graduate living with my parents, I should have the reserves of privilege to be stronger but I don’t (yet). Long COVID was an earthquake that collapsed the structure of my world and told me to seek shelter elsewhere. I’ve spent the past two years collecting the rubble in an attempt to reinstate who I was pre-COVID. I see now there’s no option to resurrect my old self. Suleika Jaouad in her book Between Two Kingdoms describes this well: “Recovery isn’t a gentle self-care spree that restores you to a pre-illness state…recovery is not about salvaging the old at all. It’s about accepting that you must forsake a familiar self forever, in favor of one that is being newly born.” Acceptance isn’t as freeing as I thought it would feel; it is a clunky car that is difficult to drive.As the world opens and learns to live with the virus, I find myself with an increasing inability to relate to my peers. I guess that’s what trauma does: locks you in the past and blurs out your future. We are nearing one million deaths in the U.S. from COVID and an estimated 20 million living with long COVID, yet the tragedy is now shrugged off. I understand pandemic fatigue and the desire to return to normal armed with the power of vaccinations, but the arrogance by which so many do that is bothersome. People use their own easy experience with COVID to justify why everyone who is now dead or disabled somehow deserved it or must have had “pre-existing health conditions.” This psychological technique of othering is always seized on during times of global unrest. My friends urge me to talk, but I know vulnerability is only impressive when there’s a triumphant end. A struggling mountaineer who finally reaches the summit. A heartbroken divorcee who keeps on dating and then meets the true love of his life. A chef who conquers her depression. It’s hard to speak up in the thick of struggle. The mountaineer who turned around halfway into the expedition? The divorcee who never got over their ex? The chef who remained unhappy? There’s no prize for anyone in a liminal state. The American dream hates anyone in limbo.

Long COVID was an earthquake that collapsed the structure of my world and told me to seek shelter elsewhere.

I'm Just Starting to Recover From the Grief Caused by Long COVID

Chronic illness not only affects your sense of self but your relationships too. In those months, I lost a few people close to me. The most devastating fallout was with my boyfriend. We’d had issues before but ill health simply reduced my bandwidth to communicate and repair the relationship.A year after my breakup, in an attempt to purge myself of my fear surrounding COVID and my continued heartbreak, I decided to go on an LSD trip. What I thought would be a reset of my grief quickly descended into an 11-hour mirage of my ex. Haunting and vivid apparitions of him caused tears to drench my face and surface my broken heart once again. “If you loved someone and you break up, where does the love go?” Carrie, my favorite Sex and the City character, once asked. Samantha explained that it should go to the next person, but how can a love so personal be transferred? We’re told to get over them because “there are plenty more fish in the sea!” and “they’re an ex for a reason!” but I’ve always found these sayings platitudinal. With some people, their absence morphs into a presence, and all time does is teach us how to move forward shouldering that weight. Unfortunately, that weight is significantly heavier when you’re navigating the loss of yourself as well. I didn’t just love my ex for his wit, charisma and unmatched generosity, but the loss of him seemed to necessitate a loss of the carefree, healthy and independent girl who felt invincible during the years I dated him as well. I thought there would be a light-bulb moment when I got over my chronic illness and heartbreak. It is almost two years to the day, but grief isn’t something you snap out of; it is continual, boring work. I try to switch my attention to every little moment that makes me grateful for the working and healthy body I currently have and the love I receive from friends and family, but I frequently fail. I’ve realized that courage is not really courage at all if you have an absence of fear. True bravery has nothing to do with how you live your life when you are healthy and happy but how you forge a new path when the one you envisioned for yourself is burned away.

"If Jessica Lange were on set and people were talking, someone would be shot." – American Horror Story set, Season 10, Behind the ScenesMarlon Brando, Angelina Jolie, Heath Ledger, Christian Bale, Charlize Theron and Jodie Foster are several actors who've claimed to use the Method while portraying roles that all have gone down in history as some of the most iconic of their lives. The Method, otherwise known as "method acting," was created in the early 1900s by Konstantin Stanislavski. It's a technique of acting in which an actor aspires to have complete emotional identification with a part—sometimes to extreme levels. As a result, actors have often complained about having to gain weight, isolate themselves, lose weight, wear prosthetics, utilize fat suits, live on the streets, spend hours at dance and music rehearsals and endure rigorous therapy. You get the picture. But what happens when they're on set? When they're actually around other people?I've worked in Hollywood for a handful of years. I've pivoted from director to producer to supporting actor to background actor to production assistant, the bottom of the barrel. I have also worked with some of the most elite actors in the business: Tom Cruise, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner. You name them, I've probably worked beside them, for them or gotten them toilet paper so they could wipe their shitty, entitled asses.Rarely are any of them gracious, kind or generous. And whether it's their Method or not, I've noticed their attitudes always mirror the role they are playing, which is usually a bipolar lunatic.

It was also announced prior to Maverick's arrival that no one over 5-foot-7 could go near Tom, since he's a short king himself.

Tom Cruise Verbally Attacked His Scene Partner After Making Us Wait On Set

Shall we gossip about Mr. Mission: Impossible, Tom Cruise, for a handful of paragraphs?I worked as a background actor on Top Gun: Maverick, which is being released this spring. After prepping for a Pentagon scene that took place in a bunker, a crew of about 300-plus people (actors, set crew, security) and I waited around the movie set for hours while Cruise was running late. This was painfully usual. It didn’t matter if we had anything to do—a family to go home to, another job, a doctor's appointment, another gig, a friend in the hospital. When he finally pranced in, we all had to refer to him as "Maverick"—not Tom—and could only look him in the eyes when instructed by the assistant director. It was also announced prior to "Maverick's" arrival that no one over 5-foot-7 could go near Tom, since he's a short king himself. In his platform boots, we filmed a strenuous, drawn-out scene, and then we witnessed him berate a background actor for not looking at him when the assistant director told them to."That person isn't looking at me! HE'S NOT LOOKING AT ME!" Cruise screamed. I peered over to my colleague I was paired with for the scene to see her aghast, too. How can anyone keep information straight when they're instructed to "not look at him, then look at him, then don't look at him"? All of us had been huddled up in a basement hallway for what seemed like an eternity. There was no water or food anywhere, so people were hangry and thirsty, not to mention perpetually annoyed with Cruise’s late arrival.After the verbal attack, he stormed off set to come back cheerful and happy 30 minutes later, probably having gotten himself a snack in his swanky trailer that's shaped like a small dick.I checked in with a friend who was working with the crew. They told me that everything they were doing was for the sake of Tom's character. Is it Tom's character or his supersized ego with a side of small fries?

Clive Owen Stopped Production to Voice His Displeasure With Me

I also worked on numerous Ryan Murphy productions, including one called Impeachment: American Crime Story, about the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal. I worked closely with all the A-list actors on this production and, for the most part, I was treated well. But there was a day when we were doing a reshoot (when the director doesn't get the scene shot properly the first time, so they try it again months later), and the horror queen Ryan Murphy himself was on set, which is rare, from my experience.I was portraying one of the president's assistants for a scene in which Monica Lewinsky (Beanie Feldstein) shows her G-string to Bill Clinton (Clive Owen). My role was to show Mr. Blow Job a document while he eye harasses this 20-something intern as she's doing a peep show in the Oval Office.Clive stayed in character as Bill through the entire shoot and rarely talked to anyone, especially someone like me. I was a nobody to him, and so was everyone else in his vicinity. I had no direction about what my character should do in the scene—I was just given a quick synopsis of where my marks were and the timing to land them. After a take, I must have done something wrong, or wasn't standing in the proper place (which is rarely the case), because instead of just telling me, Clive stopped production, got the director and had a private conversation. Then, the director came to scold me for what I was doing wrong.I used to fantasize about kissing Clive Owen, with his sexy accent and full head of hair; now I wanted to stab him with my prop pen. How was I supposed to know what I was doing wrong when no one even told me how to do it in the first place? And why the fuck couldn't Clive Owen just tell me? It's just Method, right? I guess pervert Bill would have done the same thing: told some other assistant to tell me that I was fucking up because my foot needed to be an inch to the right. Then, he'd ask me kindly to get on my knees as he jizzed on the front of my dress.

Where is the responsibility from actors when they are leading the pack and torturing people with their bad behavior—and then blaming it on the role?

Method Actors Flaunt Their Power, and Nobody Holds Them Accountable

Is it impossible to remove yourself from a character while you're portraying them? I'm sure most actors will say no, but I think there is something deeper happening here that I've observed while working in Hollywood: Nobody is ever happy.Actors use the Method—almost always when playing an antagonist—as an excuse to treat everyone around them like utter trash. They're getting paid millions of dollars; meanwhile, the other 300-plus people around them receive minimum wage, aren't fed properly and work in the rain or middle of the desert in 110-degree heat, unsure of when they can go home to their families.In a corporate job, if someone said that a person "would be shot" for talking around Jessica Lange on set, I'm pretty sure that individual would be fired, or at least have to be reprimanded and apologize for saying such a heinous comment. Where is the responsibility from actors when they are leading the pack and torturing people with their bad behavior—and then blaming it on the role?These actors, stars and celebrities have everything. They don't worry about how they're going to pay their phone bill or how scary it is that the price of groceries and gas is skyrocketing in this economy. They don't worry about people liking them because when they're at work, they're allowed to act however they want and say whatever they like—all for the sake of the role.Method acting in Hollywood is mental torture. Actors do it because no one holds them accountable, and since they want for nothing, they grasp onto power: power over the weak, the isolated and the vulnerable. Will this ever change? Probably not. From the scope I see, it seems the rich and powerful are gaining more while we deplete slowly into the distance. I guess my next big decision is whether I stay in Hollywood or go back to a nine to five. Choices, choices.

I finally arrive in the humid tropics of Iquitos, the Peruvian port city where Maria, my family friend of 10-plus years, is awaiting my return after a year away. Immediately, I smell something, and after all these years of visiting, I know it well. Masato is fermenting in 50-gallon plastic drums as a work party is being organized for the next morning.“Oye hermano, has vista lo que hemos hecho?”Maria excitedly guides me over to the drums, showing me the off-white, creamy blend of cassava, water and a young girl's saliva. What? Yes. I’ll explain. In fact, I remember distinctly expressing the whole process of this unique drink to a beer-brewing professional on a patio in South Florida after the wedding of a mutual friend. In utter fascination, I listened on as he explained his theory as to why the recipe called for saliva. He expressed that in beer brewing, amylase—a particular enzyme—was used to facilitate the fermentation process. He then explained that it was naturally occurring in human mouths, with higher concentrations in women’s mouths.Well, hot damn.

In utter fascination, I listened on as he explained his theory as to why the recipe called for saliva.

I Had Been Making Masato Without the Key Ingredient

Maria’s son, Jefferson, wakes up early to dig up some cassava root. I follow him through the field, not minding the morning dew soaking my clothes as we walk briskly through the low-lying jungle fog. A freshly dug plant has several roots cut away, peeled, chopped and set to boil. I remember the cooking process taking about an hour. Then, after the roots are soft, the pot is pulled off the fire to cool. Jefferson lays out the now-cooled roots into a dug-out log, sort of like a canoe, and begins to pound them with a blunt staff made from a beautiful red hardwood called palo sangre. DUUM DUUM. The thuds are rhythmic and blend with the bird songs above. I ask for a turn and start to pound the soft roots into a creamy slurry. As I'm working, the sticky goop begins to take shape, and Jefferson's sister and cousins begin to take their positions nearby."Why do you all ferment the cassava roots?" I ask Jefferson between thuds.He looks at me with a strange countenance, the kind you receive after asking about something so strange and foreign to me and so commonplace to him. "We ferment the roots so they can last," he says. "The masa can be kept for weeks and then have water added to it whenever we want so we can drink. It also changes the flavor and texture a lot. It's just always what we have done with this plant. You don't ferment cassava in your country?" I love the question."Jefferson, I am the only person I know, as of now, who ferments cassava where I live," I reply. "I'd like to document the process of what you all do so I can share with my friends and people who also grow this fantastic plant. It's a real treasure what you all know here.""And who spits in your yuca for you!?" he asks curiously while holding back laughter."I do! I don't have daughters, and I'm definitely not asking anyone else to do this!" Jefferson erupts in laughter. "Only the women are supposed to chew and spit the roots back in!" I laugh with him and at the fact that this is what it looks like to attempt to emulate a practice without its place. It takes a village, indeed.

Now the chewing and spitting ensue.

Making Masato Means Taking Part in a Family Ritual

The cassava roots are an unrecognizable mess at this point, and the hard work is over. Now the chewing and spitting ensue. The girls are happy to partake in the family ritual and begin taking spoonfuls of the mash and chewing it thoroughly and, after 30 seconds or so, spitting it back into the dug-out canoe. I'm taking photos and thinking back to stories I was told about the importance of partaking in the consumption of this masato beverage. To decline is to put yourself outside of the circle, to embody the opposite of communal care, at least in their eyes. To engage and accept is to say yes to life itself, as the microbes present in this fermented beverage are very much alive in every way. The mass of yuca only had about 20 chewed up and spit out spoonfuls, maybe two percent of the total, but it's just enough to jumpstart the fermentation process.Thinking back to the brewer's words about amylase, I start to imagine the enzyme helping to break down the starch. Jefferson brings over some towels, and at this point, the vat is covered—limiting flies and critters from entering—and is allowed to ferment. In this souring process, I remember Maria telling me that the nutrition of the cassava is improved upon and helps their people stay healthy."Sort of how we take probiotics," I tell Jefferson. "Sort of how our European family eats sauerkraut. The culinary traditions of fermentation span the world."

I Hope to Bring Home the Memories of This Drink’s Power

Two days later, a massive bowl twice the size of a normal breakfast cereal serving gets handed to me in the morning. Maria has a huge smile on her face as I lift the bowl to my mouth and begin eating my liquid meal. It's sour, thick and a touch sweet from some additional sugar which the elders normally frown upon. A few minutes later, I am through the bowl and pass it full to Maria's husband, Gabriel. The slight buzz is undeniable. He thanks me for the pass and has that look on his face saying, "Yeah, you're back, aren't you?""Traditionally," Gabriel shares, "the people gather for shared work, like clearing land for a small farm or help to build a neighbor’s house. They call this the minga, and it's without a doubt that masato will be present in several five-gallon buckets to support the process. It keeps us full and lets us be joyful while we work."I recall following his cousin Isaias as he, seemingly without effort, carried a drum with several hundred pounds worth of masato in it across uneven earth and slippery clay spots exposed by a recent rain. We were en route to clear land with a machete and chainsaw in order to plant more bananas, cassava and corn. There was a certain flow to the day, working in phases of strong energy and then taking collective breaks and being served masato as we rested in the shade of the cetico trees overhead. A machete in my hand, I consider the communal tool that is this fermented root drink. It gathers the people together under a shared cause and allows for tradition to live on in a daily way. The daydream is broken by Gabriel's quick steps toward the farm to cut some racks of plantains for the day's lunch."The ancestral food ways that still exist in the world are critical to our understanding of how to be in best relationship to nature," Gabriel says. "We are here to steward these technologies and make sure they are preserved for generations to come—and to share them with those who come from so far away to learn them, like you, brother."Gabriel's words rested deeply in me, and I carry them to this day. I'm reminded of them when I walk through my cassava plantings here in Florida, giving gratitude for such amazing beings that grow so readily. The wind blows through the palmate-like leaves of cassava plants overhead, almost beckoning me to visit my friends again—and share some masato.Soon enough.

“So you don’t ‘see’ anything when you listen to music?” “No.”The end of a conversation with my partner made me realize that my brain does not entirely work the same way everyone else’s does.

These songs have no association with me being in those places; they simply just pop up in my head when they play.

People Are Often Curious About What It’s Like to Have Synesthesia

Following that day, I thought about that conversation a lot and eventually scheduled an appointment with a licensed psychologist able to diagnose neurodiversity. Among other things, one word that came up in regard to how my brain works was “synesthesia.” Synesthesia is when a person blends together senses, resulting in the experience of different senses from one input. A form of synesthesia that people can easily understand is when numbers “have” colors. One with that form of synesthesia will look at any number and that number will have its own respective color on a consistent basis. Now, synesthesia isn’t currently clinically diagnosed, but they are able to perform tests that can determine if any crossings between senses are present (i.e. synesthesia). We worked through them together, and sure enough, it appeared that my brain did indeed like to take little detours through different senses. What has this meant for me? Well, the same concept as described previously applies to me, but instead of numbers and colors, I “see” places and patterns with music. Now, I put see in quotes because one thing I want to convey is that I do not see these places or patterns with my eyes. The way I see it is the same way you would envision the city of Paris if I mentioned the name or any monument within it. When I listen to music, an intense envisioning of these places or patterns happens within my mind, and it has been that way my whole life.It is estimated that roughly two to four percent of the population are synesthetes, so naturally, there are more people asking questions than there are those answering. When I am asked about my synesthesia, I always try to give examples and answer as much as I can to give the person an idea of what it is like. For my first example here, the song “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl)” by Looking Glass: This song doesn’t trigger my pattern synesthesia but it does my place synesthesia (which is by far more active). This song in particular makes me see a street in the evening a bit distant from Downtown Los Angeles. As I said, my pattern synesthesia is much less common compared to my place synesthesia, meaning that I won’t see it as often when listening to music. For this example, the song “Your Love (Deja Vu)” by Glass Animals makes a sort of slow swirling pattern akin to the pattern a kitchen mixer makes when mixing ingredients on a low setting. I am often asked about the places I see when my synesthesia is triggered. Things such as: Are they real places? Have I visited the places I see? Have I ever seen a place that was not real or one I have not seen before in person (so maybe online)? For the most part, I see places that I have actually been to before, and that includes brief visits (think simply driving by on a freeway). So yes, the places are certainly real. Throughout my entire life, I can only think of one or two times when a song’s place was somewhere I didn’t recognize I had actually been to or seen. Regarding how these places are chosen by my brain, it seems to be random. These songs have no association with me being in those places; they simply just pop up in my head when they play. They typically aren’t “major” places either. In fact, the places I see can be pretty random and obscure locations. One that often makes me laugh is a song whose place was a very random part of a nearby freeway at night. I am not often asked about the patterns I see, simply because that is a concept that is easier for non-synesthetes to understand (like the colors and numbers example).

I find it crazy that people can listen to music and not see anything!

I Can't Imagine My Life Without Synesthesia

With synesthesia being so uncommon, I can get pretty interesting and weird questions about what it’s like living with it. One memorable question was whether or not I can control it, like being able to turn it off if it becomes too distracting. Simply put, no, I cannot turn it off. Can it get a bit distracting? Certainly, but in those cases, I will listen to non-music audio (typically rain or white noise) to “quiet down” for a bit. There is good news though: Since I have lived with it my entire life, I don’t find it intrusive at all. In fact, I find it crazy that people can listen to music and not see anything! Another interesting question I have been asked is about how my synesthesia reacts to things like soundtracks, where the music might already have a place because of its medium (movies, video games, etc.). In this case, any real-life association with the song I might make will actually overwrite my synesthesia until I can break the real association (I do this by listening to it outside of its original medium). In the case of a movie, after I break the association with the movie’s events, I am able to see the song’s “real” place according to my synesthesia. An exception to this would be if the soundtrack is much more overpowering (so maybe I’m not really interested in or watching the movie). In that case, it is business as usual and I am able to see the song’s place as any other song. Lastly, I have been asked about any times when a song didn’t trigger my synesthesia, and in fact, there have been a couple of times when I saw nothing! It’s extremely rare for me not to experience anything, but it has happened. Those very, very few times in all of my years knowing nothing but synesthesia have been my only glimpse of what it is like to “normally” listen to music. While synesthesia is certainly unique, I have known nothing but its impact on my music experience my whole life. It very occasionally can have its drawbacks, but I couldn’t imagine living without it. When I learned that my experiences were not the norm, it sort of opened my eyes as to how differently every single person on this planet can perceive the world. As a result, I’ve always tried to be understanding of others even when something might seem normal or easy to me because, in reality, there is no normal or easy. Everyone will always base those concepts relative to themselves and what they have experienced. Never forget to accept and treat everyone kindly because, as you have read here, despite the fact that my experiences are shared by very few others on this planet, to me: You’re the weird one.

I was about to put my hand into the waters of Anchar Lake, situated in the congested area of Soura in the capital city of Srinagar in the Indian-administered part of Kashmir. “Hey,” my friend warned me, “Don’t touch the water. It will bite you back.” The water of the lake looked dark gray and had a layer of green weed all over it. It had an unpleasant odor.I grew up in Srinagar and, over the years, I have witnessed the bloody conflict in the region and watched the beautiful freshwater lakes shrink. Who knows? I may see them vanish as well. Indian-administered Kashmir is a Himalayan region in the north of India. Both India and Pakistan claim Kashmir as their part, and the region has gone through decades of conflict since the partition of India, with three major and two minor wars fought between the two nuclear countries so far. The region is surrounded by Pakistan and China and is a Muslim-majority region where people have been demanding freedom over the years.

I saw a woman come out of a house and throw a dustbin filled with dirt and plastic directly into the lake.

Anchar Lake Holds a Special Place in My Heart

I used to go to this lake once a month, sometimes twice. I love to visit the lake during winter to see the migratory birds that also visit it. Recently, I planned to travel to Anchar Lake for the first time in three years. When we first got there, all I saw was a green pasture and, for a few minutes, I wondered where the lake was. When we finally got to it, the shore was full of dirt and trash. I saw a woman come out of a house and throw a dustbin filled with dirt and plastic directly into the lake. I wasn’t shocked. I have witnessed these kinds of scenes before.My friend and I were going to take a small wooden boat across the lake. As I stepped into the boat, it was wet and had a pungent smell. The lake looked more like a cesspool. The person rowing told me that he had been clearing the grass on the lake before picking us up. As he started to row, the smell of garbage mixed with drainage started to fill the air and grew stronger as we rowed further. It began to make me nauseous. I had to cover my mouth with a scarf, even though I was already wearing a mask.As the oar passed through the water, the scum on the water pushed back and, as I tried to see the water, it was blackish. For a moment, my thoughts paused and I hoped not to drown there. I thought the smell and color of the water might be enough to kill me.The boatman, an elderly man in his 70s, told us stories from when the lake used to be crystal clear and a destination for tourists. “We used to drink water from this lake, and it was beautiful,” he said. “Now it smells like garbage.”

The Locals Agree It’s a Catastrophe

“I wish I had the opportunity to see the times when the lakes in the city were beautiful,” I replied. He continued the tales from his childhood growing up near the lake and how it was his favorite spot for swimming.The scenes and the condition of the lake made me feel sad. It was a hot spot for fishing, and the lake used to be busy with wooden boats. Over the years, I have watched it turn ugly, thanks to a mixture of conflict, government negligence, pollution and illegal encroachments.As I traveled on the lake, I met six elderly men who had stopped their small boats at different locations to cast their nets in the water for fish. I remember my parents telling me that the lake was once famous for its fish. There are just a few old men now who catch the fish here. The rest of the people have shifted to other jobs. “This lake has died,” one of the old men told me, “and fish here don't breathe anymore.”“The fish which we catch now don’t taste as good as they did before,” another man said.I could see that in the years since my last visit, many more small houses had been built along the shore of the lake. The lake is slowly being occupied illegally. People have been filling parts of the lake with grass and mud and claiming the spots. I saw many small kitchen gardens floating on the lake, masses of grass that the residents build and grow vegetables on. “This is a way of occupying land on water,” the person rowing the boat said.

I thought the smell and color of the water might be enough to kill me.

I’ve Watched an Environmental Disaster Unfold

Drainage from one of Kashmir’s biggest hospitals goes into Anchar Lake, which is a place for many fish species and lotus stems. The lotus stems are called nadru in Kashmiri, and they’re cooked into a number of Kashmiri dishes. I love eating lotus stems, cooked or raw, and most of them come from this lake. After witnessing the conditions there, I don’t know if I can eat them anymore.Looking at the figures, I found out that Anchar Lake has shrunk from 19 square kilometers to nearly seven square kilometers over the years. I see the same tale as the famous Dal Lake. When I look at Dal Lake, which is a famous tourist destination, it looks a little bit cleaner on the outer sides. But as I travel to the interiors of Dal, the condition of the lake is worse. The inside scenes are not only a pain to the eyes but to the heart as well, with wooden houseboats draining their toilets directly into the lake while happy tourists pose for pictures. Both of these lakes are dying slowly. Others in the valleys of Kashmir have already vanished, but no one seems to care. People have lost their livelihoods. I wonder what we are leaving for the coming generations to see. Visiting these two formerly beautiful lakes now, all I can see are the illegal encroachments and the lakes turning into dustbins.

“COVID isn’t real.” Like many before her, she said this while sitting in her hospital gown awaiting my evaluation. I asked her to clarify, as she could not possibly be implying that SARS-CoV-2 in its entirety was fiction. I adjusted her nasal cannula before I attempted to convince her of her diagnosis. I gave her an education on how viruses spread, explained the specificity and sensitivity of her two positive tests, showed images of her damaged lungs, and finally, as my Hail Mary pass, I expressed the confidence that I have in the billions of research dollars spent on COVID-19 diagnostics, treatment and vaccination development.She replied that while she believes I'm not trying to coerce her into something harmful, I was the one who lacked understanding. She described that the pandemic was a ploy to control the middle and lower class and that there have been no “proven” cases of COVID-19 to date. Her rebuttal went on further to describe that unless she was present for all aspects of testing, including the creation of the nasopharyngeal swab, no one could prove to her that her test had not been tampered with and that COVID-19 was not a fallacy designed to control the public. I could almost hear my eyes roll as I turned back around to face my middle-aged, otherwise healthy patient, who, later that week, did not survive the infection she did not believe existed.

If treating patients throughout the COVID pandemic has taught me one thing, it’s that the human ego is far more powerful and dangerous than I ever imagined.

I Didn't Expect to Argue With Patients Over Facts

If treating patients throughout the COVID pandemic has taught me one thing, it’s that the human ego is far more powerful and dangerous than I ever imagined. When I began my post-graduation fellowship almost 10 years ago, I imagined spending my days utilizing my therapeutic expertise to heal physical ailments with rigid, research-based treatment protocol. I did not choose my profession to argue with people. I am a textbook type-A personality, and the one thing that I always felt like I could rely on was science. The vast majority of people who believe in medicine and healthcare believe in science—or so I thought. Like many of my colleagues, I never imagined my practice to evolve into a politically charged discussion on "difference of opinions." I have spent the last several years in a multitude of settings—treating in the ICU, trauma floors, outpatient orthopedic clinics and even behavioral health units—and not one time did I have to vigorously defend clinically-based treatment strategies with every other patient. I also have never felt the need to "agree to disagree" with science-based facts. My job has gone from providing best-practice clinical treatment to asking my patients if they have or have not followed basic, practical guidelines. I had incorrectly assumed that I wouldn't have these conversations daily. But the patients and their families who do not choose vaccination harbor such a desire to disagree and prove me incorrect, and the only logical explanation for these feelings is fear or an inflated ego. They must never admit defeat (no matter who they harm in the process). Unfortunately, I have found the latter to be significantly more common. The phrase “losing faith in humanity” is trite; however, I have experienced this emotion more in the last two years than I ever thought possible.

I Do My Best to Counter the Misinformation I Hear

The familiar face in front of me asked about my family, my upcoming weekend plans and how quickly the year had passed. He was nervous. We had done this before. He knew from his many readmissions the next question that was coming: “Has your vaccination status changed?” His adult daughter quickly answered that he would not be receiving the vaccine as “we don’t know what’s in it.” I was exhausted and could anticipate the blank stare I would receive as I explained that they had trusted all of the previous vaccines without asking about the contents and had never asked about the ingredients within the lengthy list of daily medications I had prescribed, which were just as important to protect your health. The daughter made a light-hearted joke about not having her family be test subjects, unaware that her father would later be admitted for the last time when he contracted COVID as an unvaccinated elderly person with multiple comorbidities. Nearby, another patient was having difficulty breathing, showing decreased vitals despite a steady increase of supplemental oxygen. When they called the code, I heard it in the hallway and immediately thought of the photos I had seen of his young children. After his first admittance, he was verbose in explaining that him refusing the vaccine was for religious reasons. I vehemently countered his misinformation.Aborted fetal tissue from the 1970s was originally used to create the cell lines involved in vaccine testing, meaning that the stem cells used for this testing didn't contain any tissue or cells from an aborted fetus. To further clarify, I explained that these stem cells were harvested from the fetal tissue of predetermined, planned abortions. Obtaining the stem cells was never the purpose of the abortion. I don't believe he ever understood what I was attempting to explain to him. I can provide countless examples of ignorant beliefs that offer a false sense of security. I can almost predict what you will say as I see the UNVACCINATED/DECLINED highlighted in red on your form. “My cousin had COVID and was fine.” “It’s just the flu; I don’t get the flu shot.” “It just hasn’t been tested enough; we don’t know the long-term effects.” “People are dying from the side effects.”

I have had many, many patients who are professional, functioning adults who truly believe that by refusing this vaccine, they are somehow proving something to someone.

People Believe They're Dying as Martyrs, but They Aren't

I don’t need to expound further on the fallacy of any of these arguments. Any literate being is able to decipher the difference between research and Facebook fearmongering and explain why these beliefs are fallacy. There is, however, one argument against vaccination that is the most dangerous of all, the one that produces the die-hard us-versus-them mentality while subsequently producing the most calls to the coroner. It comes from the group of people who believe that by not taking the vaccine, you are somehow sticking it to the man, taking the "noble" high ground, not furthering the liberal agenda or being a good Christian, Republican, parent, etc. While I try my best to empathize with these beliefs, this is not the hill to die on.At the end of my shift, you are dead and no one is better or worse. No one is discussing your moral compass. No one is making you out to be a hero. We just go home. I have had many, many patients who are professional, functioning adults who truly believe that by refusing this vaccine, they are somehow proving something to someone. I cannot stress enough that you are not. The person that is hurt by you not taking the vaccine is yourself and maybe a few close family members and friends. But no one remembers. Donald Trump does not come riding in to glorify what a great patriot you were, and your name doesn't go down in history as a legacy of courage. You're dead, and that's it. I have become part of the minority of healthcare workers that believe that I may be able to educate and change your mind by giving you the benefit of the doubt, empathizing and believing the majority of your hesitation comes from fear versus blind ignorance. But I am tired, and we are running out of time. I have lost count of the body bags that have been filled with people who died believing they were a martyr for a cause that does not exist, that they were being safe by awaiting further testing or that they were protected by whichever higher power they serve.I understand the fear of the unknown, and I understand losing bodily autonomy due to a government mandate is controversial, but this cannot be it. So I need to be honest with you: No one cares.

When it comes to making movies and television shows, there is absolutely nothing about the process that is worth dying for. Which makes what recently happened on the set of Rust an absolute tragedy, and 100 percent avoidable.For those who may not have heard about the situation on the set of Rust, here is a very quick, down and dirty recap: On Thursday, October 21, 2021, actor Alec Baldwin discharged a weapon on set, accidentally shooting both the director of photography, Halyna Hutchins, and the film’s director, Joel Souza. Souza was treated and released at the local hospital, but Hutchins, who was struck near her stomach, died from her injuries. According to the subsequent investigation, three people were reportedly in charge of handling the weapons on set, including both the first assistant director and the on-set armorer. There had been rumors prior to the incident alleging that there had been repeated safety issues on set, culminating with the entire camera crew walking off due to concerns hours before. Had their concerns been addressed before the incident, and had proper safety procedures been followed during the filming of Rust, none of this would have ever happened, and the bright and rising career of Halyna Hutchins would never have been cut so tragically short.

There is no fucking way that a gun should have ever been handed to Baldwin by the assistant director.

There Is No Excuse to Abandon Protocols and Checkpoints

How do I know?I am a Directors Guild of America second assistant director. There is no fucking way that a gun should have ever been handed to Baldwin by the assistant director. To ensure its safety, the gun should have moved from the prop master to the armorer to the stunt coordinator and been checked every step of the way. The assistant director should have also held a standard safety meeting with the entire crew prior to that scene—again, with the team physically examining the gun and verifying its safety for use on set. Then it should have been handed to the actor just before the cameras rolled.Furthermore, both the director of photography and the director should have been behind safety shields—and the gun should never have been pointed directly at anyone. Cheat those angles! It's possible! Finally, in this day and age, everything could have been done in post-production—from muzzle flashes to squib bursts—meaning there is no reason there should have been a gun capable of firing a shot on set in the first place. Don't believe me? Watch John Wick 2. They used CGI and it looks amazing.Assistant directors are responsible for safety on set. Full stop. It's why we are required to take mandatory safety-pass training. It's up to us to make sure that anything dangerous is properly addressed so issues like this don't happen. There is no excuse for not doing your job and ensuring the safety of every cast and crew member.

Streaming Has Created a High Demand for Quick Content

What I just described is the protocol for what should have happened on set. There are checkpoints all along the way that would have prevented this accident had anyone taken the time to do things the way they are supposed to be done. Unfortunately, today’s faster, cheaper, race-toward-bigger-profits-by-cutting-corners-along-the-way approach to production seems to have become all too common. And until things change, this sort of tragedy is going to be repeated again and again.With the advent of streaming and the ability for people to watch their favorite shows in hyper-compressed binge fests, the demand for entertainment has never been this high. As a result, production companies and studios are churning out content at a record pace, often at the expense of the crews that make them.Working on a film set can be a brutal grind. Ninety-plus hour weeks are common, and the term “Fraturday” (where you start your day on a Friday afternoon and end it on a Saturday morning) is almost a guarantee. It’s also not unusual for the production to be shot at a location hours away from where the cast and crew are based, meaning travel has to be taken into account—both going to set early in the morning and coming home late at night when the crew is exhausted and desperate to get home to sleep. Sleep itself is a luxury. For many crew members, while there is a guaranteed “turnaround,” that time is spent prepping for the next day, meaning sleep is cut short so other aspects of life can be taken care of.

Until things change, this sort of tragedy is going to be repeated again and again.

I Almost Experienced a Tragedy Similar to Rust

I have personally experienced situations like this time and time again while working. I’ve had shoots requiring me to be on set at 5:42 a.m., in order to be on hand for the actors’ hair and makeup process, and stay until 10 p.m. to ensure the last crew members had left before doing it all again the next day. One project forced me to wrap up shooting, head to the airport, fly cross-country and then start the next shooting day just 12 hours after landing. My flight was delayed, however, and I ended up sitting in the airport overnight, waiting to catch the very first flight out that morning. I got back to Los Angeles just an hour before the crew call—I’d been awake for over 24 hours—and was expected to report to set and work another 16 hours. I managed to grab a nap in the cab from the airport and then again for 30 minutes at lunch. I don’t even remember driving home that night.Finally, in perhaps the most terrifying near-miss I have ever been involved in, I was on a shoot with a substantial amount of weapons on set. We were prepping for a large gun battle scene. Our armorer’s team had previously prepared all the weapons for the scene and had them standing by ready to go. Prior to cameras rolling, our stunt coordinator and armorer were handing out weapons to our actors. As is customary, they examined each weapon before handing it off to the actors and discovered there were several live rounds that had been included in a box of blanks, which had been loaded into the clips by a more inexperienced member of the prop team. Had those weapons not been checked, either through negligence or due to a hyper-compressed “hurry up and just hand them out” time crunch, we could have very easily been our own Rust.There are changes that can be made to make this entire industry safer. While it’s entirely possible for those decisions to come from the top down, the greater reality is they will come from the bottom up. During the pandemic, many in the industry were deemed “essential” and allowed to continue working while the rest of the world shut down. What many of us in the industry are now realizing—as we grind away on our impossible schedules, trading sleep and sanity for the ability to churn out more binge-worthy content—is that what those above us forgot to say is “essential” was only part of how they look at us. We aren’t just essential to them and their process; we’re essentially disposable.

“Why did you want to be a nurse?”I’ve been asked this question a hundred times, but I’ve never given a concrete answer. There were many reasons. As a small child, I poked and prodded my parents with the tools from my toy doctor’s kit. The day my brother came home from the hospital, I introduced myself to my mom as “the baby’s new pediatrician.” In high school, I was curious about both the caring and academic sides of medicine, but it was far from my only interest. I’ve thought about pursuing careers in psychology and international relations. I’ve loved singing, acting and art. I ended up with bachelor’s degrees in English and religious studies. Many nurses say their profession is their “calling,” but I can’t shake the feeling that I became a nurse by accident.After graduating from college, I started a career in early childhood education. I love children but didn’t love the pay and the reputation that came with what many people consider “glorified babysitting.” I knew from family members’ experiences that nursing paid well and that it was possible, even common, to go to nursing school after several years of working in an unrelated field. So, one weird March day in 2018, while contemplating my life’s purpose in a Dunkin’ Donuts, I decided to apply to nursing school.

My Schooling Was Cut Short Because of the Pandemic

In May 2019, I was accepted into an accelerated, 11-month Bachelor of Science in Nursing program at an in-state university. I knew learning a new trade in less than a year would be challenging, but this program had a stellar NCLEX pass rate, and I’ve always been a good student.I loved nursing school. I had wonderful professors and excellent clinical rotations. I made friends with a few classmates, some with even odder backgrounds and paths to nursing school than mine. I made A’s in all my classes, and I could picture a clear career trajectory following graduation.Then, the pandemic hit. What we thought would be two weeks of online classes turned into two months and then the rest of our program. Challenging in-person labs and clinicals were replaced with lame virtual simulations. We earned optional four-week hospital internships in July. With no curriculum to guide me, I spent most of my internship confused. Our program should have been extended a semester. Instead, we were allowed to graduate and sit for the NCLEX on time, barely scraping the state’s requirement for in-person clinical hours. I received under seven months of hands-on training before earning a license that allowed me to practice nursing. If this fact doesn’t terrify you, it should, because I wasn’t the only one.

If this fact doesn’t terrify you, it should, because I wasn’t the only one.

Nurses Eat Their Young—It’s True

My university had a solid relationship with the area’s major hospital system, so I had no trouble finding a job. I really wanted to work on the pediatrics unit, the only unit that was (at the time) downsizing due to the pandemic. I ended up in an adult neurology intermediate care unit. Patients in intermediate care units are considered “critical but stable.” Most of the patients in my unit had suffered massive strokes. Many had both neurological damage and COVID-19.New graduate nurses work alongside preceptors for a few months before they’re allowed to work independently. My first preceptor fit the “eats her young” bully stereotype that all new nurses fear. She offered me little encouragement and hands-on instruction. She expected me to remember every line of my nursing textbooks. She humiliated me in front of a patient’s family. I knew I was doing poorly, and she didn’t let me forget it.After two weeks, this preceptor went part-time, and I was assigned someone else. My next preceptor was more understanding and a much better teacher. Under her five-week instruction, I gained a lot of confidence. On our last day together, she told me that I was doing “fucking amazing.” But after she transferred to another unit, there was no one available to be my permanent preceptor. Once again, I struggled. I was led to believe that my lack of consistent training was not the reason why I was failing. My manager blamed my shortcomings on my personality, never mind that she hired someone with no previous hospital employment and a pandemic education on a difficult unit that lacked reliable preceptors. When I expressed that her constant questioning of my potential was not helpful for my professional development nor my mental health, she declared that she would “not take responsibility!”She was, however, totally right that I was not ready to be a nurse on a large critical care unit. Ultimately, I was thankful to her for saving me from further failure and humiliation.I worked for another three months in an outpatient setting. It was a decent job, but I felt unfulfilled working below my education level. I was also paranoid about screwing up again. This time, I received a lot of support and reassurance, but was still let go “at will.” Basically, “We didn’t hate you enough to fire you before the end of your probationary period, but we don’t like you enough to keep you on. We didn’t owe you any warning or any explanation.”I told my boss at my second job that I was quitting nursing. She moaned about how I had so much potential, and I shouldn’t give up. “You’ll forget about this experience in a few years,” she said.I will never forget. And I have quit.

The Pandemic Made an Already Miserable Job Worse

Well-meaning doctors and medical journalists like to claim that if we want COVID-19 nurses to stick around, we should “try paying them more.” During my time at the hospital, all nurses and nursing assistants received five-dollar raises. The nurses who worked through the early months of the pandemic were also given higher-than-usual holiday bonuses. Better pay was not enough to increase morale because nurses are not just underpaid, they’re also undertrained and overworked.I was responsible for feeding, bathing, assessing and administering medications to three critically ill patients at a time. I had to do so safely, swiftly and happily while sporting layers of PPE. I was also expected to complete several hours’ worth of charting each shift. If I didn’t take my 30-minute lunch break, I’d get called out for coming off slow and shaky. If I did take a break, I’d fall behind. My co-workers were better than me at hiding their stress from patients and from our manager, but I watched them cry in hallways, bathrooms and break rooms every day. Over half of these nurses had one year or less of registered nursing experience. Most of the rest were travel nurses, who have the luxury to ignore office politics and take several weeks off between jobs, as long as traveling fit their lifestyle. When I tell people that I quit nursing because of COVID-19, I don’t mean that watching people die from the virus was too much for me to bear. I knew that getting up close and personal with death and suffering would be part of the job. I also knew that working 12-hour shifts, nights, weekends and holidays would be part of the job. I knew that I would feel exhausted and terrified the first few months. I never imagined that my supervisors wouldn’t give a shit about how I felt.Nurses “eat their young” because they know that it’s easier to scare straight or scare away the newbies than it is to fight against the status quo. Before the pandemic, around one-third of nurses left the profession after two years. Now throw in fear of contracting COVID-19, constant understaffing, increasingly unsafe nurse to patient ratios and frustration with anti-vax patients. In September 2021, The Washington Post reported that all healthcare workers were leaving their jobs in record numbers. We should be more worried than ever about the state of the nursing profession.

I never imagined that my supervisors wouldn’t give a shit about how I felt.

Quitting Nursing Helped Me Find My True Self

In a world without a pandemic, I may have had better career counseling and landed a hospital job that better fit my qualifications and interests. Even in the real world, I could have found another nursing position following my two failures. A desperate doctor’s office or nursing home would have taken me on—anxiety, incompetency and all. Eventually, I could have learned to be an excellent nurse. An excellent and very unhappy nurse.This horrible experience helped me realize what I value most: my friends and family, my creative expression, my independence, my mental health. I still strive to help others through my writing, through volunteering and through everyday acts of kindness. Nursing will always be an important part of my past, but it’s not part of my future.

It was the easiest drop. Just circling through from one one-way onto another going the opposite direction. A quiet and dark back alley, a quick moment of respite from rolling around downtown. Text message. Back gate slams. Sleight of hand. Money in the bag. In and out. This bar was a top-dollar spot. Management, bartenders, catering—everyone wanted a taste. Ten birds with one stone.How many steps does it take to go from a tenured teacher to back-gate party favor drop-offs? Probably fewer than you think. The messages keep coming in and you keep replying and the business grows. Sometimes it’s booming, until it isn’t. Just like everyone else, my number eventually came up. I found myself in an ankle monitor and a court-mandated outpatient rehabilitation program, bored and running out of funds.

I wasn’t an addict—I was an entrepreneur.

Getting Busted Changed My Life

I can understand the ankle monitor. On paper, I look like someone you’d want to keep tabs on, although I wasn’t actually going anywhere. Where would I have gone? I’m not one to run away from my problems, and that kind of thing only works out in the movies. I was smart enough to know that running would have done nothing but compound every problem I had. I was also smart enough and wealthy enough to be on time to every court-mandated meeting or requirement and looking the part. Hell, when I went to pay my court fees at the courthouse, the clerk at the teller window tried to point me to the attorney's check-in. Thanks, but no thanks, lady. I was right where I belonged.Rehab made less sense. I wasn’t an addict—I was an entrepreneur. If they had tested me when I was arrested, it might have come back positive for marijuana, maybe. I was selling harder stuff for the money and the lifestyle, not to get high on my own supply. There wasn’t a 12-step program for the kind of problems I had, but my daily attendance went a long way to smoothing things over with the court.I was fucking bored out of my mind and dangerously close to feeling sorry for myself. I had gone from a life of adrenaline rushes and cash to being home every night by my court-mandated 9 p.m. curfew, just in time to literally plug myself into the wall for the required two hours to charge the ankle monitor. Lying around for hours every night with my leg thrown over the back of the couch, tethered to the monitor cord, was as close as I would ever get to losing my freedom. It was a recipe for self-loathing. The third-party monitoring service said the device was precise to the point that it could decipher which room of my house I was in. Not even once did I try to test that theory. I was at home in bed every night after charging and up every morning to arrive at my mandatory outpatient rehab program by 8 a.m. I put in my time listening and learning. It wasn’t a complete waste. They had doughnuts. I was definitely addicted—money was my drug. And I needed a fix. I needed a job.Going back to teaching primary school wasn’t an option. My credentials were under investigation by the state board of education. I had a master’s in education, and outside of my detour into dealing, that was all I knew. And with four pending felonies, whether or not I could return to teaching school was the least of my worries. When I started down this path, I always told myself that I would never do anything where I wasn’t prepared to accept the consequences—but now that they were here, it was a different story. I never heard from the board of education, beyond the certified letter I received two weeks after my arrest, letting me know that my certifications were invalid until a finding was made by the courts. It was the first time since my nights in jail that I cried. It wouldn’t be the last.

When I Ran Out of Options, the Service Industry Had My Back

I’ve always done well for myself but have never been too proud to do anything. I fell into this new profession by way of cleaning toilets, and treating it like a profession was what I did. I wasn’t above stocking shelves at Target for minimum wage or selling overpriced, mass-produced clothes to women at the mall, but I had a feeling it would be difficult to explain the pending possible life sentences and the lack of ability to set a schedule as a result of rehab, monitor check-ins and court-mandated appointments with my case officer. I didn’t need a corporate-stamp-of-approval type of job. I needed a friend. I found myself in a familiar back alley, walking through a familiar gate.I had never worked at a bar before that or had any other official experience in the service industry. You could certainly call what I did before I got caught a “service,” but in that line of work, your hours were dictated by the phone, the customer was never right and people knew exactly what they needed. I’d never held a tray. I’d never taken an order. I’d never made a drink. But the bar needed a manager, and I needed a job that knew my backstory and wanted me anyway. It paid well and even gave me an allowance to sort out my own medical care. Perfect.It was better than perfect, actually. It was exactly what everyone needed. I was used to getting up in the morning and being productive during the day. It was a habit I couldn’t unlearn, no matter how hard I tried, so I became the bar’s morning person. The seasoned trolls could hide under their covers until dusk. I would come in bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, fresh off two doughnuts and a morning of self-reflection, and open the place up. I would handle meetings and venue tours for private events with a smile. I accepted deliveries of booze and wine and beer and fruit. I wrote checks. I scheduled bartenders and barbacks. I negotiated referral percentages with event planners and catering companies. I handled visits from the fire marshal and the health inspector. I returned emails and sold the venue like a pro.It was nothing I had ever done before, but it wasn’t rocket science. If I could handle a class of 22 primary school students back in what seemed like some whole other lifetime, I could certainly handle a few bartenders, drunken patrons and high-maintenance corporate clients. After a year and a half, when it was time for me to move on, the GM told me I was the best manager he’d ever had.

It was the first time since my nights in jail that I cried. It wouldn’t be the last.

I Found My Redemption Behind the Bar

The unofficial patron saint of the service industry, Anthony Bourdain, once said, “In America, the professional kitchen is the last refuge of the misfit. It’s a place for people with bad pasts to find a new family.” While not exactly a professional kitchen, I learned what a cambro pan was and how to cut limes in half the time it would take someone off the street. I learned that if you smile big and talk sweetly to catering companies, you can gain 10 pounds in a year. I learned how to say “behind” when walking behind the bar, and I even learned how to make a drink—not that I was around long enough to be any good at it.The misfits loved on me. They were patient with me. They showed up for me at the last minute when the courts changed my dates and times unexpectedly. They laughed at my hairy ankle when my monitor was removed. They bought me my favorite cookies and smoked me out when I graduated from my rehab program. They were my family. They took me at my most broken and vulnerable and put me back together. These people saw me through one of the most difficult challenges of my 36 years: the death of a life I knew I would never be able to return to. My attorney was able to enroll me in a program that made it all go away. He made sure I understood that this would be my one and only get-out-of-jail-free card—for life. My experience has taught me that if you are looking for a place full of nonjudgmental people willing to take in broken souls, it might not be in a community center basement 12-step program. The kind of love and acceptance I needed was found behind the bar.I haven’t been back in a kitchen or behind a bar since that year and a half. Some things just can’t be recreated. Maybe that was all the time I needed to learn the lessons I was meant to learn.

Growing up in Southern California in the ’90s meant many things for the average lower-middle-class kid. One of them was Red Ribbon Week, similar to the national D.A.R.E. program that most people from that time recall. Both programs were designed to educate children about substance abuse and would go on to be used nationwide to far-reaching effect. Along with extensive anti-smoking campaigns, these programs would shape my perception of used substances and the people who partook in them.With a teacher for a mom and a self-employed electrician for a father, my perspective on work and fair compensation was also heavily colored. It’s not something I found myself contemplating as a kid, but I remember looking back and thinking how normal it must have been to decide your own hours and your own pay and taking reasonable amounts of time off. Of course, at that age, I wasn’t able to understand that those benefits were the direct results of a teacher’s union and self-employment. The reality for many blue-collar workers, namely kitchen staff, is very different.

It wasn’t anything new to be told on the day that I was working a double; it was a given that I would say yes.

Working in a Kitchen Requires Unreasonable Dedication

I thought about this as I took a puff of the proffered cigarette from my new head chef, having just been told I was working a double that day.I had cut off the tip of my pinky that morning and was angry at the fact that I had to toss out a whole case of onions I was preparing because of the blood. To this day, I can’t feel anything using the tip of that finger. I moved on when I got the distinct impression from my chef and coworkers that injuries like that were normal.It wasn’t anything new to be told on the day that I was working a double; it was a given that I would say yes. I also understood that working while not 100 percent healthy was normal and expected. What surprised me was that the magnitude of the injury had little effect on the expectation and that management had planned to further overwork their already short staff instead of hiring more to cover their newly opened second location. Today, I understand that the situation was preposterously normal in this industry, but it was eye-opening to see the exploitation disguised as opportunity. The staff was kept small because anyone not dedicated enough wasn’t welcome, and there was a better chance of climbing the job ladder if you stuck it through. It became very apparent that the better paying positions were harder to hold, and with less people working, the more likely it became that you could get to those positions.

My Naivety Allowed Me to Be Exploited

Driven on delusions of becoming a sous chef myself, I didn’t bother looking at my checks more than making sure that they got deposited. Thankfully, I was in a place in my life where I knew between myself and my partner, we could make ends meet. I was putting in this work to try to learn and advance while focusing less on the money. That said, I figured my checks should have been large considering the 14-to-16-hour days between three locations I was pulling. “What overtime?” was the response I got from two of my coworkers during a smoke break a month into the opening of the third location. It was explained to me that only two members of the kitchen staff were making overtime besides the head and the sous chef. These two cooks only ever worked at the flagship, and double shifts kept them in one location. The chefs and the general manager all made a salary. It turns out that even though the names of the restaurants connected them as the same company and staff, we were being paid as employees at different businesses. Call me naive or gullible, but I had been so focused on proving myself and learning that I had assumed I was being compensated fairly for my effort.

Cooks and Chefs Use Drugs to Cope With Toxic Work Environments

Not wanting to rock the boat, I still went to my shift at the new location, but I hoped to catch one of the owners or the head chef there to ask what the deal was. At the end of one of my longest weeks and with this realization weighing me down, I was not operating as normal, and one of the couple new hires picked up on it. Sitting on a crate out back, in between puffs on his vape, my coworker reached into a bag and asked if I needed a bump. Once I realized what he was asking, my Red Ribbon Week programming kicked in, and I emphatically refused. He clarified that he was just concerned I was going to crash and that I looked exhausted.That’s when it hit me that he was just trying to help. All the rituals and oddities I had been observing and participating in fell into focus in the wake of that moment. From the mundane (smoking on a break) to the extreme (drinking and doing drugs before, during and after the job). I realized they were the only means of coping that some of my coworkers had available.

Smoking, drinking, drugs and drama were ways for my coworkers to deal with their situations.

Drug Use in the Restaurant Industry Will Continue Until Its Toxic Culture Is Addressed

Thinking back on those times is a blur, and life was the hustle and bustle of the restaurant. Smoking, drinking, drugs and drama were ways for my coworkers to deal with their situations because in many cases, that’s all they had outside of the never-ending work, which we weren’t even being properly compensated for. In my experience, the food world is one that people work in out of necessity or because they love it. No matter which camp they belong to, most of them need to supplement their income by taking on another job or acquiring more shifts. Many will lack the time and resources to handle the stresses of the industry and will find themselves falling into the aforementioned habits we are taught to abhor from a young age.I’m not asking you to go above and beyond what you should be doing already—tipping well and treating people with respect. But I hope you understand that until people can work these jobs and feed their families without overworking, we will continue to see soaring suicide and substance abuse rates in the industry. Consider the following: The service and food you receive from someone properly supported in their work will always be better than the service of someone who might be high and newly missing part of their finger.

Since the pandemic began, service workers have been deemed essential. We’ve kept working through COVID or were fired for staying home. In restaurants, this has created a strain between workers and guests that has only gotten worse as the pandemic has gone on.

Enforcing the COVID Health and Safety Guidelines for Restaurants Is an Uphill Battle

Service workers have always had to let go of petty moments, like the person asking them 15 times for something extra or the one constantly sending back their food. But the new issues that have come up over the past year and a half are different. They can be life-threatening. And even knowing that, people continue to push back. Not only do they push back against rules that are supposed to keep us safe but they become violent and unhinged in a way that I do not get paid enough to deal with. For example, someone comes into a restaurant with signs up clearly stating to “wear a mask, even if vaccinated, unless eating or drinking,” and they see that as a challenge, or worse, that they’re exempt and if we say otherwise, it’s “discrimination.” Then, we have to coddle them and convince them to do what we need in order to serve them, all while they hold up a line of 56 other reservations.And that’s just one rule. Since being back in restaurants, I think people have forgotten how to be human. They’ve become semi-feral animals who want expensive wine and food as quickly as possible. Before the pandemic, it seemed like everyone was calmer about service and knew how to behave in a restaurant. Of course, we had occasional problematic guests, but they were easier to ignore, especially because it wasn’t a life-or-death situation. Pre-pandemic restaurants were easy-going and leisurely compared to what they are now. We spent most of our time saying the customer is always right and putting aside the fact that sometimes they’re not. And you, the guest, could go out and receive services at an amazing level of performance every single day. There wasn’t the same fear, burnout and anger like restaurants today, which are understaffed, underpaid and have no medical insurance or paid time off. Food service workers today are gritting their teeth to the bone daily just to survive.

I think people have forgotten how to be human.

Adapting to How the Restaurant Industry Has Changed During the Pandemic Is Difficult for Everyone

When my restaurant reopened after lockdown, we had made a lot of changes that made things extra hard for staff. Our menus were now digital so that they could be updated with 86’d items and new dishes on the spot, but they weren’t incredibly functional. The downside to not having paper menus was if you didn’t have a phone, you were stuck having to look at someone else’s. I had a guest ask to use my personal phone, to which I told him no, and then he proceeded to pitch a fit about it. I still didn’t let him. (He eventually used his friend's phone and wound up having a great evening.) The owners also changed the restaurant from one style of cuisine to another and hired an almost entirely different staff. They had done this many times before, so it only blew a few minds, but the people who weren’t aware of the changes often got grumpy with us for not matching our online presence, which hadn’t been updated. Since our new staff was small, starting off, our service was slower, and of course, that became an issue. On one of my first nights at work, I had a guest berate me over a mistake that he made and that he refused to let me fix. So, in a dining room full of people, he began yelling, cussing and carrying on about how stupid I was and how I didn’t deserve my job. Management promptly told him to leave and never return, but experiences like that happen at least once a month these days. If it's not to me, then its to someone else on staff over something as small as a beer not being as cold as a guest prefers or someone trying to order food long after the kitchen has closed.

Restaurants During COVID Are Short Staffed, Overworked and Stressed Out

I have had my fair share of pandemic problems, and many started before we reopened. While we were still trying to iron out our "post-apocalyptic” plans, we were just doing to-go orders and we weren’t fully staffed, so I did a number of to-go orders alone. I wasn’t used to being by myself on a shift, but it was nice to work silently and appreciate the normality of showing up to work at all. There were no chairs set up for seating, but I still had to chase people out of the bar. No one would respect the idea of not standing around me without a mask. One man left us an angry review because we forgot his salsa. We were doing our best, but the negative reviews about masks and the fact that we weren’t allowing people to sit kept coming in. Restaurant guests spent tons of time berating us for new rules to keep ourselves safe and the restaurant open. We still have to defend ourselves against people who merely look at us as their personal (and poorly tipped) servants. I have personally seen a number of service workers who tirelessly worked through the pandemic quit their jobs on the spot, usually over the combination of low pay and high stress. Most of the time, the final straw is experiencing some kind of abuse from guests or the other staff. It’s brutal out here. Once, I witnessed a co-worker have to yell at someone about masks. This co-worker wasn’t a mean person, but he was scared and wanted to make sure he wasn’t being taken advantage of. He hadn't had many days off during the lockdown. The bar had reopened for seating, but it was still too soon. Mentally, we weren’t ready, and we were still understaffed because some people refused to come back. We had been told we wouldn’t continue to receive funds if we didn’t come back to work, so many of us begrudgingly returned.

It’s brutal out here.

Being Disrespectful at a Restaurant Is Not Only Rude, It Makes Your Server Hate You

Unfortunately, almost 70 percent of our staff got COVID and the other 30 percent went on to run the restaurant instead of the owners closing and having us all get tested. One of my co-workers who'd had COVID got into an altercation with a guest who wouldn’t wear a mask. Then, he was fired, followed by everyone else on staff who had voiced any anger about the lack of safety in our workplace. We had put ourselves on the line for a job that replaced us within months of reopening for patrons who wouldn’t follow the rules and didn’t care that we were risking our lives for less than minimum wage.Over time, your servers, bartenders, busboys and chefs have been worn down to the bone with ridiculous questions, assumptions and entitlement—not to mention the stress of having to put our lives at risk just to work. We want you to enjoy your evening but to also be reasonable about expectations. The pressure you add to our jobs during the pandemic, with your demands and your refusal to respect our safety, makes us hate you. When the world is on fire, the last thing you need to do is light matches in other people’s lives. Learn some decent restaurant etiquette, because you guys suck.

I am speeding down I-40 westbound toward Downtown Albuquerque when I receive every food delivery driver’s least favorite text message: “Part of my order is missing.” Usually, I would return to the restaurant, request the missing item and deliver it to the customer, apologizing profusely. But this lady lives 30 minutes from where she ordered, and I am already late picking up my next delivery. So I follow the standard protocol, telling her to contact the restaurant or DoorDash’s customer service to resolve the issue. This response is met with a slew of complaints because customer service is useless. “Why didn’t you just check the bags to make sure nothing was missing?”I express my understanding of her frustration because I do. I understand how annoying it is to pay for a service and not have it perform as promised. But we are in the middle of a pandemic, and it is company policy that drivers do not open their customers’ orders because, like I said, we are in the middle of a pandemic. If I were to go through orders to ensure all the items were in place, I would receive warning notifications in my app that the customer reported tampering with their food—notifications I sometimes receive anyway, despite never tampering with orders. I don’t hear back from the customer after my explanation. An hour later, I receive a response in the form of a one-star rating and a thumbs down for communication in my DoorDash app. I don’t want blame to be directed toward restaurants, even though it’s often the case that the driver has nothing to do with the mistake, particularly when it comes to missing items in sticker-sealed bags.

We’re the most accessible punching bags, the shields held up at the front lines to protect the big-name brands from taking the damage.

Being a Food Delivery Driver Means Taking Blame for Unhappy Customers—Even When I’m Not at Fault

One time, I delivered to a customer who claimed to be missing part of their order, only for me to return to their door where the “missing part” had been sitting on the doormat the entire time. They’d only bothered to collect one of their two bags. I have asked drive-thru employees for the drinks on the customer’s order, only to be told the drinks were already in the bag, which I’d later learn from the customer that they weren’t. I have had customers request additional items after I have long since left the restaurant, as if either of us would gain anything from my returning to the 30-minute-long drive-thru line for a couple packets of hot sauce. I have had customers complain about taking too long in said 30-minute-long drive-thru lines, because it’s clearly my fault that the restaurant is understaffed and had to close their lobby. While the occasional understanding customer exists, their basic human decency gets overshadowed by the people who direct all their complaints toward their delivery drivers. After all, we’re the most accessible punching bags, the shields held up at the front lines to protect the big-name brands from taking the damage.

Delivery Driver Gigs Do Not Pay Well—Even With Tips

Despite DoorDash’s claims that they pay according to the distance of the trip and the time it takes to complete it, drivers earn about $3 per trip, not including tip. Tips generally range from $0 to $3, so if you were to average one trip per half hour, earning $3 tips, the hourly wage would be $12. Granted, this is based on my experiences in New Mexico, which may receive lower wages than big cities like Los Angeles and New York City. But a full tank of gas costs at least $30 now, meaning three hours of work is required just to fuel the vehicle that allows me to deliver. (Don’t get me started on the cost of vehicle maintenance.) Uber Eats used to be better than DoorDash. They stayed true to their promise of earnings based on distance and trip time. But they have since lowered their wage per trip to $2, competing with DoorDash to see who can make their employees quit faster. On good days, I will get a three-mile, $2 DoorDash trip and earn a $5 tip. On bad days, I will get a 10-mile, $5 delivery to someone twice my age who thinks they can tip with lip service, commenting on my appearance as if that will help me pay my bills. On good and bad days, I will gamble on short-distance McDonald’s trips, with a 50-50 chance of getting tipped a couple of dollars at most because why should you tip your driver if the restaurant is just around the corner? Surely it can’t be that much work to pick up and drop off your order. Couldn’t you pick up the order from the restaurant just around the corner if it isn’t that much work?

Food delivery drivers are like waitstaffs: underpaid and overworked, the root cause of all customer problems.

Are Delivery Jobs Worth It? No. But I Still Have to Pay My Bills

In effect, food delivery drivers are like waitstaffs: underpaid and overworked, the root cause of all customer problems. DoorDash and Uber Eats drivers are supposed to have an “easier” time than waitstaff, free to schedule their own hours and work within the seated comfort of their own car, but that logic only applies if your preferred hours are during mealtimes or when people have late-night munchies and if you enjoy running your car into the ground by racking up thousands of miles driving back and forth from restaurant to house to restaurant to apartment and back again for six hours straight. Which, yes, I continue to do because just like waitstaff keep their wretched jobs to pay their bills, I, too, keep my wretched job to pay my bills. Wretched, I say, though I appreciate the few people who go out of their way to tip me a couple extra dollars in cash or give me a can of beer to enjoy when I get off. And, unlike waitstaff, if someone tries to complain to me about their food or lack thereof, I have the option of ignoring their call or text message, though I can’t say I ever have.

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. That’s how the saying goes, right? We’re taught that we have to make the best of the opportunities that we’re given and somehow find a way to make them work to our advantage. We are supposed to grab any and every opportunity that comes our way and figure things out as we go. So when my parents and I had the chance to buy a small antojitos Mexicanos restaurant from a young couple who was looking to get out of the service industry, we jumped at the chance. It was the summer of 2018, early August to be exact. During one of my mom’s insomniac nights one weekend, she found a woman’s Facebook post about selling her small antojitos Mexicanos food joint (antojitos Mexicanos are basically quick Mexican foods: tacos, migadas, flautas, gorditas, tortas): “It’s taking too much time away from my young child, so I’m selling the rights to the place, transferring the lease, equipment and personnel contracts.” Less than 48 hours later, the woman and her husband were having coffee at my house, going over the details and signing the contracts. We renamed the place—Trébol, as in a four-leaf clover, since we’d been lucky enough to have this come our way—and were in business by the next Monday.

We expected it to be a lot of work, but to say we were overwhelmed by exactly how much work it turned out to be is an understatement.

The Restaurant Brought My Family Closer Together

Food has always been a central part of my family’s life—our kitchen is the heart of our home. The house is purposefully built in a way that the kitchen is right in the middle of it all; there’s no way to avoid walking past it. We’ve spent the happiest and the hardest of times in that kitchen: cooking, drinking, talking, crying, fighting. Owning a restaurant had always been one of my mom’s crazy dreams; from time to time, my dad and I would randomly listen to her daydream, “Maybe one day when the kids are older,” or “Maybe when we’re older and we retire.” It was no surprise that when given the chance to make one of her dreams come true, she convinced my dad and me to take the leap of faith with her—we knew how much this meant to her, so we dived right in. We had no qualifications other than the fact that we had been going to restaurants all our lives and that we were all self-proclaimed foodies, but this was too good to pass up. And so, the adventure began. None of us had any real experience when it came to the food industry; we knew nothing about managing a restaurant, but we had tried our hand at different areas and industries before (cars, tires, raw pet food, pest control…I guess you could say we are entrepreneurs at heart), so we figured we could manage. We expected it to be a lot of work, but to say we were overwhelmed by exactly how much work it turned out to be is an understatement. For months, we worked 12 to 15 hour days, somehow managing to divide our time between our day jobs—which we were lucky enough to own, so we had that flexibility working for us—the restaurant, family and some social life. My relationship with my parents had always been somewhat strained and complicated, especially when it came to anything food-related, but somehow, despite the long hours, though, spending so much time figuring out vendors, menu edits and branding brought us closer. Instead of arguing over how much who ate—it was usually them complaining about how much they felt I ate—we finally had a food-related thing we could enjoy and work at together, instead of it being a source of constant fighting.

Despite a Difficult First Year, the Restaurant Pulled Through

It wasn’t all sugar, spice and everything nice, though. There were a lot of fights, arguments and disagreements that we had to work through. Money played a significant role in those disagreements. While I was constantly advocating for not elevating prices too much and offering free delivery to our customers, I’d be outnumbered by my parents. For nearly two years, we struggled to make ends meet and to meet break-even points with the restaurant costs. It didn’t make sense to us. Why was it that people raved about our food, but I was still seeing red numbers almost daily on our sales reports? We reached out to anyone and everyone we could; we pulled strings and got invited to local food fairs; we received local press and were even a favorite spot for a local singer with a somewhat decent following. It wasn’t enough, though. Every day, I’d dread closing time and having to fill out the daily sales report. I’d dread coming home and hearing my parents ask, “How did we do?” only to have to tell them we didn’t make enough money to cover basic costs, yet again.Of course, there were periods when sales spiked up; spring break and summer break were always good. Our close proximity to a few different office buildings made us the go-to spot for a good chunk of the employees working there, and we could always tell when payday came along. Despite people loving our food, we were still somehow hemorrhaging money. Things were looking bad, and more often than not, we’d have the “maybe we should just give up, cut our losses and shut down” conversation. It was both depressing and enraging to know that our product was good and beloved by those who tried it, but we still couldn’t find a way to make enough money to keep the business afloat. I mean, I know the logical thing to many would’ve been to cut costs and find cheaper ingredients, but we refused to compromise the quality we were offering. We firmly believed it would be our saving grace, although that belief was slowly waning. Things started to change in December of 2019, though. We went from having days where no one would come in to having a line form outside our place and having to bring in my siblings to help take and deliver orders. From opening till closing time, we were full, leaving little to no time for any of us to eat or take a breather—we weren’t complaining. Things were turning around, and the dream we had worked so hard for and invested so much money on finally seemed real and within reach. Day after day, I’d sit down after closing time, running numbers and nearly crying tears of joy when I realized we’d broken our sales record again. Things were looking up, but we figured the winter break had a lot to do with the surge in popularity, so we were cautious and tried not to get too excited. When January 2020 rolled around, though, we noticed the momentum kept going. There would be slower days, but sales were still better than we’d seen before. We chalked it up to the fact that we'd been in business long enough and had passed the opening rough start. Week after week, we would celebrate our rising success. February was a better month than January had been, and if things kept going like this, our restaurant would be self-sufficient, and we’d finally be able to see some return on investment by mid-2020.

Despite people loving our food, we were still somehow hemorrhaging money.

The Pandemic Shut Us Down Longer Than Anyone Expected

By the first few days of March, we started considering expanding to a second location as a possibility for the near future. We started scouting locations in different neighborhoods and looking for places where we could replicate the original Trébol. Everything felt like it was finally working out, except it wasn’t. When news broke about this new virus, we knew we had to temporarily shut down. All our staff was considered part of at-risk populations, so the smartest thing to protect them was to take a break and wait for it to blow over. All three of us had lived through the H1N1 pandemic in 2009, so we figured things would be similar and we would be able to avoid a catastrophe by staying at home for a few weeks. By March 27, I had sent out messages to our clients and put up social media posts promising our return by mid-April or late May. Of course, things didn’t quite go as planned. April turned to May, spring turned to summer and COVID numbers kept rising. Still, we refused to give up hope. We kept paying rent on the place and never canceled our utilities contracts, hoping that sooner rather than later, we’d be back in business. By November, however, we were forced to admit that the dream was over. I talked to my parents, called our landlord and terminated the lease. It’s hard not to think about all the “what ifs.” Had COVID not been a thing, we’d probably have a successful restaurant by now, maybe with a few different locations. We would have expanded, had an opportunity at a better life and been able to create jobs for so many people. To this day, almost a year after shutting down permanently, I can’t fully get over the fact that I won’t ever eat there again or have people come in and order their favorite dishes. I try not to dwell too much on the things the pandemic took away from me, since I know I’m one of the lucky few that has made it through today almost unscathed, but it’s still painful to know that the chance of making that dream come true was taken away from me so abruptly. Maybe one day I’ll try again, but for now, I’ll stick with the knowledge that I’m lucky enough to have had the opportunity to even try to make it come true in the first place.

It was mid-afternoon on Friday, March 20, 2020, when the email landed in my inbox.The wrath of the first wave—we’re on what, the fifth now?—of the crucifying COVID-19 pandemic was just beginning to decimate restaurants and bars, many of which were places I’d been embedded in—and written about—for decades. And when that email came, I was forehead-deep in writing multiple versions of “where to eat and drink now” stories for an organization where I’d freelanced for more than a decade. They were my primary client, and they paid me well. They loved my work. I loved writing for them. Life was peachy. The gist of the email was this: We’re pausing your workload. Our funding stream has been annihilated. “Hope you’re hanging in there,” it ended. Thud. There went the universe. Each time the science (looking at you, Dr. Fauci) suggested there was light at the end of the dark pandemic tunnel, or our governor allowed restaurants and watering holes to (sort of) reopen, I sent what surely sounded like desperate follow-up emails asking if I could resume writing again. Nope. More budget cuts, staff layoffs and reduced hours for former full-time employees. My editor wished he had better news. I knew it would be months, if not more, until he did.I sighed, sobbed and slammed my laptop shut. And I wondered aloud: Is this it? Is my 30-year career going to crash and crumble into smithereens? Am I done? Shit. I can’t afford to be done. But for 19 long months, I was.

Food has always been at the epicenter of my universe.

I Was Destined to Have a Career in Food

Food has always been at the epicenter of my universe. My mother was—and still is—a remarkable home cook. I learned to bake casseroles when I was a toddler, and by the time I was in elementary school, I was in charge of roasting the Thanksgiving turkey in my mom’s then-unreliable oven. I cooked whenever—and whatever—I could, flipping through recipes in my mother’s tattered From Julia Child’s Kitchen and The Illustrated Encyclopedia of American Cooking food bibles. I knew that when I eventually embarked on a career path, it would involve food. By the time I graduated from college with an undergraduate degree in English, I’d worked in restaurants, lived in England for a year and traveled extensively throughout Europe, including France and Italy, two of the world’s most extraordinary culinary utopias. Restaurants, I believed—and still believe—are the yin to my yang. I wanted to be a restaurant critic. At the age of 32, after working in the public relations arena and spending a shit-ton of money on grad school just to get a useless journalism degree, I got my wish: I was tapped as the chief dining critic at a startup city magazine. It paid just enough for a jaunt to the market once a month, and I recklessly maxed out numerous credit cards springing for my own meals. Still, I was there for several years, and I’d made a name for myself; big enough, I guess, to land the food critic position at a major metropolitan daily newspaper. By the time I left—the paper abruptly closed one fine Friday morning—I had almost a decade of restaurant criticism under my belt, which meant I’d also met and mingled with a lot of chefs and restaurateurs; too many, I thought, to continue as a critic. Plus, I was over wearing disguises that fooled no one.

I Kept Food in My Life as Much as Possible

For the next decade, I shifted to writing about my local dining scene, interviewing chefs for a weekly feature and covering restaurant openings and closings. And lists. Lots and lots of dumbed-down lists, specifically for a now-defunct, no longer relevant digital restaurant site with international prominence. That job sucked.But not as much as losing my food-writing freelance gigs as a result of a global pandemic that, nearly two years later, continues to ravage the industry I’ve dedicated myself to for more than three decades. Like so many others facing uncertainty, I felt unbuttoned, abandoned and isolated, and my brain had turned to something resembling vomit. My partner wasn’t working either, so there we were: two unhinged souls trying to navigate the abrupt dissolution of our lifelong careers. The very thing that fed my soul suddenly went poof. Still, it was crucial to continue supporting local restaurants, so I ordered takeout pretty much on a daily basis, and I purchased a lot of liquor. Neither fulfilled me. I took long walks with my dog and met neighbors I’d never spoken to prior to COVID. We talked—always masked and socially distanced—about how much we missed the camaraderie, pleasure and thrill factor that makes dining out so different from pitching a fork into a soggy box. I reluctantly applied for unemployment, which initially made me feel worthless until I bought two trunk’s worth of groceries and returned to the therapy that always brought me joy: cooking. I cooked nonstop. Like a maniac. And I shared those dinners—there were always leftovers—with neighbors, my ex-husband, mom and very close friends. That made me feel somewhat whole again. And I took up a new sport: fly-fishing, a passion of my partner. The rivers were bereft of humans, and while I took a major tumble at one point—river rocks are slippery little suckers—I managed to save my fly rod by shoving it in my mouth. Instinct. And a small triumph.I took several out-of-state road trips, bunking at secluded cabins, usually on a river, and found peace in nature. We even drove to Mount Rushmore, just a few months after the country had all but shut down, and do you know how many people were there? Four. A park ranger, a professional photographer, my guy and me. Imagine that.

There’s optimism, ebullience and a deep, deep sense of newfound purpose. And for the first time in a long time, I feel it, too.

I Found Joy in Making Birdhouses

In the midst of the profound bedlam, I found so many unexpected silver linings, for which I am grateful. Still, I wasn’t certain if I’d ever return to my chosen profession—a profession that had always been my first love. I fell in and out of fury, depression and apprehension. My son sensed my angst and suggested I “find a hobby.” Earlier this year, in April, I completely pivoted from writing and started designing and painting fricking birdhouses. Never did I ever. The first few were mostly discards, but I’ve since sold dozens of them on websites, at festivals, to random strangers, good friends and supportive neighbors. One woman bought 14 and wants more. She made my year. And so did a recent note from my former client. Nineteen months after that crushing email from March of 2020, I’m writing about my local food and beverage scene again for the same organization. The restaurant climate has changed exponentially since that first wave of COVID, and while those that made it through the pandemic are still struggling (the labor shortage is real), there’s optimism, ebullience and a deep, deep sense of newfound purpose. And for the first time in a long time, I feel it, too.

There’s something so soothing to me about the process of rinsing uncooked rice. The grains make that pleasant tingly sound when you measure them into a metal bowl. The water clouds slowly as the starch leeches off the surface of the grains. When I run my hands through the mixture, making sure each grain has been adequately washed, I get the same calming sensation you might feel when you’re letting wet sand fall through your fingers at the beach. Though I may seem passionate about it now, I haven’t always been an enthusiast for the sensory delights of one of the world’s most important crops. Growing up in the American South, I often heard people say that “rice was invented to hold up beans.” To me, it was always a boring blank canvas to be painted over with your flavor of choice. Though I hate to admit it, there was a time when I didn’t even know you were supposed to rinse rice before cooking it. As it turns out, that was just the first in a long line of things I didn’t know about the food I was eating.

Enslaved people turned rations that weren’t suitable for human consumption into one of the most celebrated Southern foods of all time.

I Discovered Where Grits Really Came From

When you’re from the South, people tend to have expectations about the contents of your diet. It’s all grits, corn bread, collard greens and, the perennial Southern staple, fried chicken. This isn’t always so far from the truth for those of us lucky enough to have lived in a place with such a rich food culture. The South is home to many iconic American dishes that keep the tourists coming and the restaurant economy booming. It’s easy enough to see why people can’t get enough shrimp and grits or red beans and rice. But where did all of these famous foods come from?It wasn’t until I moved away from home, and my mom’s cooking, that I really started thinking about the foods I had grown up eating and loving. Being removed from the source of the best home cooking forced me into a mode of discovery. If I wanted something, and wanted it to taste good, I had to cook it myself. It seemed like a daunting task but one I was ready to tackle. The first recipe I set out to master was a humble pot of grits. Being the extremely thorough researcher that I am, I combed through dozens of internet recipes looking for one that seemed to fit. There are many strong and differing opinions on how to consume the creamy concoction of ground corn, but I stayed loyal to the tried-and-true savory approach. It was during this process that my understanding of Southern food started to take shape.I had always assumed that grits, which are little more than ground bits of corn, originated with the native people who inhabited the current day United States long before they were the United States. While partially true, that was only a small part of the story of how grits ended up in a pot on my electric stove. Their beginnings as an American food staple can actually be traced to enslaved people from West Africa. Corn was often a part of the meager rations given to enslaved people who were forced to labor in the fields of Southern plantations. Despite the brutality they faced on a daily basis and the sparse resources they were given to work with, enslaved people created a dish that transcended their horrific circumstances. As I would find out, grits then took a common route from being enslaved fare to plantation home staple. Through an incredible amount of knowledge, ingenuity and creativity, enslaved people turned rations that weren’t suitable for human consumption into one of the most celebrated Southern foods of all time.

Most Southern Staples Were Started by Enslaved People

It was nothing short of an epiphany for me to think about the history of the dish I’d eaten so often as a child. When I took my first stab at cooking them on my own, each tiny grain seemed heavier and more precious to me. Learning the history of grits pushed me to dig deeper, to find the source of each familiar dish I set out to cook.As I went on my Southern-themed culinary journey, I noticed an unmistakable thread that connected each dish. When I wanted to add shrimp to my grits, I found a similar story. Shrimp haven’t always been the pricey items sold at an ever-rising market value on menus at the fanciest restaurants in Charleston. At one time, they were easy pickings for enslaved people who could sneak out to the creeks in the Lowcountry of South Carolina to supplement their inadequate rations.Even after the Civil War and the ratification of the 13th Amendment, shrimp remained a key food source for freed people who were forced into the undesirable outskirts of the coastal plains. They held the knowledge to use the food at which white people would turn up their noses. Their expertise was passed down from generation to generation, going all the way back to the shores of Africa. Shrimp and grits, one of the South’s most celebrated dishes, was the brainchild of enslaved people who made something out of nothing. I grew up eating it, and I never had a clue.After learning this, my curiosity was insatiable. I learned that fried chicken gained its popularity predominantly from the hard work of Black women who were seeking a way to make money after gaining their freedom. They perfected the art of breading and frying chicken in hot oil to give us the dish celebrated around the world today. I learned that people who were kidnapped from Western Africa and sold into slavery kept seeds for okra, beans and rice braided into their hair, and the presence of these crops denoted a population of enslaved people who grew them for sustenance.

We Need to Know the Conditions Under Which Food Is Made

All of this information was just out there waiting for me to find it. It didn’t become any more important or critical for me having learned it. So many brilliant chefs and food historians, like Michael Twitty and Mashama Bailey, had been sharing their hard-found knowledge with anyone willing to listen. Unfortunately, not many people seemed interested in hearing it.Today, if you take a trip to Charleston or Savannah, you’ll find a restaurant serving these dishes around every corner. The products of generations of labor and strife that were endured by enslaved people are being sold by predominately white chefs at a premium. These foods are the economic foundation of much of the South, but the context of their origin has been wiped out. As a white Southerner, it irritates me to see the history of these foods erased in the name of financial gain. I can only imagine how it pains the folks who carry the DNA of those who invented Southern cuisine under the cruel hand of slaveholders.We have a tremendous opportunity as Southerners to be honest about the origins of the food we hold so dear—not as a way to keep people from cooking or eating it but as a way to educate and showcase the true cultural richness of Southern food. People stand only to gain from understanding the painful and brutal history of the food they eat. The persistence of these dishes mirrors the persistence and perseverance of enslaved people, who wouldn’t allow their traditions or their spirits to be crushed by the weight of those who made them their property.This food should be a story of triumph for Black people who carry these traditions with them today, but sadly, it continues to be a story of exploitation. If we continue to depend on these foods to hold Southern states together, we must also, at the very least, give credit where it is long overdue. Kids in the South shouldn’t grow up eating stewed okra every Sunday for lunch completely ignorant of where it originated. Tourists shouldn’t leave the beaches of South Carolina or Georgia without knowing the conditions under which their favorite meals were developed.

This food should be a story of triumph for Black people who carry these traditions with them today, but sadly, it continues to be a story of exploitation.

Making Rice Is a Meditative Practice for Me Now

It seems like an insurmountable task with how far gone the Southern culinary industry is, but like most cultural movements, it can start with individuals. Eat at restaurants that showcase the work of Black chefs; read the literature on the history of Southern food and its inextricable links to slavery; tell people about the way enslaved people built a cuisine from the things that white people threw away. Maybe then we can slowly start to showcase the brilliance behind the dishes people will travel across the world to eat.My most recent Southern food fascination is rice. With delicious Gullah dishes like Hoppin’ John or Limpin’ Susan, I can’t get enough of the stuff. In colonial times, Carolina Gold rice was the crop that made slaveholders in South Carolina—and Charleston, in particular—extremely wealthy. Rice cultivation, like the cultivation of so many other crops, was only tenable through the back-breaking work of enslaved people. It had to be grown in the coastal plains where water flowed in and out throughout the day, flooding the fields and allowing the rice to grow. After it grew, it was only the enslaved people of West Africa who knew the incredibly labor-intensive process of harvesting it, and they did it under abhorrent circumstances.Now, when I’m washing my rice, when I take care to rinse and re-rinse each pot, it’s a meditation of sorts. It’s a time to remember the human cost associated with the things that I serve at my dinner table. When I run my fingers through the grains and shake them dry, I think about the path they’ve taken to get to me. I feel grateful and most of all, hopeful that other people will know that path, too.

Years ago, I was in Chicago for a high school vocal ensemble trip—think Glee with less glam. One of my friends, Olivia, was vegan. I always hated the sight of veins when I cut into the chicken breast my mother served at our very American 6 p.m. dinners. There was an aversion to knowing I was eating another animal’s flesh. So in Chicago that weekend in 11th grade, I decided to try out being vegan with Olivia. I remember how restricted the options were, how impossible it seemed to find anything vegan on a menu. The salad I ended up ordering was served with Parmesan on top, and I determined this experiment impossible. At 17, I thereby declared, “I never want to inconvenience myself that much to be vegan.”

Sometimes, I’d choose candy over food if I couldn’t guarantee there was no dairy or animal products in it.

It Was Hard to Be a Vegan in the Early 2000s

At 18, upon moving out of my parents house, I quickly became vegetarian. It was only natural to me. Tofu was a much safer alternative to veins, blood and fat. Plus, I could still eat loads of free soft serve in the mess hall while I was studying abroad in Australia. At 19, before going to live in China, I’d hopped over to Olympia, Washington, to watch my brother graduate from one of the most liberal colleges known to man. You betcha PETA had a stand there—and you know I picked up their flyers and their infamous vegan starter guide. That summer in China, I mostly ate bread and boiled spinach. For a year or so, I rocked the junk food vegan life. By 20, I was traveling full-time, backpacking all of South America. Sometimes, I’d choose candy over food if I couldn’t guarantee there was no dairy or animal products in it. Let’s just say things in the early 2000s weren’t so easy. After that, I was studying in India, and holy Krishna, was it rough to be vegan there! Vegetarian? Yes, the easiest. But the moment you want to cut ghee (clarified butter) and paneer (farm cheese) from the menu, you’re fucked. I cheated. I surrendered. I tried and fell and got up again. I was still vegan, with a few streaks of cow pus across my face.In my early days gallivanting the world until 2013, it was never convenient to be vegan. In some places, like Spain, they couldn’t even conceive of what it meant. In East Asia, they’d try to sneak meat into soup broths “for my health.”But then, everything started to change. Alicia Silverstone, a mainstream vegan, passed the torch to Elton John. The millennial's childhood dream boy Leonardo DiCaprio got on the scene, and within years, “vegan” became a household term.

How Celebrities Influenced the Rise of Veganism

I started seeing way more vegan restaurants pop up nearly everywhere I went, from a remote village in southern Ecuador to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. As a proud ambassador for the global veggie eating guide HappyCow, I’ve helped keep the world updated on the status of vegan restaurants worldwide, and they are rapidly growing in number.As celebs make the move and influencers rule the show, it will be no time until everyone shifts their ways. Documentaries like Cowspiracy and What the Health gave everyone the opportunity to experiment. I showed The Game Changers to a lover in Hawaii, and he literally cleared out his fridge and became vegan that night.Vegan festivals, conferences and food shows are now my most frequented stops in my nomadic traveler’s lifestyle, and all the natural health food stores I visit have an array of locally made or imported vegan substitution products. Now that Bill Gates’ investment portfolio has followed in the footsteps of Leo’s, we know the tides have turned.Natural hygiene, the philosophical roots of naturopathy, my profession, urge us to return to our species-specific diet. Think of chimpanzees in a zoo. They’re fed fruits and vegetables. Our digestive systems are nearly identical. So for me, and for those I teach and advise, plant-based is a no-brainer. It gives our body less to process, less toxicity and thus more time to renew and repair. In other words, you grow healthier!

The future is knocking, and this time, the cows won’t come home.

Vegan Food Choices Have Come a Long Way—Especially Dairy Substitutes

I’ve had my fair share of people sit in my naturopathy consults and tell me they’ll do anything I want, but they just won’t give up cheese. I know it’s hard to imagine life without it. Some might ask, “Is that even a life worth living?”I get it because I myself have gone in and out of my vegan cheese addictions over the years. But now, there’s much higher quality stuff on the market these days than ever before. Greece is dominating the vegan cheese production for Europe, and Whole Foods just copies whatever cassava stretchy cheese works well in the States. The feta varieties from coconut are even preferable to the real thing. It’s the string cheese stretch ones that just can’t be copied—I’d rather pass on that than eat a vegan pizza. There’s even a German brand of sliced cheese that many people taste and don’t realize it’s not dairy! And hey, the payoff is huge when you don’t have a slathering of mucus—the body’s self-protection shield—in your throat after normal ice cream or cheese. Ew. Just thinking about it grosses me out.(As for vegan meat replacements? I’ll also pass on anything too processed. But if you eat wheat, I highly recommend you try a seitan dish at a restaurant and see if you can tell the difference.)

Will Veganism Take Over? I Think It’s Inevitable

My 70-year-old parents have opened up to my dietary choices I’ve made over the past decade and have even changed their own. My dad didn’t realize the Beyond Burger wasn’t meat the first time I grilled it for him—now they eat them every week. I can find vegan options on most menus most places, and the world is simply opening up to inclusivity around people who “inconvenience” themselves as much as me. Cows versus cashews aside, I bet that most of humanity will become vegan within the next decade or two. From my world travels, the ease of vegan conversion, the health factor, the way that we’re destroying the environment and the way we’re crawling toward the tipping point of mass adoption, it seems an unavoidable direction. Factory farming aside, our water supplies are dwindling, and eventually, there won’t be any other choice. The future is knocking, and this time, the cows won’t come home.My claim that “I would never inconvenience myself that much” made sense in 2005. It doesn’t make sense today. Veganism is no longer inconvenient. And it will continue to permeate every corner of the world, developed and developing alike.

Americans love instant gratification. After a long day, almost no one going home to their family also wants to run to the nearest market, prepare a meal, set the table and clean up afterwards. It’s much more enticing to visit the nearest drive-thru window or have a quick night out with the family at a restaurant before starting it all over tomorrow. While the restaurant industry does extremely well at upholding its tradition of service and keeping a steady flow of revenue to keep that service alive, it’s not without its dark secrets and habitual sacrifices. I started in the industry out of passion for food. Like many others in the same situation, I’ve come to resent the job I chose, and I’m too tired from the constant berating to stand and fight for any improvement. For chain restaurants like the one I work in, the worst problems begin at the restaurant’s HQ, where cutting corners and customer/worker communications are their main concerns. Anyone under them is at the unwavering mercy (or lack thereof) of what they can throw at their expendable, and oftentimes underpaid, employees. In their minds, stores can and will be run like Michelin-starred restaurants, regardless of their real-world status, with restrictive and time-consuming procedures upheld to ensure that every meal comes out memorably. In reality—where time is always against anyone who works in a kitchen that’s halfway functional on a lucky day—it’s not easy to consider every little detail that corporate would like us to. We have to find our own ways to cut corners and keep time restraints in mind just to make sure we can get food out of the kitchen. That sometimes leads to unsafe decisions for both workers and customers. We all know that customer safety is what’s most important, and we do our best to abide by that, but you might be surprised if you knew what happens in a kitchen to keep them from truly becoming sick.

There were problems in the restaurant industry before COVID. Now there are a plethora of new issues affecting a vast majority of restaurants.

COVID-19 Made Restaurant Work Worse

There were problems in the restaurant industry before COVID. Now there are a plethora of new issues affecting a vast majority of restaurants, and it seems like those problems will continue until workers begin to show a little retaliation.I began working at a newly-opened location of a breakfast cafe chain a little over a year ago. In the beginning, we barely had any online or to-go ordering. We all assumed our kitchen would work like most kitchens. Training went off without a hitch, and everyone was well on their way to becoming comfortable at their stations, with three people crammed in prep, working diligently, six on the line and a pair of dishwashers. While it was a little annoying at times to take a step and be on someone’s foot, customer demand practically required the full team to be on the line to keep pumping food out at a rate to match the orders coming in. As time went on, those who couldn’t handle the heat (literally and figuratively) of the kitchen left or took transfers back to the stores that had previously trained them. Those who remained got used to working in a kitchen that was permanently short-staffed, with the rare inclusion of a “warm body” hire or help from another store. It became routine for me and one other person to wake up before sunrise and head to the kitchen for an hour of prep work before opening. At least I was rewarded a key—not because I was working hard and deserved it but because I got tired of having to wait 30 minutes outside for management to show up and then proceed to rush line setup while cooking.Currently, we take to-go orders through Uber Eats, Olo, our website and in-person, while also dealing with in-house orders from groups as big as 30 at a time from 6 in the morning until hours past when we’re supposed to close. The restaurant itself has no means of slowing down production or denying large groups or ridiculous orders—that’s up to the graces of those above us, who only see the $5,000 days and not the way they’re wearing us down. The bad reviews, tremendous wait times and order mess-ups have caused things to ease up, but we’re still obligated to send out food we don’t have and to improvise even under the worst of conditions. As corporate continues to expand an already considerable number of stores, it begins to stretch what little we have. We’re constantly training new management and new employees, who either quit on us after a few weeks or are forcefully transferred to satiate another store’s needs. Current employees have gotten tired of having to train all the time, so now they just leave new hires to fend for themselves and to get berated for not knowing a job they were never trained for. It doesn’t help to have a highly explosive manager who imposes half of their workload on the employees, screams and belittles anyone who tries to do their job and doesn’t care to oversee the more vicious customers, leaving servers to handle customers’ belligerent wrath themselves.

In the Food Service Industry, Hell Is Other People

I’ll never understand the headspace of people who get aggressive with someone who's only trying to do their job—sometimes aggressive enough to the point that police are involved, always over something minor. You aren’t really going to go into the kitchen and make it yourself—especially since what you’re asking for is far beyond our kitchen’s capabilities. You’re not going to be applauded for making your server cry, especially when they barely make a living wage and still come to work with undeniable strength. That type of behavior shows a low level of intelligence when you aren’t willing to be at least a little civil over something that can easily be fixed if you’re patient. Don’t do unto others what you don’t want others to do unto you. Get off your high horse, leave the God complex at the door and accept that cooks or servers are going to make mistakes—because shockingly enough, we, too, are human. Remember, there’s no restaurant if everyone quits because they no longer want to deal with the abuse, so have a little humility and understand that being able to sit in any restaurant is a privilege that can easily be taken away by the will of the workers.My biggest issue is with customers who want great food without the wait. Understand that restaurants and fast-food places are two vastly different entities with two increasingly different ways of how the kitchen is run. I don’t go to a drive-thru and expect to get a mid-rare burger on a slightly toasted brioche bun with maple-glazed bacon in under 40 seconds for the same reason that no one on planet earth should expect that the food at a sit-down restaurant will come out as fast as at a drive-thru. Understand that even in the kitchen, we are vividly aware of what happens in the front as well. We remember names and faces, the ones who come in trying to scam a free meal, and although we can’t kick them out unless they become a documented habitual repeater, we’re not nice to the food that goes out to them.

Get off your high horse, leave the God complex at the door and accept that cooks or servers are going to make mistakes—because shockingly enough, we, too, are human.

Feeding You Has Made Me Fed Up

People who have never worked in a restaurant setting such as this will never come to fully understand the level of frustration and exhaustion that we work through on a daily basis. We not only work six out of seven days, for 10 to 12 hours straight in the blazing heat, but extensively deal with issues beyond our job description. It’s not hard to fall into becoming the reliable one if you’ve got a good work ethic, to have odd jobs gradually tacked onto your workload that over time become your responsibility. I don’t do this job out of passion anymore. The work is grueling and way too much stress for anyone to deal with for 10 straight hours daily. I don’t even really do it for the paycheck because I have other means of revenue from more confidential projects. I used to wake up every morning to face a job with a good living wage that I’ve started to hate because of the immoral work standards and the aggressively rude clientele who we’re supposed to serve with an unmatched kindness. To this day, I don’t use microwaves because my first restaurant job had one going at practically all hours of the day, but my current job has made me start hating myself for having to deal with severe anxiety and heart palpitations at such a young age due to everything I’ve dealt with over the course of a year.I guess in some way, I could thank my horrible work situation for making me realize that this is a world I no longer wanted to make for myself, for getting me to venture out into uncharted territories and find new means of making a livable wage without the stress. Rest assured, when the company finds a decent workforce that won’t quit or be expedited elsewhere, I’ll be quitting the same day.

In my late teens, I did what every other student does and spent my summers as a waitress. I was due to leave London for a year abroad in California the following year, so I was desperate to start saving up.The agency that I worked for hosted some of the most prestigious parties and events in London, so during my summers while at university, I began traveling around the city to polo clubs, historic museums and even a royal palace. None of which I would have ever stepped foot in otherwise.

Different Social Classes in England Have Always Existed; I Just Hadn’t Been Exposed to Them

Up until that point, I had lived in London all 22 years of my life, but this was the first time I saw how the other half lived in my own city. At one polo club gala ball, I served canapes to beautiful guests who could have easily just walked off the set of Made in Chelsea. I was hardly surprised to overhear conversations about “Eaton this” and “Harrow that.” After all, at no point in the history of British state schooling has polo ever been offered as an extracurricular activity. If I didn’t already feel uncomfortable about the level of social and economic inequality in my country, I was about to feel a whole lot worse. Rubbing shoulders with members of London’s high society, I immediately found the opulence with which they were accustomed to jarring.

This was the first time I saw how the other half lived in my own city.

British Upper-Class Chivalry Is Only for the People Sitting at the Table

I internally rolled my eyes at the fuss made over a new champagne at one product launch party, having just overheard how much each bottle cost. At a private lunch for two international banks, I polished white porcelain plates that had been specially flown from China for the two-hour event. At that same lunch, I was specifically asked to serve the head of the British bank first, seeing as this particular gentleman had paid for the £50,000 event. I dutifully did as told and served his starter of grilled lobster tails from the right, of course. As soon as I set the plate down, the balding, suited man proceeded to chastise me in front of his table full of guests.“Serve my wife first,” he demanded. Red-faced and flustered, I quickly took the plate back and placed it in front of the boss’s equally embarrassed wife. It would appear manners and chivalry were only reserved for women sitting at his table. From then on, the miserable-looking man continued to treat me with as much respect as the dirt on his Christian Louboutin leather shoes."I'm going to America,” I told myself as I served him his roasted rump of Herdwick lamb with smoked sheep's yogurt. “I'm going to America.”

Experiencing the Economic Divide of British Classism

Around this time, I was working as a student ambassador for my university’s outreach team. I absolutely loved the role, which involved visiting underprivileged schools in London and encouraging pupils to enroll in universities across the country. These prospective students would be the first generation in their families to have ever attended university or to gain a higher-level education.I found the work unbelievably rewarding and had always felt passionately about social mobility, especially within diverse communities. It was heartening to speak with pupils from deprived backgrounds who were dreaming big dreams for their future. But this experience juxtaposed so sharply with the parties at which I was spending my summers working. “Which agency do you work for?'' one beautifully coiffed party-goer once asked me. I politely informed her of the company, to which she replied: “Oh, I love them; we’ve used them for several parties.” “Darling, the caterers are the ones we’ve used before,” she called across to her equally coiffed and manicured 20-something-year-old daughter. “Oh yes, Mummy, I remember. Tabatha and Hugo should use them for their engagement party if they don’t go to Bora Bora.” This was one of many exchanges I would hear over the summer. As I said, how the other half lives.

I couldn’t help but notice that the only Black people or other minorities I ever saw at these parties were the waiters, kitchen porters or delivery men.

Classism in England Is a Racial Inequality Issue Too

I couldn’t help but notice that the only Black people or other minorities I ever saw at these parties were the waiters, kitchen porters or delivery men. Even behind the scenes, the venue owners, catering managers, photographers and chefs were all white. It was a constant reminder of the reality of racial inequality in Britain today, which made me only more resentful when Michelin-starred chefs agonized over the presentation of the red-veined sorrel leaves on the duck breast starter. I couldn’t bring myself to appreciate the amount of blood, sweat and tears that pastry chefs poured into designing and preparing their frozen mint and Belgian chocolate parfait creations. Especially when ball-gowned women would politely decline the dessert course. It was difficult to reconcile such excess when I knew how deprivation existed only neighborhoods away. The more time I spent immersed in this alternative reality, the more I wanted to escape and devote my time to uplifting underrepresented communities. So that is exactly what I decided to do.

British Classism Motivates Me to Pursue a Different Life

At the end of the summer, I left waitressing behind and went back to university to continue working with gifted and talented underprivileged teenagers. My final day on the job involved polishing silverware at a £200,000 wedding and being clicked at twice by a bride with more money than manners.So you can imagine I had no regrets about my decision. The experience revealed the depressing truth that Britain’s class and racial divides remain deeply entrenched within society today. But seeing this firsthand only gave me the impetus to do something about it and further convinced me of my mission to seek justice and equality through my life’s work. I suppose every minute of my waitressing days really was worth it.

Being stuck with the Sunday skeleton crew waiting on the crustiest bunch of Christians the Bible Belt has to offer wouldn’t be so bad if I wasn’t by myself, or at least so hungover. I don’t even remember my hour-and-a-half commute. I drank too much last night and stayed up too late. Now I’m way too hungover with way too many tables and not enough fucks to see me through the week, let alone the end of this shift. As soon as the old man in front of me spits out his order, I’m going to the restroom. Just as soon as those mortuary-thin lips part and the cobwebs clear from his esophagus. Just as soon as he upholds the patriarchal chain of command and orders without consulting his wife. Just as soon as he— “Y'all's tea fresh? I don’t want no spoiled tea.”“Absolutely.”Standing here, hurrying up just to wait. This job wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for these people. They turn a 10-hour drag into a sadistic hell full of assholes huffing their farts and asking if you like the smell. I know a lot of servers don’t feel this way, but I do, and I don’t think it’s my fault.

This job wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for these people.

My Job Has Made Me Lose Faith in Humanity

It’s not the 30 hours of work or even the 15 hours of class every week that kills me. It’s not my three-hour round-trip commute or my strung-out coworkers. It’s not even my sycophant manager or the horndog owner. It’s not any of that. It’s the other part: the never-ending requests for more butter and ranch. The idiots that can’t remember what they ordered. The lame-ass jokes and recycled cliches. Asking for a “strong” drink or food we don’t carry because they’re too illiterate to read the menu. The lactose-intolerant, gluten-free fuckwads expecting the red carpet in a dive bar. The bootlicking homophobes calling me a “fag” when I cut them off. The racist sacks of shit in cowboy hats and their undeserved sense of entitlement. Oh, and every single fucking dipshit that orders a filet mignon well-done. Get fucked. All of you. You’re the reasons I hate my job, lost faith in humanity, God and any hope of escaping this Midwest circumstance. It’s not that I don’t want to work or that I’m lazy. It’s the unconscious morons that would rather shoot the shit and polish a turd instead of ordering. It’s not my fault I lost hope in everything; it’s the public’s. “I think I'll take me a sweet tea.” “I’ll have that right out to you.” Right after I get myself where I need to be.How did I get here, spreading out white lines on a toilet paper holder? I could’ve been a teacher like Mom wanted. Or anything besides a wannabe cliche, another table-waiting writer. If the Christians could see me now, their knickers would be twisted up further than the stick in their ass. They’d wonder, how in heaven’s name could anyone wait tables on drugs? But honestly, how in the hell could anyone wait tables not on drugs? There are a few things in this world you can trust: a fat cook, a dirty mechanic and an inebriated bartender. Granted, I’m coked out and not drunk, but after this, I’ll type a 3,000-word essay on the ideologies of the French Revolution, then wake up for a lecture on historiography and start over again. Right now, I’ve got 50 bucks of blow in my nose and a restaurant full of hungry assholes whose kindness went out the stained glass when the dollar bills hit the offering plate. I’ve got bills to pay and old folks waiting on teas. An appetizer for 12. Seven needs salads. Shit! The regulars. Tom and Tracy need a drink. Honestly, fuck those little kids and their coloring books. I’ll pretend I forgot.Did the door ding again? Great. Any boog-shug in the Batcave? Nope. I’m good. Let’s do this. Well, what’s one more? WHO-AH! Shit, did they hear that? I sound like a Hoover going over a wet balloon. Fuck it. Sniff, sniff, it's allergy season, you know how it is.

Hell Is Other People (Especially When You’re Their Server)

“Hi, how are we—““We have six.” Alright lady, cool, I’ll go fuck myself. I didn’t give a shit how your day was anyway. More people coming in. Fucking awesome.“Ma’am, I have a table here, and I’ll be right with you.” This stay-at-home mom eats so much Xanax, she double taps Vyvanse to pass the time between strokes of the broom. What am I saying? That’s rude to assume. I’m sure she has a maid. Do I know this couple? I hope I don’t know anyone who still wears boat shoes and pastel polos. Goddammit. He knows me. “Whaddup, dude?”Shit. “Hey man, how are you? Just two?” I think I recognize him. His face is so fat and average. I’ve seen it a thousand times on the Frat Chads in knee-high khakis, Apple Watches and Oakley shades. Cardboard cutouts that left their small town for a big university, earning a business degree only to pick up the family legacy where Daddy left off. They’re the generational circumstance of a silver spoon. They either have their nose so high, they’d drown in the rain or so far up their ass, their face could be an enema.“Oh! Before you run off—” Before? Motherfucker, I’m already six steps and a hopscotch across the dining room. “Babe, Bloody Marys?” “Yasssss, that sounds so good.” It pisses me off that she’s hot.“Alright, I’ll—”“Oh, can we … alsooooooooooo … geeeet … an order of oysters?”This motherfucker.“Oh, and bud, make those drinks strong, mmkay?” Did this cuck seriously wink at me?How about some vodka and ketchup and then you can drive drunk straight to hell? Wait … is that the same guy I heard got beat up for shitting on someone’s carpet and woke up in his Beamer, smeared head to toe in poop? Good to see he’s still a shitstain.Alright, they need their drinks. I ran that appetizer, got those salads. Tom’s good. Tracy’s nursing her drink. Now I just need to get the table of pre-cremated corpses their drinks and I’ll be good. These old fucks probably saw me talking to Shitpants McGee instead of doing my job. Oh well, they’ll take it out of the ten percent they weren’t gonna tip me. “Here’s your sweet tea, sir.”“Where’s my lemon? I told you, sweet tea with lemon.” No you didn’t, you gaslighting old fuck. “I’m so sorry. One moment.”If they’re the people I’ll meet in heaven, I’m glad I’ll miss out. It’s never just one trip to a table of old people. There’s too much hair in their ears to hear you and not enough dental glue to tell you what they need. We should just take away their rights. No driving, no voting, no cell phones, Facebook or Fox News. These cunts are getting the local news, golf and Matlock. Anything else is too stimulating. While we’re at it, no sugar or dairy. It’s Splenda and powdered creamer only, or no senior discount. “Here’s your lemon, sir. Are we ready to order?”

If they’re the people I’ll meet in heaven, I’m glad I’ll miss out.

I Work My Ass Off, but It’s Not Worth It

You move to their beat and stop when they say, or you’re rude and lazy. I wish I could say it gets better, but it won’t. It’s the same every day. I wish I could say the old fucks and the young cunts tipped me well. I wish, despite all my negative thinking, that I was wrong, but I’m not. They tipped a collective $7. But I don’t care anymore. I’ve got nine hours of ricocheting from table to table like a fly searching a window pane for financial freedom. I can’t wait to close so I can sit down in my car after ten hours of serving, in that silence between a commute and an essay, where my feet burn with relief and my mind throws away its list of everyone’s bullshit. Then, when the time’s right, I’ll light a joint, drive home and start over again. For now, though, I’m stuck serving old Christians, coked out of my mind, trying to make ends meet between a dead-end job and a stupid dream.