04.06.07

Practical Jokes

Posted in The Story at 11:26 am by Chef Matt

The jokes that are told in the kitchen are generally of the type that I won’t be sharing here. Mainly because my mother reads this blog, and because I am sure you have heard all these jokes before at one time or another. If you want some examples of the humor styles exhibited, you can always read my latest kitchen humor post.

Yes, the jokes are even better than the good old Whoopee Cushion…

But the really fun jokes of a kitchen are the practical jokes. It is a non-stop effort by all people who work in a kitchen to try and fool everybody else. From simple bullshitting (”Hey, we have a party of 15 coming in tonight, get ready for it!”), to sending people on a wild goose chase (”Take this bucket and go get me a live lobster from the basement.”), some of the best kitchen humor comes in the form of making somebody feel like a fool.

The simplest example is the aforementioned “can you get [blank] for me?” prank. The new person is asked to go get something that does not exist, but because they are new and eager to please (and don’t want to be fired) they will search high and low for the non-existent El Dorado they have been charged with finding. This prank was even pulled on my wife on her first experience of working at Vero. I could have protected her from it, but it is just too damn funny. The key to this prank is timing. The restaurant has to be busy to add a sense of urgency to the request, and to make it believable that the person requesting it: a) needs the item now and b) can’t go get it him/herself.

Example used on my wife: “Hey Caroline, can you go downstairs and get me some clean napkins from the basement?” This was done with a vague point in a direction where the basement supposedly would be found. The prank puller (Jay in this case) then went back to work, looking furiously busy. So Caroline went off in the direction he pointed looking for the basement door. The only catch - Vero has no basement. But that didn’t stop her from opening any door she could find to see which one had the magic stairs leading down. When she returned in a panic asking where the basement was, we all let her off the hook… and I then slept on the couch for a week for laughing at the joke.

The series of pranks on this theme are never-ending in a kitchen, so you have to be constantly on your guard to figure out if what you are being told is the truth (in which case you must do it quickly), or if it is bullshit (in which case you must blow it off). Choose wisely…

Last night though, I decided to start a prank like this that snowballed into something truly magical. Our busboy, Brian, was in the kitchen refilling a series of water pitchers when I tossed him a simple line of bullshit on a whim.

“So Brian, are you coming in to work brunch on Easter Sunday?”

Pranks involving Easter are awesome…

Of course there is no brunch on Easter Sunday since we are never open on Sundays, let alone Sundays that are holidays. But I figured maybe I could get him going for a second or two. He expressed disbelief at first (good gut reaction to his credit), but I pushed the issue a little more to see if I could trick him. Jay overheard me, and decided to join in.

“Oh yeah, we’re gonna be slammed on Sunday, and I have a complex menu all set up - we’ll need all the help we can get!”

Greg, the dishwasher heard Jay join in and added a beautiful stroke of his own, “Yeah, they’re paying us time and a half too since it’s a holiday! You should come!”

I had discussed this prank with nobody. It only said it as a joke that I figured would maybe trick him for a second at best, but the kitchen culture is such that everyone knows when to run with a prank. When someone is falling for it, don’t let them off the hook easy.

So Brian went out front to ask the floor manager, Anne, about working Sunday. He of course didn’t want to come in on Easter, but all the same, he wanted to see if this was really happening. Seeing as how I said nothing to Anne about this, I figured she would blow it when he came up to her and asked her about working on a day when we would be closed. However, Anne happens to be a seasoned pro when it comes to kitchen pranks. She figured out what was going on immediately.

“Wait, she volunteered me for what?…”

“Yeah, I checked with your mom, and she said that you would be fine with working Easter for us.” (Brian’s mom, Jackie, works in the restaurant office.) Anne hit the prank in full stride and kept it alive in a way I never expected. And now Brian was upset that his mom had volunteered his time for Sunday.

But it was the next step where things became truly amazing. Brian called his mom and asked her why she volunteered him for Easter Sunday. This is when the joke really should have fallen apart right?… I mean Jackie had no idea we were making this story up, she knew full well we were closed on Sunday, and any mom would protect her son from a prank like this, right? The conversation apparently went something like this:

Brian: “Mom, why did you say I could work on Easter Sunday?”

Jackie: “You said you wanted to work more hours…”

She picked up on it in a heartbeat and placed the sweetest cherry on top of one of the finest practical jokes I had ever seen evolve. Brian was livid. He apparently was angry at his mom from that point on - a MOST unintended result to be sure - so I let him off the hook at this point.

“Wait, are you serious?” he asked, his eyes going as wide as I have ever seen them.

“Yes, for the first time I’m serious. We’re not open on Sunday man.”

Sorry Jackie!

Brian looked at me, then Anne, and in the true spirit of one who has just realized they had been taken for a major ride he delivered the punch line that makes the entire effort worthwhile: “You guys are total douche bags.”

This prank continues to amaze me. The story grew to mythically large proportions completely on its own accord like Chicken Little’s fear of a falling sky. I could never have imagined everyone could keep something like that going for so long, and so well. I’m sorry to Jackie that I made her son mad at her - but she knew it was all a joke, so I am assuming all is well. (All the same, I am bringing her flowers today…)

But there is one problem with my having been the ringleader of a joke like this:

Today is my birthday.

And I’m “next”.

Matt

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