Chet is a good cook, but nobody is perfect. Everyone has a breaking point and tonight Chet’s breaking point was five orders of bacon wrapped salmon on the same check.

I watch it printing, snickering on the inside as Chet slams his tongs against his cutting board exactly five times. My entertainment quickly becomes anxiety as more and more tickets come pouring in without Chet starting any of them. 

“I only have four salmon prepped!” Chet screams, running for the walk-in.

He emerges from the cooler with a crazed look in his eye, a filet of salmon in one hand, and a pound of bacon in the other. 

“We’re on our own now,” he uses the salmon to point toward the dining room, “they’re feeding us to the wolves.” 

He starts wrapping the salmon in bacon, clumsy from all the rage coursing through him. 

“What’s with all the noise?” Macy asks. 

“Five orders of bacon wrapped salmon in the middle of the dinner rush,” Chet retorts, “it’s pretty damn noisy.”  

Then he slams five pans onto the stove and turns them all up so they are ripping hot. He pours a spoonful of oil in each pan and once they start to smoke, he places the fish in. 

The waitresses come and go, rolling their eyes as Chet’s anger grows. By the time he gets the salmon into the oven, the entire board is filled with tickets. 

I have been selling whatever small orders I can, appetizers and salads and burgers. But without Chet starting any entrees, there’s not much that I can put out. When I start heating up a pan for sauteed mushrooms, he turns to me with his eyes seeing red and commands me:

“You fry chicken.”

Not knowing how to respond to his aggression, I ask:
“I have fingers ready, if you can go up on table twelve?” 

I ask this with full knowledge that he has no crab cakes cooking. Normally a crab cake takes five to ten minutes. But Chet responds:

“Two minutes.” 

So I start selling all of my food as fast as possible, hoping that the hot window can keep it warm and that Chet can keep up. But before Macy and Shay come and take the food away, a new wave of orders comes pouring in. 

“I didn’t know we had this much seating.” 

My half assed joke flies over Chet’s head. He’s glaring with murderous intention at the server station. In his head, the dinner rish is the server’s fault. To keep his mind on cooking I ask:
“You good to go on table five?”

He nods silently, keeping his death stare focused on the servers. His lack of communication must have worried the dishwasher, because he walks around the corner wringing his hands nervously.

“Do you guys need any help or anything?”

“Get out of here, Chris.” Chet snarls at our innocent dishwasher. “I need clean pans.”

An order comes in for eight cheeseburgers, cooked to every temperature of the meat-rainbow. I start throwing burgers on the grill and Chet begins to gain on me. We dig ourselves out of the hole slowly but surely. But as the number of tickets grows smaller, Chets anger increases more and more. 

“No warnings.” He exclaims. “God forbid the front of the house should communicate with the kitchen.” 

The last ticket hanging is the one with eight burgers: two cowboys, three classics and three shroom-and-swisses. Chet helps me plate them and put them up in the window without saying a word to me. 

I thank him for helping me through the last of it but he isn’t listening. He’s already halfway out the door to have a smoke. 

When the door slams behind him, Chris steps onto the line again, looking more bewildered than before. 

“What’s up with him today?”

“I don’t know, just keep your distance.” 

I give Chris whatever dirty cookware I accumulated during the dinner rush. And I’m starting to clean up Chet’s mess with Chris’s help when Shay rushes into the kitchen holding one of the classic burgers in her hand. 

“Hey Ray, do you have an extra burger cooking?”

My heart falls out of my chest. 

“No?” I ask. “What for?” 

“Macy needs a cowboy burger.” 

Then Chet comes back in. He sees me talking to Shay, the worry on her face and the cheeseburger in her hand. 

“What wrong?” He asks.

Afraid of the confrontation, I start walking towards the grill before I say:

“We need another burger.” 

He looks at Shay in disbelief, tickled by the idea of the waitstaff messing up. 

Then Macy stomps into the kitchen, she’s worried about her tip, when she should be worried about Chet. She must not know she rang in the wrong burger, because she asks:

“Do you guys have the third cowboy ready?”

Chet walks over to her with the ticket in his hand, smiling like a crazed child.

“You didn’t ring in three cowboys,” he’s way too happy about her mistake, “you rang in three classic burgers.”

Then he starts giggling, high pitched and frantic. It’s an annoying laugh, right in Macy’s face no less.

“What’s so funny?” She asks sullenly.

Chet keeps on cackling, too amused to answer her. 

“Keep on laughing,” she taunts back, “that’s why everything was so damn slow tonight.”

The silence in the kitchen is painful. All I hear is the sound of the burger sizzling on the grill and the roar of the vents overhead. Chet’s blood is reaching its boiling point.

“Are you kidding me?” He explodes. “Do you know how terrible you are at your job? You flat-seated us to shit tonight and you still couldn’t keep your orders straight. You suck!”

Instead of running away from his wrath, she tries to fight it. 

“Excuse me!” She shouts back. “Do you know how many–”

“No,” he yells over her, “Get out of my kitchen.” 

“You can’t cook a fish to save your life, you never listen to anyone’s advice, and you’re the meanest–”

“Get the fuck out of my kitchen!” 

I can’t cook this meat patty fast enough. They’re going to be at each other’s throats before this is medium rare. The shouting continues, raising in volume until Bert the bartender comes back and breaks it up.

Chet ushers me away so he can plate the burger himself. When he hands it to Macy, she looks into his eyes and thanks me instead. 

“Thanks Ray, you’re the best.” 

That little bit of kindness killed him. With all the blood drained out of his face, Chet storms out of the kitchen. 

I go back to cleaning up but get interrupted when we hear loud crashing noises coming from the parking lot. Chris and I rush outside to find every window of Macy’s car shattered and the alarm blaring incessantly. 

Macy is already outside, weeping on her hands and knees. All of us watch in silence as Chet’s taillights fade into the distance.