Let The Man Cook
It’s a Friday night rush, and I’m training a new hire, walking them through station rotations. We pass the fryer station, where Marcus (names changed) is standing in his usual spot, bobbing slightly to music only he can hear, absolutely reeking of weed.
New Hire: “Uh… is he… always like that?”
Me: “Define ‘like that.'”
New Hire: “He smells like a dispensary and hasn’t blinked in ten minutes.”
Me: “Yeah, that’s Marcus. Fryer’s his domain.”
New Hire: “Isn’t that, like… against policy?”
Our manager walks by, sees Marcus rhythmically dropping fries with zen-like precision, nods in approval, then turns to us.
Manager: “Before Marcus, we lost three people in one week to the fryer station. One just disappeared into the night and never came back.”
New Hire: “So you let him work high?”
Manager: “I let him work quietly.”
Marcus pulls out a basket, perfect golden fries, zero grease burns, exactly on timer.
Me: “Marcus may be fried, but so are the fries.”
The new hire accepted this state of affairs, and we moved on with the training. A week later, when the new hire had to work the fryer on Marcus’s day off, they apologized for ever questioning anything about the “arrangement”.