Years ago, back when I worked in fine dining, I had the pleasure of working around a great chef named Jamie. His sense of humor had been etched in stone
decades before political correctness came along and he was also damn good at what he did. We liked each other immediately. We used to have a regular diner whom
I will call "Martha" and she was the worst sort of patron. Rude, demanding, awful tipper, bullied servers ; I was the only waiter on the staff she couldn't push around and it became my job to
wait on her every time. The management appreciated it as did the other servers so I would take one for the team.
One night Jamie ran escolar as a special and with his aforementioned sense of humor, our pre-shift meeting was one of the funniest I ever attended. He explained the re-"percussions" of over indulging in it and kept the portion around 4-5 oz. or so. In what can only be described as cosmic alignment Martha came in that night and ordered the escolar. She absolutely loved it but complained about the portion and asked if she could get another filet. I could not believe my luck. I didn't even walk to the kitchen, I floated. Beaming, I approached Jamie and explained the situation.
His pain was palpable. His face flushed, he grimaced, he held his head in his hands, he paced, he laughed, he took huge deep breaths, he went through it all. Finally he laid his hands flat on the expo, dropped his head, and his body seemed to go kind of limp. "I will go out there and explain it to her, but don't think for a moment that's what I want to do.", he said. On one hand I was crushed. We had Bin Laden in the crosshairs and let him go. On the other hand, I will always say that Jamie was a true professional.