There was a great article this morning in the Sunday Times sports section about figure-eight stock car racing, which one racetrack tow-truck driver described as "definitely one of the most dangerous types of motor sports there is".
It's a pretty simple concept. Drivers maneuver their 650-horsepower cars around a cramped half-mile figure eight track (which is usually unpaved), at speeds approaching 100 miles an hour. In order to make the transition from running clockwise around one loop to running counterclockwise around the other, they are obliged to steer directly into oncoming traffic trying to make the same transition in the other direction. Imagine driving full-tilt down a busy urban street and running every red light you encounter, relying on your timing, reflexes, and a whole lot of luck. Crashes are frequent and spectacular; fatalities are not uncommon. Even so, the sport endures at dozens of tracks around the country and is a multigenerational affair in many families.
The reporter sums it up pretty succinctly:
"The people who do this, who tenderly build racecars that cost up to $50,000 and then drive them repeatedly into crossing traffic, know that they are wired differently."
Hey, wait a minute. Are we sure he isn't writing about chefs here?
My average workday for the most part feels an awful lot like a succession of potential head-on collisions, most of which I manage to avoid by sheer dint of experience, snap judgment, and sometimes pure luck. In order to succeed as a chef, you can't back down when things get messy. You need to stick your neck out and make the hard decision, knowing full well that the entire operation may come grinding to a halt if you blow a call. You need to have the courage of your convictions to stick to a decision when it is the right thing to do, and the willingness to stand on the brakes and swerve when you sense the gap closing too fast. When it's Monday morning and the gas isn't working and your breakfast cook is in police custody, when the produce truck is late and the dish machine is down and the barista has locked herself in your office to cry and oh, by the way, the CEO is in town and wants to tour today… you, as the chef, can't just slow down and drift into the pit lane to think things over. The rest of the cars are still careening around that track and you need to grit your teeth and stare down the oncoming traffic and make a MOVE, motherfucker. And not only that you have to enjoy it, live for it, even look forward to it. As a good friend in the business said to me recently at the tail end of another 14-hour day: "Boredom is my Kryptonite".
If you get off on an environment where things routinely burst into flames, where blood, sweat and tears are more than a figure of speech…well, there's just something fundamentally different about you. If you take it for granted that an honest day's work starts somewhere north of the ten-hour mark and probably doesn't involve a lunch break, if you assume that your average workday will almost certainly involve raised voices, foul language, physical discomfort, stress, confrontation, and the near-sexual release of cranking out mass volumes of good food…well, fuck. You're reading this, aren't you?
For the past several months my late-night, can't-sleep bedside reading has been Sun Tzu's The Art of War, in an edition edited with commentary aimed directly at contemporary managers in the business world. The basic premise – that modern corporations are not far removed from feudal Chinese warfare – holds up as pretty sound. And who among us hasn't felt the occasional urge to behead a concubine or two, just to make our point?
One theme which recurs again and again is the issue of resource allocation. Does the wise General send reinforcements to shore up an underprotected area, or does he leverage his strong positions in order to divert pressure from his weaknesses? Defend the castle or storm the bridge? Do you slide that extra tight end over to the weak side to cover the gap, or do you double-stack him with your fullback and go up the gut?
In other words, just another day at the office. Do I break up my dream team on the sautee line in order to shore up a pantry that's chronically weeded? Do I shave my product cost to the bone to free up more cash for labor, or do I max out on the fact that my food kicks ass and drive the top line sales, in the hopes that it all flows through? Do I spend my morning doing mis for the weakest station in my empire, or do I dedicate my time to challenging and developing my A-players, knowing full well that they're the ones who are going to carry my ass in the long run? That's how I spend my early commute every day, mentally juggling scenarios as the cool morning air swirls inside my helmet and the bike laps up the miles of darkened asphalt. By the time I walk into the kitchen at 6AM I know who is going where and doing what, which subtle adjustments we are going to make to face the day, where we might fall down and what I'm going to do to stop it.
And if I have to run a few red lights to get there, what the hell. It isn't the speed that gets you, it's the sudden stop.
