The other day, I went to my dry goods shelf to grab a 5 kilo box of 64% chocolate pistoles, and found that it had been vandalized. Someone had written ñiñita chucha in black magic marker on the front of the box. Random scrawlings around a kitchen aren’t all that strange. I’ve seen everything from “te gusta maiz?” (you like corn?) written next to the employee toilet, part of a long-running kitchen joke involving an escort service ad and an ear of corn, to expletive filled notes imploring coworkers to keep a given area tidy, to random cartoon renditions of male genitals, to altered labels on my pastry items (tart turned into a fart, buttermilk becomes simply butt milk, you get the idea) Suffice it to say it doesn’t take much to entertain a bunch of kitchen workers.
But ñiñita chuca was the first bit of graffiti to show up in my present workplace which had been, up to that point, generally free of expletives, shouting, practical jokes and general bad behavior. In other words, it’s been a bit atypical as far as restaurant kitchens go. When I casually asked the Spanish-speaking chef what ñiñita chuca means, he answered just as casually, um, it’s like, cute little pussy, in Guatemalan slang. Huh? My relationship with the Spanish-speaking contingent with whom I shared the basement prep area had been pretty good up to that point so I found it unlikely that one of them would call me a pussy via a box of chocolate, and anyway, after years in kitchens, I’ve done my best to make sure I don’t come close to giving off a pussy vibe. So I gathered the three of them around, held up the vandalized box and asked, as non-accusingly as I could (I didn’t want them to think I actually cared about the grafitti, I just wanted to figure it out), why did someone write cute little pussy on my chocolate? The butcher, and the oldest of the three, looked a little surprised at the words that had just come out of my mouth but simply shook his head as if in exasperation, while the youngest started to giggle. He’s from Guatemala, he explained, pointing at the third, holding his stomach as he laughed, as if it all made perfect sense. And that was all the explanation I got.
June 26th, 2009
9:48 pm
While I’ve only worked in two kitchens (this is a second career for me, I came out of a corporate environment) there are days that I feel as though I work in a frat house. These are not the most sophisticated or intelligent people I’ve encountered.
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