Grace is really excited.
She
has this great idea to have me come in weeknights to get started cutting filets
for gift boxes. I can just cut the
beef—no bacon wrapping and skewering—and she will cryovac them and freeze
them. It’ll save so much time later on;
she’ll just thaw them out, wrap them in bacon, and wrap them for gift
boxes.
The
delivery truck comes Tuesday, so she tells me to text her Wednesday about
coming in Wednesday night.
Wednesday
comes, and she tells me not to bother coming in.
When I come in Saturday, there
are two trays of filets in the cooler.
“So after Grace asked me to
come in and cut filets, you guys decided to have someone else do it?” I ask
Tommy.
“I—I don’t . . . Leroy did
those, so yeah I guess.”
Leroy’s new nickname is Leroy
the Tornado. Because he whips through
fast and leaves mass destruction in his wake.
He is fast and furiously trimming and tying tenderloin in the back room;
standing in pools of blood of his own making.
As I start to get myself
situated for the day—clearing off the work space, straightening everything,
putting gloves, skewers, and a scale within reach—Grace comes by and whispers,
“I love the guy, but I hate how all of Leroy’s filets are different sizes.”
I simply shrug. I suppose that’s what happens when you call
someone else in to do what I do best.
A few weeks ago, she was
wrapping up a bunch of six ounce filets that I’d cut, and she kept asking, “Are
these sixes or eights?”
Those are sixes. That’s what they look like when you weigh them.
I’m cutting for orders and gift
boxes, not the case. They stock the case
with the filets that Leroy made. Once I
start cutting, their shittiness becomes even more apparent. Tommy starts throwing them away and taking my
fresh ones for customers. Not even
tossing them in the grinder, just putting them in the garbage. Meat that we could have sold for $19.99 a
pound. One . . . two . . . three . . .
and it’s official: if they’d had me come
in for a few hours Wednesday night, they would’ve made money on this deal.
Grace asks me to come in Sunday,
strictly to cut filets for gift boxes.
Her other great idea—spurred on
by Kyle—is to limit the number of orders we take each day this holiday
season. We are accepting 175 orders to
be picked up on Christmas Eve; 250 orders for pick-up on the 23rd and
22nd. After that, customers have to pick
up the 21st, and so on. Orders for the
21st will have to be frozen if they’re expecting to be served on Christmas.
This will work out great—if
they’re actually able to stick to it.
