I’m Nathan Langley and this is Maackia, a (very delayed) monthly newsletter on character.
It’s 6:45am. The cat’s incessant crying has woken everyone in the house again. But that’s ok — you asked the cat to wake you up earlier than usual, as today marks the beginning of a major milestone in your life.
You bash your way through the usual morning routine and are now ready for some breakfast. But as you begin to eat, a warm, heavy sensation washes over your body and settles in the centre of your chest. You begin to realize what you have to do today: you have to go to school for the first time.
Everyone at home tells you it will be fun — that they are excited for you to go on a new adventure! Nonetheless, you’re barely four years old. You have never been away from home, alone, for an entire day. Never mind being away from your parents for that long.
To top it off, you have to get on a bus with lots of people you have never met — to go to a school with even more people you don’t know.
Despite your reservations, you still get ready to go. As you wait for the bus at the end of your driveway, a random person walks by on their morning constitutional. “Is it your first day of school?”
You smile and explain it is your first day of school ever. “Wow, that’s so exciting! Have a wonderful first, first day of school!”
The bus rolls up shortly afterwards. The lights flash; the door opens.
There is a spring in your step now. Let’s go!
Apologies for the lack of newsletters lately. Things went a little sideways this season. I won’t dwell on the issues faced, or the failures endured, as they aren’t that interesting. But my mind has been unusually focused on one thing throughout all the mess: character.
It’s partly my fault, I guess, as I continue to spend my spare time learning about cooking. As an outlet for my frustrations, I finally read Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. Like a lot of other professional chefs, his tales touched on numerous topics you would anticipate. But there was a lot in there that I wasn’t expecting.
Practicing your craft in expert fashion is noble, honorable and satisfying. And I’ll generally take a standup mercenary who takes pride in his professionalism over an artist any day. When I hear ‘artist’, I think of someone who doesn’t think it necessary to show up at work on time.
…
When a job applicant starts telling me how Pacific Rim-job cuisine turns him on and inspires him, I see trouble coming. Send me another Mexican dishwasher anytime. I can teach him to cook. I can’t teach character. Show up at work on time six months in a row and we’ll talk about red curry paste and lemon grass. Until then, I have four words for you: ‘Shut the fuck up.’
— Anthony Bourdain - Kitchen Confidential
Until this year, I wouldn’t have agreed with that quote. I thought you could teach character. I’ve read the books and built the systems that allow me to work for myself today. It’s not rocket science — it’s just gardening.
I think my hubris came from a simple misunderstanding of what having character meant. It is born from what you decide to do when you are faced with immense pressure. How are you going to react?
What most people don’t get about professional level cooking is that it is not at all about the best recipe, the most innovative presentation, the most creative marriage of ingredients, flavors and textures; that, presumably, was all arranged long before you sat down to dinner. Line cooking - the real business of preparing the food you eat - is more about consistency, about mindless, unvarying repetition, the same series of tasks performed over and over and over again in exactly the same way. The last thing a chef wants in a line cook is an innovator, somebody with ideas of his own who is going to mess around with the chef’s recipes and presentations. Chefs require blind, near-fanatical loyalty, a strong back and an automation-like consistency of execution under battlefield conditions.
— Anthony Bourdain - Kitchen Confidential
My official start in horticulture, even though I don’t really consider it as such, was working for the school district back home. The job was simple: line trim. The hard part was that I had to do it day in and day out all day for an entire summer.
When I started working at the UBC Botanical Garden, I, along with three others, were tasks with more drudgery. One of the primary projects we worked on that summer was pulling an invasive species of Rubus that was originally planted as part of the Asian Garden collection. It was everywhere and we would pull truck loads of the stuff each day by hand.
I had forgotten these tales from my past. I didn’t remember that I wasn’t allowed to prune trees and shrubs until my second year working at the garden (I wasn’t even given a pair of secateurs until that point anyway). Instead, I thought I could make gardening more exciting for people new to the trade and teach them what I knew quickly and efficiently.
But what I have come to understand is that people new to gardening likely haven’t worked under real pressure before. Professional gardening isn’t like gardening at home. It’s slightly different from cooking under pressure, I’ll give you that. But it can be just as brutal.
Visitors would often comment about how lucky we were to be working at the UBC Botanical Gardens — that gardening was their dream job! Of course they would say that. They don’t understand. They haven’t faced the pressure of what the job really entails each and every day. They just smell the roses and go home.
My largest frustration with character is that you don’t know who has it until they have worked with you. You have to see how they respond to the pressure that will inevitably hit them in the face one day, and then be there when they realize what the job actually means. What do they decide to do then?
Skills can be taught. Character you either have or don’t have. Bigfoot understood that there are two types of people in the world: those who do what they say they’re going to do - and everyone else.
— Anthony Bourdain - Kitchen Confidential
After this summer, I, clearly, still have a lot to learn. But looking back, I can better appreciate why I was brought up through the trade the way that I was. I know how I responded. And now I have a better understanding of what it means to have character. It’s a lesson I won’t forget.
n