I recently left my job as a pit crew cook at a commercial barbecue restaurant. It was an exceptionally educational experience, and I am grateful for my time there. I originally took that job hoping to peek behind the curtain of how barbecue, a beloved hobby of mine, was produced at the commercial scale. I got that and a little more than I expected.
Before I began working there, I was intimidated by the thought of buying a $100 raw brisket and smoking it all day. That just seemed like a lot of money and time invested in a piece of meat that I could ultimately screw up and waste. Today, I can cook multiple briskets, pork butts, pork ribs, chicken, turkey, sausage, prime rib and beef ribs simultaneously to a delicious perfection because I’ve now practiced on thousands of pounds of it.
Learning to cook the meat was only part of the process. I learned to trim it and season it. I learned how to maintain the grills and how to manage the fires. I learned how to lift boxes of 150 pounds of trimmed briskets off the floor onto a cart without throwing my back out. I even learned how to get up at 2 am everyday and still manage to spend time with my loved ones in the early evening through sleepy eyes, then get 5 hours of sleep, and do it all again the next day while also attending Farm School.
The big take away for me was the reminder that there are positives and negatives to every endeavor. There were things I loved about working at a restaurant again and things I did not. It wasn’t the best restaurant I’ve ever cooked at and it definitely wasn’t the worst.
This experience gave me a chance to see how far I have come since the last time I cooked for a living, and how I have changed as a person shaped by all those experiences in between. This restaurant experience gave me the chance to work alongside young people pondering their futures and making choices on where their lives will go. It also gave me the chance to work along side people, my own age, whose lives had brought them to this same spot along a very different path.
Other jobs I’ve had taught me to meet people in the immediate moment of our interaction as a way to give them the opportunity to be free of assumptions of who they might be. This job helped me learn to walk with people on the journey for a bit, laughing and learning together, before we come to the next fork in the road that sends us onto our separate futures.
Thanks to all of you for the good times, commiserations, and the valuable things I learned from each of you. I wish you all the best of luck on the rest of your journey.
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