You want it all without the consequence.

"In the course of the complex and terrible evolution which has brought the era of class struggle under a new set of conditions, the proletariat of the industrial countries has lost its ability to assert its own independence. It has also, in the last reckoning, lost its illusions. But it has not lost its being. The proletariat has not been eliminated, and indeed it remains irreducibly present, under the intensified alienation of modern capitalism, in the shape of the vast mass of workers who have lost all power over the use of their own lives and who, once they realise this must necessarily redefine themselves as the proletariat - as negation at work in the bosom of today's society. This class is objectively reinforced by the peasantry's gradual disappearance, as also by the extension of the logic of the factory system to a broad sector of labour in the "services" and the intellectual professions. Subjectively, though, this is a proletariat still very far removed from any practical class consciousness, and this goes not only for white-collar workers but also for wage workers who as yet know nothing but the impotence and mystifications of the old politics. But when the proletariat discovers that its own externaslised power conspires in the continual reinforcement of capitalised society, no longer thanks merely to the alienation of its labour, but also thanks to the form taken on by unions, parties and institutions of State power that it had established in pursuit of its own self-emancipation, then it must also discover through concrete historical experience that it is indeed that class which is totally opposed to all reified externalisations and all specialisations of power. The proletariat is the bearer of a revolution that can leave no other sphere of society untransformed, that enforces the permanent domination of the past by the present and demands a universal critique of separation; the action of the proletariat must assume a form adequate to these tasks. No quantitative relief of its poverty, no illusory hierarchal incorporation, can supply a lasting cure for its dissatisfaction, for the proletariat cannot truly recognise itself in any particular wrong it has suffered: nor, therefore, in the righting of any particular wrong - nor even in the righting of many such wrongs; but only in the righting of the unqualified wrong that has been perpetrated upon it - the universal wrong of its exclusion from life."

I'm curious

 If someone could help me out here that would be great. 

The entire UK is currently experiencing a "Cost Of Living Crisis" yes? 

Primarily, this is due to the massively increased cost of gas/electricity, industries that are required for living in 2022 (can we say 2023 yet? It's like ... two weeks away). A person cannot live without gas and/or electricity. It is illegal to use open flame inside a residential property, which is the only way one could cook or heat their home without those utilities. Even if one could sit in the dark without refrigerated food in the summer, or use the frigid air inside their home in the winter to keep their food cold, wrapped in rags and blankets against the frost, it would be impossible to cook anything without heat. And that's before we get to the part where we live in Scotland, so there is only seven hours of daylight in January. So there you would be, in the dark, starving.

And these utilities are not, as one would expect, public utilities controlled by the government, despite their necessity for living. And there can be no possible way that having your citizens being alive is not a priority for any civilised government. Even if only for selfish reasons. After all, dead people can't pay taxes.

So we are currently witnessing something that is affecting literally every living resident of the entire union, from the poorest to the richest, negatively. And there is the actual risk of death to the most vulnerable. That is not hyperbole. The desperately poor and the elderly and the infirm will die this winter when their power is cut, or they will die from health complications related to cold and malnutrition and overwork trying to solve this insoluble problem. Or they will lose their homes due to spiralling debt and be left in the streets to freeze. 

Countries with nationalised utilities have seen increases as low as 5%. The UK keeps using its little guerilla math to make our jumps seem smaller (12%, then 54% in April, then 80% in October, but they don't mention that that's compounded, so if you were paying £100 it would be £112  but then 54% on that, not on the original £100, so £175 in April, then 80% on that, so £315 by October, etc, so the real increase is actually 215% or more, as I'm sure your electric bill will reflect).

And the argument as to why this should be allowed to occur is that the utility companies are privatised, and the government cannot interfere with the operations of private companies. The companies have no moral obligation to the citizens and the government has no control over how these companies choose to operate their business. It would be a violation of their rights as capitalist entities, which apparently outweigh the rights of actual living human beings to see inside their own homes or not freeze to death.

And yet, if I recall correctly, for a period of twenty four months between April 2020 and March 2022 the UK government absolutely and unilaterally told almost every private business in the UK exactly what they were allowed to do and how, at great detriment to their profits, their workflow, their livelihoods, and their sovereign rights to pursue capital, did they not?

I myself, owner of two small restaurants, was told I had to close completely, and then that I could only do takeaway despite being set up to do sit-in dining, and then how many people were allowed inside my space, what kind of perspex and sanitiser I had to have on hand, how many employees could work there at any given time, etc. I had to provide masks and gloves, refuse service to non-compliant customers, close at random intervals for indeterminate periods of time while wages were still due and stock spoiled, and watch while my very hard-earned savings dwindled away to nothing. A shifting, impossible to navigate series of hoops and demands, the violation of which would result in my shops being closed by the government and being fined for violating the rules. 

I'm not sure if any of you remember, but the whole fucking city of Glasgow was shut except for grocery stores and petrol stations for quite a while there. Airlines were not allowed to operate. The taxi industry basically collapsed. Grants and furlough were not remotely enough to save hundreds and thousands of businesses across the UK who could not survive closure nor operating at half-capacity. Last time I checked that was the government telling private businesses what they could or could not do because there was a risk to the safety and health of the citizenry.

So I'm just wondering how it is that suddenly the government, when faced with a similar but even more acute crisis, which unlike COVID will actually affect 100% of the population, and also carries the risk of death for the most vulnerable among us, is suddenly unable to issue a single command to the utility companies or tell them specifically what they can or cannot do.

Either you can or you can't. And since we all know that you absolutely can, why would you not do it right now, before the holidays, at the coldest, shittiest time of the year, for the good of the people you are supposed to represent?

Every single one of these companies is on track to make record profits this year. RECORD profits. I know I bring this up all the time but Shell alone will make more in profit in 2022 than the entire £37 billion bailout package for ALL of the entire UK's poorest families. And that's just Shell. And that £37 billion is doing absolutely fuck all when these companies just quadruple their rates to overcompensate unnecessarily. So again, why could the UK government tell every restaurant, nightclub, retail outlet, office, airline, etc how to run their business even if it crippled them, but can't do the same for the ones that are right now causing absolute chaos and misery across every sector of the population?

I'm sorry, I keep saying "can't" when I'm asking why they won't. The precedent has already been well set. Two years worth of precedent, and we are technically still in the second year for another two weeks so it's not like you need to dig up some historians from their dusty libraries to explain how it worked back in the Victorian era. It was THIS YEAR. So what's the issue? 

Why won't they stop them, and why are they still in charge? Blatantly ignoring the basic needs and the lives of their constituents to help their pals make some money at the people's expense should immediately eliminate any mandate they think they have.

So if someone could explain it to me that would be great, because I just can't seem to make it make sense.

Say you made one million pounds in 2021

You did this by selling SEX VIBRATORS to LONELY WOMEN at the LANARKSHIRE COUNTY RUBBER WIGGLER CONVENTION.

It was a great year for rubber wigglers, and butt lube sales were also through the roof. Just a fantastic time for the whole industry. 

Thankfully, your vibrator manufacturing infrastructure has been in place for many years, and you stay on top of advancements in materials and design, plus there are government subsidies for large-scale wiggler production. Profit is steady and secure.

But oh no! War has broken out on the continent! There is a MAJOR DISRUPTION in the VIBRATOR SUPPLY CHAIN! 

You are counting on that million pounds in 2022! You already have your flights booked to the WARM GEL CONVENTION in Athens, and you need to pay your DIRTY UNDERWEAR BILL! Whatever will you do?!

Well, let’s see: Let’s say it costs you £10 to make a really top-notch, super long, very ergonomic vibrator that really wiggles those hard to reach places. First you need the raw materials (RUBBER, and AN ELECTRIC WIGGLER), which are sent to your SEX FACTORY to be assembled and hand painted by the art department. That’s all there is to it. The rubber costs £2.5 and the small yet powerful wiggler costs £6, plus a minor (yet in your eyes vital) £1.5 for some really vibrant paint.

Your production costs and wages are steady because you have a small yet dedicated team of RUBBER WIGGLER MANUFACTURERS that know their jobs and do them well. Your outgoing expenses are consistent because this isn’t your first SEX RODEO. Therefore, every year since you first had the dream of making aesthetically pleasing sexual prosthetics for the lonely and/or horny you have sold forty to fifty thousand “units” (that’s an industry term, which in this case represents RUBBER WIGGLERS) at a retail price of £40 each. Quite an impressive markup, but you have added VALUE to people’s VAGINAS AND BUTTS, and they are happy to pay it.

Your outgoing expenses, not counting raw materials, are £100,000 per year. That covers wages, utilities, shipping and distribution, dry cleaning, the company dental plan, rent on your vibrator factory, dry ice, wet ice, petrol for the unmarked van you bought when the company car got vandalised, and marketing. So it costs, every year, £100,000 plus raw materials to run the best god damned vibrator manufacturing company in Scotland, if not the whole of the UK.

So how many RUBBER WIGGLERS do you have to sell (at a very reasonable, especially for the WIGGLE QUALITY, £40) to consistently make a million pounds a year in profit?

MATH(S):

£1,000,000 (profit)

£100,000 (outgoings)

£??? (materials) (obviously this depends on WIGGLE DEMAND)

If we assume making £1,600,000 will cover the whole thing with some to spare then that is your target for the year, meaning you would need to sell roughly 40,000 SEX DEVICES to ensure you cover all costs and meet demand, plus make that £1,000,000 you want so you can go to the best LATEX WALTZES and DOUBLE-ENDED BRUNCHES that bring such joy into your life.

40,000 x £10 (rubber/wigglers/paint) = £400,000 (materials)

40,000 x £40 (retail price) = £1.6 million 

£1.6 million - £500,000 (£400K materials + £100K outgoings) = £1.1million in PROFIT

BOOM. There you go. Only a fool could fail to sell 40,000 “units” of top quality RUBBER WIGGLERS in a country this LONELY and HORNY. You do it every year! You’re on easy street!

But wait! We were so caught up in SEX MATH we forgot about the ECONOMIC CRISIS! 

The cost of rubber has LITERALLY DOUBLED! And there is an ELECTRIC WIGGLER SHORTAGE affecting almost all of the European Union! Thank fuck you use good old fashioned UK VIBRATOR PAINT, made right down in Yeovil. Still, this is a disaster for your rubber wiggler company. It now costs £5 in rubber, and £9 for the wigglers, plus inflation has pushed the cost of even UK-made vibrator paint to £2 per unit. 

SUDDENLY THE  DEPENDABLE RUBBER WIGGLER MANUFACTURING COSTS HAVE SPIRALLED TO AN UNPRECEDENTED £16 PER RUBBER WIGGLER! JUST TO MANUFACTURE! JUMPING JESUS ON A POGO STICK, WHO HAS HEARD OF SUCH A THING? AND WHAT DOES THIS DO TO YOUR BUDGET?!?

Well, your outgoings remain the same. The factory is good, the employees are seasoned pros, and you can even save a little on dry ice this year because of some internal feedback about its overuse. So that’s still £100,000 in outgoings. 

And, even though people are hurting and worried about the GLOBAL SITUATION, you still need that £1,000,000 in profit to go LUBE DIVING in Peru and you have to fly to Paris for the JIZZ MOP TRADE SHOW in August because there have been some really interesting developments in that industry and you don’t want to be out of the loop.

So now your materials costs to make 40,000 rubber wigglers is at £640,000 instead of £400,000. And, of course, at current prices you would instead need to sell another 4000 wigglers just to hit your targets, which would increase materials cost closer to £700,000. That’s a 75% increase!

Fucking-A, WIGGLE BOSS. Can you guarantee that there are another 4,000 horny customers out there? And how do you cope with the near doubling of your materials costs?!

I know it sounds crazy, but you could do one of several things:

1. Keep prices and distribution steady in a time of uncertainty, absorbing the added cost of production so that LONELY HORNY PEOPLE all over the country have something dependable and wiggly to cling to and/or sit on. This would mean you only make about £750,000 in 2022 and you would very likely have to skip the NOVELTY BUTTPLUG CONVENTION in Sacramento, including their absolutely legendary taco bar.
2. You could increase the cost of your product to £45, a 12.5% jump for the customer, and hope that sales remain steady despite the economic uncertainty prevalent in the world at the moment. Then you would make £1.8 million, which covers your materials increase and outgoings, and still leaves you your cool million in profit.
3. You could sell your rubber wigglers for £100 instead, citing the economic disruption and increased costs but inflating those costs to people who are bad at math and/or not allowed to see your books, and take advantage of the government subsidies given to the WIGGLER INDUSTRY to offset their costs, which would actually make 2022 the most profitable year for your company by a HUGE MARGIN even if you only sold 20,000 “units” but would set you up with so much cash you could retire at the end of the year if sales remained at current levels. 

You would make £4,000,000 just in 2022 alone, and less than a quarter of that is needed to run the company. It is not in any danger of failing or even incurring a single penny of debt. Its costs would be covered after you sold your first 1100 wigglers. 

In a regular year, with regular costs, and rubber wigglers selling for their previously totally acceptable £40/each, you would only have had to sell 4000 of them to break even. The other 36,000 were pure profit. 

Remember, almost all of this SEX MATH is dealing exclusively with a vibrator company that wants to make A MILLION POUNDS A YEAR IN PROFIT. At absolutely no point is it in danger not doing so. You could have been selling vibrators at £20/each this whole time and still made £300K a year. 

You could quadruple the cost of rubber and electric wigglers and it would still not be necessary to charge the consumer the original £40 for you to have a profitable company. Sure, it’s not going to make you a millionaire, but you won’t starve either, and your company is not in danger of closure.

(£10 rubber, £24 electric wiggle unit, £2 paint = £36 per wiggler to produce)

(£36 x  40,000 units = £1,440,000)

(£100,000 outgoings + £1,440,000 materials = $1.54 million operating costs)

(£40 retail wiggler price x 40,000 = £1.6 million, or £60,000 profit)

In what universe would it be necessary to quadruple the cost to the consumer? When would you ever need to charge someone $160 for a vibrator that only costs £10 to make? £20? Even £40?

When they have no choice, of course. When they have to use a long, ergonomic rubber wiggler or their children will starve or they will freeze to death. When they cannot eat or work or in any way exist in the modern world without your big, sleek, wiggly necessity.

Remember when Roosevelt said “I don’t want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a result of this world disaster” in response to WWII? Remember when we actually tried to discourage war profiteering and disaster capitalism? Of course you don’t, because that world is gone, and the one we live in is a joke.

I hate math(s), but I hope this little diatribe can help you make some sense of your current electricity situation, and the much worse one coming next month, and the absolutely bonkers one coming in March. I don’t need to make sense of it. I can spot a shower of cunts from a mile off (or 1.5km if that is easier to process), and that’s all I can spot these days, everywhere I look. You can’t throw a rock without nicking an absolute bastard running 100% on premium unleaded high-octane greed, from the politicians to the corporate fuckbags they work for to the wannabe coffee barons and bar owners on the local strip. It’s trickle-down corruption, and you’re the recipients of every level of shit dripping from above you.

I was trying to be an example of how to succeed from the opposite direction, but I didn’t count on the public utility sector being privatised, so … I failed. Got five good years out of it, though.

Thank fuck all those social media influencers tried so hard to shut me down last year, eh? It did actually take a pretty good chunk out of Nanika’s sales. That was a good use of everyone’s time, and did a lot of good for the world. Let them be your guiding light, paragons of honesty, virtue, and integrity that they are. The old fucks in charge are rotten to the core and have set up the system to retain their power and profits and the youth can be bribed to destroy their own future for a free cheeseburger or a pair of shoes.

Ah well, at least we’ll all still have Locavore to keep the “community” going this terrible winter. Who among us is not comforted by the thought of a £12 turnip? I know I am.

Stay LONELY, Glasgow, and stay HORNY. 

Somewhere out there is the last honest LUBE MIXER working his ass off to bring you what you really want for Christmas.

"Welp," sighed the former whelp, "That's that."

"Good morning,

I spoke with your office yesterday regarding having received a notice of disconnection from BES Utilities for my business at 72 Victoria Road. I have been there since August 2018, so nearly five years, and it has always been my mission to provide the best food I can to the people of this neighbourhood for under £10. We were in The List's top restaurants in Glasgow in the last eating and drinking guide pre-pandemic, which I thought was incredible since we were up against some of the most expensive and large venues in the city, and Nanika only seats 14 people and a dinner for two will come in under £30 even if you really gorge yourselves.

It has been closed for the past six months due to an injury (I had tendonitis and could not use my left arm, so I operated a different business at my other shop on Allison Street while I was doing physio), so the only electricity usage would be the refrigerators and dehumidifier that are always running, and the occasional prep day and dishwashing where there would be very minimal drain compared to actual service, when the extractor fan/pasta boiler/steamer/bain marie/rice cookers, etc would need to run concurrently for at least five hours per night.

If you are familiar with the shop you will know it is literally one small room with one lightbulb, maybe 50 square feet. It is, I believe, the smallest functioning restaurant/takeaway in Govanhill. And I would like to reiterate that it has been closed, and thus its electricity usage has been as low as possible from the 20th of April to the 10th of November, when we reopened. We were similarly closed last year from May to September while I set up the other shop, with all the same equipment running at Nanika, and our monthly electric bill was £225 on average. That is the baseline for a closed shop, with £350 being average for the times we are operating normally.

I have had a direct debit set up for the electric bill since 2020, and I do not normally pay attention to the total, as it has always been consistent. In October, however, for the period of 15th September to 15th October, I received an invoice for just under £900, which is more than double the previous month's invoice. It is also almost double the monthly rent.

As I did not have £900 in the account, I immediately cancelled the direct debit and tried to contact BES, but their web interface was not functioning, and after managing to speak to an agent via chat he informed me that he couldn't even authorise anyone to call me back. All he would do is insist that I reinstate the direct debit. I explained that there is no way a closed shop could possibly use £900 in electricity, and that I wanted an engineer or other professional to come out and check the supply to determine what could be drawing that much energy or if someone else had somehow accessed my wiring. Eventually he agreed to have someone call me. I received two calls in November from BES, both of which were dropped due to poor connection on their end, as I spoke to them on the restaurant's phone, which we use every day we are open to take orders. There is no signal loss inside the building and the phone is on wifi anyway. When I attempted to call back the number was outgoing only and would not re-connect me to BES. (As an aside, I am wondering why so many companies nowadays use dead emails and blocked numbers to communicate with their legitimate customers; why is it legal to contact people about their accounts from a means of communication that can't be used to return the contact? And why would you want that?)

I then received a second bill for 15th October to 15th November for another £900 without explanation nor resolution, along with an intent to disconnect notice. When speaking to the disconnection agent he told me that if I did not give them £1100 in 24 hours they would remotely cut the power, and that if I didn't have £1100 then it would show that my business wasn't "economically viable" enough to continue operation.

As you can imagine, someone quadrupling one of your monthly bills after five years of consistent operation and then calling the business economically unviable when that is the sole reason that it would be so is as insulting as it is laughable.

Either someone is illegally using electricity from my meter (it is a shared building), or BES has literally quadrupled my energy costs in under six months, which would be completely unsustainable for ANY business, let alone one as small as Nanika.

I have attached several monthly bills and invoice summaries, etc. for your examination, as well as a small flyer I put on my window in September, before I received the first startling invoice. As you can imagine, Brexit and the post-COVID economy have driven my cost of goods up significantly. Literally every item I need to buy in order to make food for my customers has increased in cost in the past 12 months. I have raised my prices by 50p from their 2020 levels, and my profits are significantly decreased. Some months I even lose money, but it has always been more important to me that normal people can afford a good dinner in this neighbourhood and that they can count on the restaurant being there for that purpose.

A main at Nanika is £9. A bun is £4. A person making minimum wage can get dinner for the cost of an hour's work. Apparently I should be charging £13 for the thing you can hold in your hand and £34 for a chicken katsu, if we're going by the BES maths, which would be wildly out of the reach of my neighbours, friends, and fellow Govanhill residents.

If these figures from BES are accurate then Nanaika must close immediately. It cannot absorb the cost of their naked greed. Obviously the energy consumption would increase with regular weekly operation, and if it miraculously costs almost a thousand pounds just for the shop to sit empty what would it cost to actually sell food?

There is no possible way that BES could need to increase costs by 400% to cover their expenses unless they are simply willing to let people literally die to maintain or exceed their already astronomical profit margins, which would be repugnant from a restaurant but should be literally illegal from a utility company. The difference between Nanika and a utility company is that nobody needs Nanika to keep their house warm in the winter, or to keep medical equipment running for the sick and dying. They don't need buns to see when the sun sets at 3:30pm, and to keep their groceries from spoiling.

I hope to hell there has been a mistake, or that some illegal activity is to blame rather than just corporate greed and government complicity pairing to literally kill off some citizens for money this year, because while I have been here for ten years and tried my best to improve the city/country I cannot and will not contribute to that sort of behaviour. It is morally bankrupt and disgusting, and can have no positive consequences for the UK and its actual people going forward.

Please review the attached, and let me know your thoughts.

Thank you,

Justin Valmassoi"

Just in case you were wondering why we're closed this weekend and every weekend thereafter, that is the letter I sent to my MP this morning, but I already know the answer. There is no cap on commercial electricity, so the energy company doubled my bill in April and then doubled THAT in October, and will continue to do so while making record profits, just like every other privately-owned utility company in the UK because nobody will stop them. I work 70 hours a week. I have been doing that for years. I will not do it so that BES can make more per week than I do while thousands of their customers will literally die this winter in shivering poverty. Fuck them and fuck those that created the situation, and continue to allow it to progress. And fuck the "small businesses" that lie about their energy woes, and the "community interest companies" whose entire business model is apparently based on borrowing money from the taxpayer, and somehow still charge triple what any other business charges for the same items. I will not be holding a crowdfunder so the community can pay twice. Without Nanika I will not be able to afford my visa renewal either, so what I really need is someone to take my pet when they deport me, as airlines do not allow lizards to fly on them. Believe me, I have checked.

This country is broken. I came here because mine was too, and I thought the people here were smarter, but it turns out they were just on a slower path to the same point.

I have not always enjoyed my job, but I have always enjoyed my customers, and seeing/feeding you week after week, year after year. You are the best, and I wish you all a tolerable Christmas and independence from Westminster's insane policies in the future.



Thanks, Govanhill. Happy holidays, etc.

The slave admires the tyrant because the last is what the first would be.

"He surveys himself all over in the glass of royalty. The swelling bloated self-importance of the one is the very counter-part and ultimate goal of the abject servility of the other. But both hate mankind for the same reason. because a respect for humanity is a diversion to their inordinate self-love, and the idea of the general good is a check to the gross intemperance of passion."

As we wind down 2022, a year I think everyone but the utility and gas companies will remember as one of the worst in their lifetimes, let us abandon the trappings of rote behaviour and surrender to WHIMSY, not for the spark of joy that might illumine those pitch-hued corridors of your guarded hearts but as an experiment to test the strength of those bonds forged by that which is stronger than twined steel and more steadfast than the mightiest of ancient oaks: FLAVOUR. Perchance the flavour of a cauliflower hash brown bun, whose yielding dough and alarmingly savoury layer of chilli crisp mayo surrender to the pressure of your grinning jaws and yield up their crispy, well-seasoned bounty. Maybe to the flavour of numbing Sichuan noodles whose hidden cashews proivide a rich textural contrast to the soft, pork-dappled noodles atop them. Does the flavour of kedgeree that you can hold in your hand do more to move the blood through your sluggish veins? How about the spicy crackle and finger-staining bliss of a salt & chilli aubergine?

Regardless, all of these are valid possibilities at one of Nanika's famous MYSTERY SALES.

And a MYSTERY SALE is all we are doing tonight because Cilijn is away to a funeral and I am too overburdened to run the whole place by myself, but still have to run the whole place by myself because there are so many bills to pay and no other way to pay them! That's the joy of being alive right now! Inflated bills from companies that are absolutely rolling in money! Corporate interests that threaten to sue the government if they try to cap their greed! Amazing! You have to marvel at the illusion that anyone else is actually in charge of the country!

So come on down (or call; you can and probably should call ahead) to Nanika and get yourself a bag of WHIMSY, containing one main, one bun, and two sides for only £16.00! That's it! That's all we're selling! And you don't know what's in it, just that it's food, and that it's good! That's the MYSTERY!

ETC!

"How matter presses on me! what stubborn things are facts! How inexhaustible are nature and art!"

Despite an exhausting week of melancholia and mild injury it is time once again to feed you, the eight people who read this thing (and the two hundred who have no idea it exists but see the lights on and are drawn to them like moths with debit cards). We have all the things on the menu so you don't have to keep asking. We are not one of those hipster places that run out of their shit every shift and open whenever they feel like it. We are the place that has been here for five years and has always adhered to its opening hours, and I have tried to never run out of anything unless it is a special, which by its very nature would be a limited item and subject to the whims of fate and scarcity.

Speaking of specials, they are the same as last week, with the caveat that the Red Chicken Curry is actually on the menu full-time but has been omitted from the printed version because of my own failings as a menu-artist. We have so much Red Curry. Please buy it. We need the space for other foods.

The only thing that was neither painful nor disappointing between Saturday night and Thursday morning was watching Tár, starring Cate Blanchett, twice (and also Three Days of the Condor starring Faye Dunaway, the Cate Blanchett of the 1970s, once). Tár is phenomoenal, and you should watch it, twice.

So when you have finished with that, or if you find yourself peckish at some point during its expansive yet very engrossing runtime, there is a little bun shack/noodle hut just at the end of Victoria Road which for some bizarre reason has dynamite (and huge) cannoli for like ... £3.50. Come grab some dinner, and lift my sunken spirits with your presence as I lift yours with pork mince.

If the poor believe that their condition can be improved by judicious entry into the systems of power, who stands in genuine opposition to those systems?

It's all in The Book, as my religious aunt used to say whenever I had some foolish youthful question like "Why is the sky blue?" or "When can I eat?" or "Why did you handcuff me to this radiator and why is it so dark down here?"

I am alone all day/night, so apologies in advance if I start to take your order and then bolt over the counter, knocking you to the pavement in a breathless rush as I vault through the hatch and sprint down Allison Street into the wet night air, never to be seen again by man nor beast.

In that event, I give you full permission to raid the fridges and take home whatever cannoli filling or pork products you find, lest they eventually spoil and go to waste.

"Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group."

What a week.

What a year, really.

What a time to be alive!

If you think about it, we had two whole years wherein almost every human being on the planet was sharing a common experience. Two years of social and societal interruption where mass-communication made possible the steady and near-complete connection of the majority of the globe, and would have provided, had we thought to make any steps in that direction, an absolutely unprecedented opportunity for large-scale change in just about any category you can name.

We could have done anything. Having the collective attention of a room is difficult. Getting the collective attention of a country takes something like a couple of planes destroying two occupied skyscrapers in the largest civilian metropolis available, or Russia invading. Getting the world's attention, and holding it for longer than an instant is, barring alien invasion, almost impossible.

And we had two years to really come together and discuss the world we wanted to emerge from our chrysalis of fear to find waiting for us. To examine the structures that rule and restrict and make adjustments or rubble of them. To look at ourselves, and our effects on others, and reframe our wants and desires around collective good instead of personal greed, toward industry and away from sloth, to edify and organise and prepare for a new and bright future humbled and grateful for the opportunity to gain perspective and wisdom despite the circumstances of the gift.



I remember they had to get traffic wardens for Govanhill because there was such an insane queue when McDonald's reopened.

That's actually my strongest memory from the entire experience.

And look at us now. Look how far we have come. You could turn on your laptop and livestream the war in Europe but that would take precious electricity you can't spare lest you fall behind in your obscenely inflated utility bills, and you wouldn't want to lose the flat you share with five other people because Winter is coming and even though you can't afford to heat the place you know that rent has tripled since you moved in so you can't exactly afford to get a new flat either, which is something you worry about while waiting for an underpaid migrant to come deliver your dinner on his bike in the pissing rain for what amounts to slave wages (but at least he will appreciate the Black Lives Matter poster in your window, knowing that you care about his welfare). Meanwhile, you can hop on that phone made by child labour in a country you couldn't find on a map (like the Ukraine, or Palestine, despite your deep concern for them) and send shitty DMs to local small businesses but you keep getting interrupted by news alerts summarising what the IMF has to say about our unelected leaders' complete farce of a budget that might as well just be a wholesale transfer of the bank account contents of the lowest 10% of the country to the highest, so instead you hop on the Chinese spyware platform that every world government in the West has specifically tried to ban because of its ridiculous and blatant data-mining because "it's fun", which of course makes Meta very angry because they had the market cornered on stealing your very private information and desires but forgot to factor in that humans require "fun" in their headlong race into a nuclear winter where personalised advertising nanobots are intravenously injected into their cholesterol-clogged arteries.

Oh, to be Mr. Wednesday, just footloose and fancy-free, murdering mice for sport and then risking certain death to sprint across Victoria Road and into Nanika to scream in the face of The Chicken Man, demanding a portion of his meat bounty in exchange for ONE (1) small pet upon your furry head before darting out the door without so much as a "thanks" in search of adventure and erotic entanglements, free from the burdens of 'civilised' existence.

Unfortunately, I am not a cat, and must instead panne chicken and roast weird powders for the masses, then serve them, which does allow me to ignore the collapse of the species by occupying sixty to seventy hours of my week. Which is the next best thing, I suppose.



Come and get your lunch/dinner, Thursday-Sunday for two more weeks, down at the bun hatch. I made beets, and a bun that is basically a hamburger.

(bagpipe solo but everyone plays and kids scream)

"Meaning is doing! It's a language game! Words are content! Nonsense! Nonsense! Words are content! Yahoo!"

What do you do, I ask my lizard, who functions as a sort of sounding board for various ideas and musings, if a sounding board could also blink and eat bugs and take a shit (sometimes simultaneously), when you're in the grip of an obvious depression?

Naturally, I am not asking Brian what he would do, as he is incapable of feeling depression because he lives a life of abject luxury completely free from any responsibilities save body temperature regulation, which can be done simply by repositioning himself to various points inside his opulent reptile mansion. Outwith that small burden he is free to eat fresh salad or calcium-enriched locusts to his fat heart's content, taking day-long naps on his binkies or even with his hemipenal bulge plopped right smack dab in the middle of his salad bowl as whimsy would have it.

It is I, his manservant, who must exist in the outside world and use FirstBus, which is about as enjoyable an experience as passing a gallstone while being forced to watch Mrs. Brown's Boys.

I used to take taxis frequently, being willing to pay the premium to avoid supporting the most fucking useless excuse for public transportation I have ever seen in fourteen cities, six countries, and two continents, but ever since the pandemic and the consolidation of the remaining cab companies under GlasGo Cabs I have been left standing in parking lots for over an hour on so many occasions, watching the restaurant supplies I purchase spoil in the sun. Even the extremely expensive but usually dependable Black Cabs left me at the Rouken Glen Garden Center for two hours yesterday after accepting a booking without having any cars available then cancelling it without telling me, after three separate phone calls to the operator trying to figure out when I could expect to get home and eat, since I did not have breakfast nor lunch.

The fact that I have four days off per month causes me to be distressingly efficient with my time, so standing at bus stops or in parking lots for huge chunks of my day(s) is enough to make me literally weep (happened yesterday), but depending on how much I have purchased I can't carry it onto the bus, even if the bus were going to show up when the sign/screen says (a laughable joke; they run about 30% as often as they are scheduled to, and at whatever pace they feel like it) so I must rely on cabs, which means that any errands I have to run on my one day off per week usually take well over an hour and a half per errand, even if it's something as simple as getting groceries in Shawlands and taking them back to Eglington Toll. I could literally walk it faster if it were not for the burden of the purchased items. So quite often I am paying extortionate cab fares but not experiencing the speed and efficiency that using a cab should provide, or destroying my eternally-pained elbow dragging supplies and bags of rice to the bus stops just to sit there so long I have to hail a passing cab anyhow.

None of this is interesting to Brian nor you, I know, but the resulting misery that kind of curdles into a deeper lethargic depression where I don't get out of bed at all unless I absolutely have to is somewhat more relevant to our respective interactions. And I am not asking for a solution to the transit crisis because it is just a matter of de-privatising what should never have been made private in the first place, which is PUBLIC transit. And the cabs should obviously not be able to confirm bookings if no car has actually accepted the pickup because that is ... I don't know ... fucking stupid? Probably illegal? Remarkably similar to that thing that airlines started doing where they sell more tickets for a flight than the plane has seats like people aren't planning whole fucking holidays with accomodation, etc? A repugnant cash-grab that fucks over the end user, who is completely innocent of any wrongdoing and just trying to live? Yeah, that. It's like that.

And that is just trying to get groceries and some new soil for repotting a plant or two. We should probably avoid discussing running one business and watching another just sit there and deplete your life savings while you work seventy hours per week for nothing. That would not improve the horizontal nature of one's "spare" time at all.

No, what I am asking Brian is really just to look at me with his big, black, nub-rimmed eyes and sort of tilt his dumb, shovel-shaped head to one side in a gesture of ... camaraderie? Understanding? An if-you-die-I-also-die-so-don't die-and-also-my-pak-choi-is-kind-of-wilty sort of look that both soothes and comforts, and reminds me that the calathea which I have already (miraculously) saved from TWO spider mite infestations now has another, and requires my attention, so I should probably do that. Wouldn't want to have brought it back from the brink of death so often just to let it go now.

Which is, of course, the metaphor Brian was trying to convey. My life is enriched greatly by sharing a house with such a powerhouse of pure, mute intellect.





It should be noted that I do not technically "share a house" with Brian. He has his own house, which is inside my house, so while we are ostensibly flatmates it is not in the common interpretation where one of us might have to ask the other to scoot over on the couch or to turn the channel on the TV (neither of us actually own a TV, but you get the idea) because he does not wish to spend any time outside of his domicile and I don't fit inside it.

"When the seasons circle sideways out of turn, and words don't speak just fall across the carpet ..."

Is the purpose of the artist in 2022 to write grants? Is that the burning need for expression? The pressure to commune that demands release is neatly double-spaced obeisance to the money tap?

There is more genuine art in the decorative choices of an average immigrant's flat than the collective creational drive of the southside arts community because one is genuine and the other is so immured in bureaucracy that it cannot, regardless of eventual outcome, be considered true.



The voice of revolution cannot be funded through the engines of oppression, and what you create for Mammon will be critiqued by Maat.

Also, you can have a free mango cannoli if you buy £30 or more worth of food today.

You know, as a treat.

Is repetition not the foundation of memory? Can a habit form save for the repeated doing of a task?

Every employee gets the exact same speech(es). The Induction, if you will. At this point, I can do The Induction regardless of circumstance. I can do it in song. I can do it in French. I can do it while buckling swash on the foredeck of a canting ship. I can do it in French song while swashbuckling on the foredeck of a canting ship blindfolded. The Induction is ingrained from repetition, you see. It does not deviate. It does not alter. The induction is, in itself, an example of its own principles: that speed and technical proficiency come not from any inherent talent or desire on the part of the participant but almost solely and exclusively from consistent, purposeful repetition of tasks.

If you have to think you will fail.

If you have to look for it it is lost.

If you change the pattern the pattern does not exist.



It is neither elusive nor a secret. It isn't even difficult.

So why do so few manage to succeed?

What is it that prevents them from believing in the principles of The Induction despite the clear evidence of its merit?



Email your best guesses to nanika.glasgow@gmail.com and one of our representatives will engage you in esoteric debate regarding the declining moral and ethical state of Man in the 21st century. Act now, representatives are limited.

One good employee does not a bun shack make.

I mean, it definitely helps to once again have someone you can go, "I'll be back in an hour. Call me if you are on fire," to, and waltz out the door secure in the knowledge that a capable, intelligent individual is going to do a good job in your absence as you tend to the actual business of running a business[*]. In fact, it is a lot like a drug, and I am currently doing huge rails of "I'll be back in an hour" at every available opportunity. Can't get enough.
But, like most addicts, I need more. I want ONE WHOLE DAY where I am not at work while it is open. Something I have not had since ... 2019? 2020 maybe?

Wow. I think it was actually still the ass end of 2019. So three years ago. It has been three years since I had enough capable employees simultaneously to leave the fucking restaurant unattended for a full day without closing it. It is realisations like this that make it incredibly difficult to get out of bed in the morning, let alone go to work, let alone maintain a distressingly perfect physique carefully concealed beneath soft, expensive fabrics, let alone a rich, fulfilling intellectual life full of semi-forgotten literature, let alone the consistent production of promotional materials made from repurposed mid-century advertising, let alone a masterful capacity for keeping far too many houseplants (and one fat lizard) alive, and still make time for HBO's House of the Dragon every week, chronicling the slow decay of Viserys' body and his daughter's entire life.

But hey, that's the job, you know?

Someone has to do it.







* Every time you see me making buns, or assembling a huge and ridiculously well-priced Korean Taco Bowl, there is a figurative mountain of admin and supply runs, phone calls and banking, vendor relations and site maintenance that I am ignoring because I am understaffed. I am never supposed to be chopping spring onions. That is how newbies are supposed to improve their knife skills.

A play in one act.

Scene: NANIKA, a semi-abandoned noodle bar in the rough outskirts of Govanhill. Daytime. Cabs and buses occasionally trundle by, also migrants on electric bikes working for corrupt delivery companies which inflate consumer cost and simultaneously rob independent businesses of profit. The sun struggles to escape cloud cover. The pavement is covered in litter and puke.

Enter: MR. WEDNESDAY, a cat.

Mr. Wednesday: "This place looks like shit. Who works here, some butthole? I have never eaten, not one day in my life."

From downstairs emerges MR. JUSTIN. He is covered in flour. He is grotesque. A human monster, blinking and unkempt. His fleece is beautiful, however. Any man would kill to own it.

MR JUSTIN: "Well well well, if it isn't Mr. Wednesday-on-a-Sunday! Could you- Could you not-

MR. WEDNESDAY shoves his whole face into MR. JUSTIN's face like a soft and stupid battering ram. He is screaming for food.

MR. WEDNESDAY: "Well well well, if it isn't Mr. That's-My-Lunch. You got any ham, friend? You got any cured pork? Sausages? Beef jerky? Tuna in hummus? WHAT ABOUT CHICKEN, PAL? I HAVE NEVER EATEN. LOOK AT ME FOR GOD'S SAKE I'M JUST FUR AND BONES OVER HERE. LOOK AT ME. WHAT, YOU CAN'T LOOK AT ME BECAUSE I AM HITTING YOUR FACE WITH MY FACE? HUH? MAYBE I'M TRYING TO RATTLE SOME CHICKEN LOOSE, YOU EVER THINK OF THAT? No, of course not. You only think about yourself. Etc."

From a small plastic tub MR. JUSTIN produces delicious, roasted chicken and quietly admonishes MR. WEDNESDAY.

MR. JUSTIN: "Dude, this is my lunch. I specifically brought this for me to eat today. For lunch. And I'm already kind of late so-"

Mr. WEDNESDAY ignores the pile of chicken that is now on the floor. He screams for food. His voice is deafening. An atonal bleat. MR. JUSTIN carefully picks a strand of pulled chicken from the pile and proffers it, wincing.

MR. WEDNESDAY: "YES. CHICKEN FROM YOUR SAD PATHETIC HANDS TASTES BETTER THAN FLOOR CHICKEN. YOU ARE A WORM. BEG ME TO EAT YOUR LUNCH, MAN OF FLEECE. REMAIN AT EYE LEVEL AND SPEND FIFTEEN MINUTES DOING THIS. IT IS MY WILL. Also, have you thought about painting or something? This place looks grim. You have to do Spring cleaning, even in late September. Unused spaces get that dusty look, you know? And the plants need watered. I'm a cat and even I can tell - DO NOT PET ME JUST PUT CHICKEN IN MY MOUTH. Etc."

MR. JUSTIN: "Dude, for real. That's more than half. Half of what I brought for me, a human man. I brought enough for a fully grown human man and you are the size of like ... both my feet. You do not need that much chicken."

MR. WEDNESDAY screams. He is a void that cannot be filled.

MR. JUSTIN: "I am just going to go back downstairs and grab the buns. I will be right back. Stop screaming."

He descends the ladder. In his absence MR. WEDNESDAY consumes another 200g of delicious chicken, then gives NANIKA a dismissive once-over before disappearing onto the pavement, up the wall, and onto the train tracks. A small stain on the hardwood floor marks the last place chicken was seen. From below rises MR. JUSTIN, his fleece a blaze of unfathomable colour against the grey hellscape that is Glasgow. He is hungry, but only has half a lunch. He glances around for signs of cat and sees only chicken juice, which he diligently cleans. I should dust in here, he thinks, then marches up the road with his buns.

End scene.

Alle Nachrichten, die druckreif sind.

That was a fine, fine Friday. I give every potential new employee the whole spiel about how all our customers are regulars and the best regulars in the city at that, because we are normal people selling selling good food to normal people who want to eat it, and there is no upselling or greed from our end and thus no mistrust nor entitlement from theirs (and because we got rid of all the assholes way back in 2018, leaving only the cream of the customer crop).
Still, it's always amusing to see someone who thought you were giving a corporate induction speech have to stand by and watch while twenty people in a row come up and have lengthy, animated conversations about twenty completely different topics, everyone cursing and laughing and being normal and open and honest, all while Korean Taco Bowls and buns by the hundreds are being assembled, more than half of them saying some variant of "I'll have the usual," then frolicking off into the moderate sunshine with a bag of lunch, leaving me to go, "See, I told you."

This business exists as a functioning testament to the fact that you do not have to pay someone to optimise your search engine results and you do not have to desperately try to make TikTok videos of yourself where you basically say you'll suck some dick if only someone will buy your product(s), and there is no need to pay someone to take arty photos of food that will NOT look like that when the customer gets it, nor do you even need a sign on your own shop that says what you are.

People have been selling things to other people for a couple millenia, and the modern tactics are not the ideal. Your participation only really benefits the systems we all hate, and in the end it's the customer who suffers, and since all you small business types are customers somewhere else, you should probably ask why you're doing things that you wouldn't want done to you when you're on the other side of the till.



Small business is meant to exist in opposition to large corporate interests and their predatory behaviour. We are meant to provide an alternative, better example.

If you're just doing all the same shit but on a smaller scale, what does that say about you? And how does it serve the public, of which you are a part?

Stop worrying about your branding and start thinking about your customers. Chances are, they are awesome people once you stop viewing them as revenue.

Oh my god I really don't have any interest in watching the next season of The UK. I don't like any of the actors, and the plot is just off the rails bonkers at this point.

It used to be this big, seafaring epic, but even when it kind of narrowed the focus to just the one island and the wars it was pretty gripping. Now it's just kind of a cartoon and the plot lines are paper thin. They had a literal clown in charge (whoever did his wig should be barred from the industry) and they wouldn't drop the royalty stories even when they didn't make any sense with the rest of the show. Now they have some terrible actress who is supposed to be in charge because she was like ... the most ruthless rat drowning in a barrel? I don't even know how it works. I thought they were supposed to elect people? Not the royals, obviously, but the people who make deals with businesses to avoid tax? And speaking of the royals that actress that's been on it since like ... season three got killed off so now they have the guy that looks like a corpse with Mickey Mouse hands as the focus of that whole side-story and nobody wants to watch that.

It kind of reminds me of America, which is hopefully also ending soon. That show had an awesome start and a great cast.

Remember the tea thing and the big wars? Even the space stuff was done super well. Great production values, great central themes, a solid writers room ... It should have been a mini-series. Maybe three, four seasons and then wrap it up, but the networks always want to drag these things out and just continually dumb them down for broader appeal. More and more ridiculous plot lines, shittier actors, half the budget. And it shows! I mean, look at the last few seasons of that consistently-renewed car wreck. Another clown with hair that breaks immersion, some sort of race war?!, and they still haven't addressed the healthcare thing after like ... a million episodes.

And don't get me started on the crossover. We're supposed to believe there was a GLOBAL pandemic that derailed both shows for a whole season and then everything just went back to normal or worse? No major changes were made when they had everyone's collective attention ON THE WHOLE PLANET? It's such shit writing I'm mad just thinking about it, let alone watching it.



Anyway, we made cannoli from chicken skin and there's a veggie samosa bun, so come get those or maybe something else and if you have any better show recommendations let us know because this one suuuuuuuuucks now.

Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives

I can still picture my grandfather, although time has made much of him indistinct. I can no longer recall the exact lines of his face, only the kind and mischievous eyes beneath his shock of white hair. Suspender socks, the smell of cigars, sunlight on his spectacles ...

His voice, of course, still resonates almost as much as the words he used to speak in his patient manner, always full of mirth, never chastising.

I can still recall him sitting at the dining room table, Samsung GalaxyZ Fold4 in hand, browsing reels for hours, sometimes spending whole afternoons on TikTok, engaging with content, liking and subscribing with childish abandon, building stronger networks of behavioural biometric data than the rest of us combined, a result of his Depression-era work ethic and resolve. He was a titan in my mind, vast in knowledge and strength, a tree in whose shade we could always find respite.

Sometimes I swear I can hear him, just in the other room, calling for me to come enter my contact information and tag two friends for a chance to win free food at a small, sustainable, local business who paid a marketing firm to design their quarterly branding strategies, and my heart is full and heavy with love.

Thankfully, when I struggle to recall his face I know that somewhere in the once-sprawling but now densely-connected neural networks responsible for cross-platform data collation there is a crystal clear image of him, marked with over 289 articulable points of recognition, which will live on in a government server storage facility forever at taxpayer expense, and I smile.

He will not be forgotten.

Oh, Danny Boy, the blog, the blog is calling for you.

Part of what I consider my duty to the world-at-large is to discourage the youth from opening restaurants/cafes. First of all, we already have millions of food service establishments opened by rich dipshits with little-to-no practical kitchen experience, and they are remarkably indistinguishable because people with little-to-no practical kitchen experience think that “the aesthetics” are the important part and that once you make a hip, soulless shell to fill with Instagram influencers then the money will simply follow no matter what is happening under the extractor. They just search our pal Google for “restaurant interior trends” this season, then pay someone else to make it happen. You can tell just by walking into one of these places (or sometimes just by looking at their signage) what year they were opened, almost without fail.

Don’t get me wrong, these kids have probably watched a LOT of Vice documentaries and maybe some Bourdain shows, and they might even be accomplished home cooks with a sprawling collection of cookbooks arranged just-so around their flat (you know, for the aesthetics). The problem is that no television show I have ever watched, nor that Bradley Cooper movie, comes close to capturing what a commercial kitchen is like, nor do they teach you the first thing about MATH (or maths, if you’re British), which is such an important part of being a chef that the entire introductory chapter to the main textbook used by the Culinary Institute of America is devoted to explaining that if you are unprepared to do a lot of math you will fail as a chef.

But hey, it’s either their parents’ money or the bank’s, so what do they care?

Another reason to try to prevent these … things … is that they further confuse the general public by normalising unsustainable standards. When someone has twelve members of staff working in a place that only seats 24 people, and they’re serving something that costs £9.75 to make per portion for £10 (or the inverse, where it technically costs 95p to make and they’re charging £9.50 because they have to subsidise the eight employees that shouldn’t be working), the average customer is none the wiser and thinks that every place should have that many people working and that anything imaginable costs £10 without realising that 99% of these places are burning through money and will default on their loans and close within the next 18 months, thanking everyone for “helping them on their journey” as they “pursue other ventures” etc.

And despite my absolute disdain for the current generation of “entrepreneurs” who think having a great idea for a logo means they are ready to enter an industry that has been know for its almost unbelievable failure rate (something like 90% of restaurants fail in under five years, most of those in under two) and my curmudgeonly exterior, the main reason I discourage the youth is because I have to deal with terribly disappointing staff every day of my life (except Jack, but even Jack sometimes), and I would spare everyone this misery if I could.

A few years ago I was running the kitchen at a certain venue famous for its constant pleas for local charity, which I am legally prevented from badmouthing, having been forced to sign an NDA (or “gag order” as we used to call them) in order to get paid for my time there.* In that kitchen we had some real doozies, employee-wise (and a few absolute gems; it wasn’t all bad). We’ll call them Dannys, because Danny (not his real name, unless it is) was our favourite. And that’s collectively. I am not using the royal We. Danny brought us all months of entertainment and confusion in equal measure, because he continued to text every day for about six weeks after he got fired. So let me, using Danny as an example, let you know the kinds of things you can expect as a burgeoning restaurateur in the modern marketplace.

First of all, in Glasgow at least, you can assume that anyone who applies for a chef position in your restaurant is on cocaine, both at the time of application and every second they are on shift. Much like the habitual drunk, cokeheads have convinced themselves that the duration and constancy of their habit has allowed them to function smoothly and seamlessly thanks to their adaptation to- and tolerance for- their chosen drug. This is false. Literally everyone can tell when you’re fucked up. It’s you that can’t. (I really don’t mean to burst your bubble here, habitual substance abusers, but it’s true). In some kitchens this can be a benefit, as a lot of kitchens are absolute dumpster fires, tended and stoked by a collection of pure cowboys who are changing every single part of a dish, on the fly, to suit the various failings and fuckups of the team at hand. In a well-organised kitchen, designed by someone (probably a super handsome someone with an exotic foreign name like … Dustin, or Rustin, or maybe Justin) who understands and prioritises workflow and consistency, this approach is a lot like hiring five silent, cautious, gentle-fingered sales clerks and one enraged bull to stock shelves in a china shop.

So from day one, Danny was loud, bug-eyed, constantly sniffing, belligerent, dismissive, and completely unable to perform even basic tasks without incident. He would cut himself every day, in the rare instances he was not in the toilet, either doing coke or moaning and panting with the effects of coming down from doing coke. He was one of those men who, for whatever reason, believe that bluster and bravado will cow all dissension, and that any authority must be challenged so you don’t appear weak (to whom remains a mystery, since everyone else in the kitchen had no problem following instructions and taking orders, but somewhere in every macho guy’s skull is an audience of apes, and when someone tells them to do something this simian crowd goes wild demanding a reaction). He was also one of these “chefs” I keep meeting here who love to run their knife on their steel every five minutes in distressingly random directions and at angles that boggle the mind, creating the sort of “shinging” noise one equates with knife honing without any of the practical benefits of actually honing a knife. This is to let lesser chefs know he means business (the business of cutting pieces of his thumb off every shift, apparently).

Danny was also what we would call a “floater”, meaning that even though he had an assigned station and the concurrent duties that go with it, staying there and doing those jobs would mean that he had submitted to authority, and so he would float around, overseeing his coworkers like an unchristened sous chef or supervisor, offering (bad) advice about cutting techniques or plating to people who clearly outperformed him in both categories. A lot of very mediocre employees are floaters. Partially it’s to avoid work. If you look busy maybe your boss won’t notice that you aren’t actually doing anything. So, like a shark in a dirty apron you just … keep moving. Always nipping to the walk-in or transferring something from point A to point B despite being told not to leave point A every day you’ve ever worked. Partially it is because the vast majority of straight-up bad employees believe that they are, in fact, above-average if not exceptional employees. This is not exclusive to workers. My friend’s mother-in-law is only an IQ point or two from being special needs and will unironically and with total confidence say things like, “I am very intelligent” and “I’m smarter than most people,” while everyone in the room just blinks in mute incredulity. Like her, many of these employees exhibit not one single quantifiable trait that would make them better than their average peer. Danny was not the fastest vegetable chopper, nor were his cuts the most accurate. He had no butchery skills, no sense of timing (and yet a staunch disdain for electronic timers, something that absolutely makes up for any lack of inherent timing), no organisational skills, no time management skills, and no focus. He was, in short, a chaos agent loose in the kitchen, spreading discord everywhere he went, which was everywhere except his assigned station.

In any kitchen you hope for a well-rounded team of skilled workers, interchangeable at need, and capable of swift adaptation to new problems. Obviously, depending on the size, you will have some who are less-skilled doing the more menial tasks, working their way up the ladder, and some who are minor superstars, shepherding the rest in the proper direction while juggling twelve of their own tasks. Anyone with the proper focus and motivation can excel, except of course for Dannys, the one thing you don’t want at all.

An untrained or inferior employee is usually eager to learn and will stretch and adapt to their environment, like a tomato plant with an apron. They can sometimes, also like a tomato plant, shock you with sudden spurts of growth. Skilled and inherently talented employees will immediately stand out, and rise quickly to a position of elevated responsibility, as every head chef/kitchen manager is looking for someone to manage the day-to-day tasks and guide the tomatoes toward the light so they can focus on the more important operations that a functioning business requires. But a Danny is neither of these things. A Danny has the lack of skills you associate with the untrained combined with the arrogance and bravado you try to discourage in the very talented.

It is infuriating, because you give them the most menial tasks, knowing full well they will likely fuck them up, so that they don’t touch anything that is actually important and/or expensive, but because they feel they should be in a position of authority (in fact they should be THE authority, despite having taken an entry-level, minimum wage job just like their completely untrained coworkers), they rush through or half-ass these tasks they consider beneath them, which of course means that you won’t give them anything more complicated/important since they can’t even be trusted with picking mint, but instead of realising that they see it as The Man refusing to acknowledge their superior (though inexplicably absent) skills which just triggers the resentment of authority, on and on, in a recursive loop that always ends in being fired, but never, miraculously, in self-reflection or personal growth.

I could write an entire treatise on this particular bit of cognitive dissonance, but I can probably just provide an example and save us both some time.

We had waffles. You know, for kids.

I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the process, but it is remarkably simple: First you make waffle batter (which we did not let Danny do because he refused to accurately measure the ingredients). Then you put a pre-determined amount of the batter into the waffle maker and close the lid. Then you set a timer and walk away for the duration of the cooking time, returning at the alarm to two perfectly formed, golden-brown waffles which you gently shoogle out with a fork onto a plate, where they are then dressed in whatever toppings you’ve chosen.

The waffle station was in a corner by itself, next to a prep table. It is where we put the newest of the new hires. Out of the way of the burners, the oven, the expensive meats and cheeses, and harm, with a little station all their own to pick coriander and mint, slice spring onions, mix sauces, and any other very simple, very mundane jobs that the average nine year old could do unsupervised. And hey, they’re cooking too! They’re the waffle man! Good job, buddy! You did it! Etc.**

So we put Danny on waffles, to keep his coke-fuelled chaos relatively contained to one corner of the kitchen, and to ensure the rest of the machine could run efficiently and effectively without a human spanner in its works. There was a gallon of batter prepared and waiting on the counter, eight inches from the waffle maker, a four ounce ladle in the batter, and a little cup with a fork in it for the shoogle. Everything you need for successful waffling. You couldn’t possibly fuck it up.

Unless.

Unless maybe you’re a Danny, or in this case, if you are Danny.

You see, the waffle maker requires SIX ounces of batter to make a correctly sized, full waffle. And since it has two waffle … compartments? Griddles? Trays? Two waffle sections … you would need one and a half four ounce ladles per section. Three ladle-fuls in total. Obviously, a six ounce ladle would be ideal, but we did not have one at the time, and if you refer to the second paragraph of this very essay you will note that basic math(s) skills are an inherent and very important part of this job, so being able to figure out the relationship between four, six, and twelve should not be an impediment to a talented chef. In case you, as a layman, cannot solve the complicated equation presented, the solution is to do one of the following:

1. Put one full, level ladle full of batter into the first section, then dip another half ladle and add it to the first, then repeat for section two, giving you two six ounce portions of batter
2. Put one full, level ladle full of batter into the first section, then fill another full, level ladle and pour half of it onto the first section, then pour the rest into section two, followed by another full, level ladle, making for two even portons of six ounces apiece (which is slightly faster than the first option as it requires only three dips in the batter instead of four), or
3. Put one full, level ladle full of batter into the first section, put one full, level ladle full of batter into the second section, then split one full, level ladle between the two, which is just #2 in a slightly different order, but with the exact same result.

Then you just close the god damned lids and hit the timer, then walk away or move slightly to your right and continue picking mint. A child can do this. In fact, if anyone’s niece or little sister or actual child did come into the kitchen for some reason, that is what we would have them do, because it’s fun to cook! Look, you made a waffle! Yayyyyyyyy! Etc.

So despite the fact that everyone else in the kitchen can make waffles while they are running their own section during busy service, Danny, all alone over there, fuming that he was not allowed to cook the meat/eggs/etc like the superior chef he was, would (every fucking time) somehow fail to correctly make waffles.

Firstly, despite no rush whatsoever, he could not slow down enough to avoid spilling batter all over the entire section. All you have to do is literally hold the ladle still for four or five seconds after you pull it out of the batter so the excess can drip back into the gallon, but NO. The Danny way is just to dip and fling, putting three ounces of batter on the counter, the outside of the waffle iron itself, and the wall behind it, for every (hopefully) four ounces that made it to their destination. This is wasteful, and costs money.

And then comes the hard part (it is not hard; I am being sarcastic), which is eyeballing half a ladle of batter to get to that magic six ounces. It would only be hard if you refused to hold the ladle still for even one single second so you can see it, which was of course the Danny method. That, and a staunch refusal to put a full ladle into the machine to begin with, meaning he was always trying to eyeball two three ounce portions out of a four ounce ladle, while flinging that much all over the god damned wall with each dip. So basically just putting an arbitrary amount of batter into the iron each time, then repeating that for the second section, then just praying.

There are three outcomes to this method, waffle-wise. The first is that you end up with two undersized, anemic looking waffles because you only managed to get four or five ounces into the tray. This means that we have to make NEW waffles for the customer because they are paying for two whole, good waffles. Which of course means that we have to bin the two shitty, un-circular waffles you’ve Dannied into existence for no discernible reason. This is also wasteful, and costs money.

The second outcome is that you have put too much batter into each section, which means that halfway through cooking, huge globs of batter come pulsating out the sides of the machine, immediately cooking onto its surface (the machine is very hot, you see), meaning that you will have to either wipe them off immediately, keeping you from doing your side tasks, or you will have to chisel them off later when they have hardened to an unyielding carbonised crust. This does produce two full-sized, correct waffles, but it is very wasteful, and costs money.

The third outcome is that you combine these god damned methods to end up with one proper waffle with two ounces of baked-on goop on the side of the machine and one shitty half-waffle we can’t sell, especially alongside a decent waffle as it would really just draw attention to the disparity. So we have to bin them both and start again, destroying the workflow of the other four employees and pissing off the servers who are dealing with the crying child the waffles are almost assuredly for. This is also, as you might guess, wasteful, and it costs money.

And then of course you eventually have to clean both the waffle iron and the section it is in, which would normally be a ten minute job for literally any other employee. But for Danny this is an hour long task, requiring a full gallon of soapy water and a steel scrubby from the dish sink because there’s more batter on the walls, the machine, and the floor than could have possibly gone into the trays during a single shift, and half of it has been cooked into a black rind that requires some sort of tool to remove. This is wasteful, and costs money as well.

When confronted about this, a Danny’s answer is not that he should slow down, not that he should ask literally ANY OTHER COWORKER how they manage to avoid these issues, nor to apologise and make an effort to improve, but that I, the employer, who runs a much larger, busier section every day as well as the whole kitchen, and the entire administrative side of the business, am at fault because my ladle is too small (not a euphemism). It’s not Danny, It’s the ladle. Of course! How could I be so blind?

So after pointing out that the ladle does not pose any sort of impediment to anyone else in the kitchen, and after carefully pointing out every way in which his methods could be changed to ensure the proper result (which I would like to remind you all is TWO WAFFLES FROM A MACHINE SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO PRODUCE NOTHING ELSE EXCEPT TWO WAFFLES AND REQUIRES NO COMMERCIAL KITCHEN SKILLS WHATSOEVER) Danny’s solution was to wait until nobody was looking and then absolutely fucking mummify the waffle iron in blue roll so that he could get as much batter on it as he wanted and it would not cook onto the surface.

Now, I bet you know where I’m going with this, but just in case let me explain:

1. Blue roll is a paper product. Paper is well known for being flammable. It is a poor idea, in my professional opinion, to wrap a machine that operates at 180º C continuously for eight hours in a flammable paper product because of the risk of fire.
2. Blue roll, when coated in huge globs of heated batter, will actually fuse to the waffle iron at the point(s) of contact, increasing the odds of fire as the batter dries/hardens/cooks
3. Blue roll is a disposable item which I must purchase every week, unlike learning what six ounces looks like, which is absolutely free

This was wasteful, cost money, and added the increased bonus of a possible kitchen fire to what should have been the easiest possible job in that unit at that time.

And this is just one example of Dannydom in the workplace. And with the post-COVID, post-Brexit industry essentially hollowed out of all its most experienced workers, your chances of pulling a Danny have more than doubled. Partly this is just generational. The youth tend to think of their very existence as a gift they are giving you, and the thought that their (totally fucked up, borderline-psychotic) approach to a task is the only one that matters and that you are being mean to them by suggesting they are not great at it. Dannydom is a now a feature, in other words, not a bug. Then you have the “I’ve been doing this for 10/15/20 years, mate” crowd, who have always existed, and yet never wondered why it is they are always taking jobs and orders from more accomplished people who have not been doing it for anywhere near that long. Life-long Dannys, beating their knives at odd angles against chipped steel, full of enough coke to raise the dead.

It was a bad industry to make a go at ten, twenty, thirty years ago. Today it is madness. We aren't even talking about cost of goods and/or "supply chain issues" (the "my dog ate my homework" of the 2022 import/transport sector). Just what you can look forward to every time you try to delegate a task.

So for those looking to enter this glorious industry, pockets bulging with someone else’s money, social media strategy in hand, please hear my plea: just don’t. You are, most likely, the entrepreneurial equivalent of a Danny, and the rest of us are too busy trying to do our jobs to come explain why you shouldn’t need nor want to wrap your (metaphorical) waffle iron in (metaphorical) blue roll. We’re trying to help you help yourself. But I bet you don’t think we have anything to teach you, right? Because you’re so smart and capable? I mean, who do we think we are, anyway?

We don’t even have the right size ladle.




*I just want everyone to think about how much shit they have heard said venue and its employees talk about ME these past four years, and then ask yourselves if you have ever once in human history heard of the innocent party in a dispute making the guilty party sign a gag order. When Trump raw dogs a porn star behind his wife’s back, for instance, she does not go and make him sign an NDA so he won’t talk about what a great time he had fondling her big fake boobs with his tiny weird hands while she doesn’t tell the world what a small penis he’s got. Because that would be insane. Just some food for thought. I’d elaborate, but I can’t. Because I had to sign a gag order.

** At one point we had the 16 year old KP doing this job because he was bored standing around waiting for dirty dishes to wash, and it amused us all to go “Yes, chef!” Or “Oui, chef!” every time he said the waffles were ready. And his waffles were perfect, because even a 16 year old with no prior employment experience can make waffles in a waffle maker after about six minutes of training.