The Bear
or, how a tv show gave me PTSD food biz flashbacks
I saw an ad for a show called “The Bear” awhile back, was very interested and then promptly forgot about it. Ahh….ADD is a pain in the ass. Anyway, one day my roommate Jen tells me there is a show I need to watch because I am into food, and of course, it is “The Bear”. I ended up watching all the episodes over a 2 day period, it’s that good.
The show stars Jeremy Allen White (who you may remember as Lip on Showtime’s Shameless) as a Chef named Carmine (aka Carmy) who comes back home to Chicago to run his dead brother’s Chicago Beef joint. He runs into walls everywhere he turns: problems with vendors, staff, customers, his family, his dead brother and frankly, himself. It’s a brutal but very accurate look at how to come to terms with substance abuse in families, family responsibility and following your dreams. Not to mention the true grind of trying to keep a small food biz alive.
And that last part? It gave me nightmares.
Back in, I think, 2007, I got fired from an office job. It was awful and I made a quiet vow to myself to avoid that sort of work if I could help it. My mental and physical health couldn’t take it and frankly, Corporate America sucks ass. I am perpetually a round peg jammed in a mouse maze. I asked my Mom if she would want to start a pierogie business. Her response was “Are you nuts? You know how much work that is? No! I’m too old for that sort of thing. But I’ll teach you if you want.”. And she did.
The first few times I sold at the Farmer’s Market at the Whole Foods in Jenkintown, It took me all week to make 13 dozen. I sold mostly to the seniors who lived in the adjacent assisted living places (Altho most of them would linger, eat my samples and buy exactly nothing. They were fun tho, especially the bickering old couples having the same argument they have been having since 1958.) and more out there people would grill me on ingredients. One woman stood in front of my tent and lectured me on Spelt Flour for 45 minutes. I shit you not. It was quite a time for $6.50 a dozen.
Three years later, I would be cranking out almost 200 dozen a week by myself to bars, restaurants, farmers markets and regular people. And let me tell you, the work never ended. I would work constantly. It’s not just the rolling, it’s the prep of buying and making the fillings that took time. You see that in The Bear when Carmy and his crew get to work around 7am and leaves at 10pm. About all you can do is pass out after work.
When you work for yourself in a small business, it is very freeing, this is true. No one is yelling at you that you took too long on a break or that your attitude sucks or you are getting laid off. However, it quadruples your stress and anxiety (Can’t meet a deadline? Crack open another Mountain Dew Code Red or Low Carb Monster Energy and work all night!). There are no sick days or vacation days or 401ks. Every day you don’t work is money you are not making. It’s a constant chase to pay bills from vendors, pay your own bills, deal with weird customers & restaurant owners & bar people and keeping yourself afloat.
Watching Carmy work from 7am to 10pm made my shoulder hurt. I developed tendinitis of the rotor cuff from rolling dough. It sometimes radiates all the way down into my hand because I also have nerve damage. It made my back hurt from rolling so much dough. My lower back is still wacky. I have arthritis almost everywhere. My body is a walking weather vane.
When you walk into a food joint, appreciate all the work that goes into it. The hours that go above and beyond the times they are open.
And when you watch The Bear, which I am adamant that you do, take that journey with Carmy and maybe order from a local joint.