It finally happened.

I lost my virginity!

Just kidding. That happened years ago. (Sorry, sister. Sometimes you just have to say these things.)

Anyway, a dude came into the restaurant who I recognized. Since the place is close to a relatively small number of offices, when I see someone I recognize, I usually figure it’s a regular, and pay them no mind. He kind of lingered by the door, waiting for someone. When his friend came in, they came up to order. His friend goes, “have you eaten here before?” and he’s like “Oh, yeah,” confirming (or so I thought) my belief that he was a regular. I continue to pay him no mind (other than the usual, you know, customer service mind). As I’m toasting his tortilla he asks, “Did you used to work downtown?” And I turn around and say yes. “Retek?” I turn around slightly and meekly and I nod.

He worked (and, shit, still may for all I know) in my office when I was a high-rolling computer programmer. That was awkward. I mean, we never worked together, and I’d be fucked if you asked me his name, or even what he did. But it was the first encounter I’ve had with someone at work who knows–who knows–about my old life. And then watches me put rice onto a tortilla.

Honestly, the thing I’ve been freaking out about the most, in regard to the new job is seeing someone from my old team. That would be really awkward. Someone who knows I got shit-canned and is wondering what I’ve been up to, and then sees me slinging burritos for less than half what I used to make–someone who would really think I’ve lowered myself.

I don’t regret changing my station in life, and I don’t apologize for it, but I do like having the opportunity to explain myself, or else have people just assume that I’m the type of guy who works in a fast food restaurant, and always has been.

Oh, and…

The newest thing that pisses me off about work and, ensuingly, about our nonstop comparisons to Chipotle, is that our “cold table” starts with cheese and ends with sour cream (or guacamole, but that’s extra). That means that when I say “Would you like cheese?” and you say “Yeah, cheese and sour cream” you’re skipping the salsas. I don’t care that their dairy shit is all in the same place–ours isn’t. Yes, we can go back and do salsas, but by then, you’ve fucked up the process sufficiently that I can’t tell you what kinds of salsas we have, and you’re left doing the reach-over. Sticking your hand, which is just dripping with dead skin flakes and parasites, dangling inches over our salsas so that I know exactly which one you’re pointing at when you say “what’s that one there?” It isn’t like we tilt the glass covering our germ-free salsas towards us in a manner to dissuade you from infecting our food with poo particles and flesh-eating bacteria. Oh, wait, we do. But you aren’t deterred. You want cheese, but you also want sour cream. And while I’m spreading out the sour cream, you want to point at salsas.

You not-paying-attention motherfucker.

And while I’m at it, we have four fucking kinds of salsa. Don’t come up and say “Yeah, I want cheese, sour cream, and salsa.” We have four kinds of salsa, and some fuckers want to look at our pico de gallo and call that salsa, and some of you want to look at the mild ancho and call it salsa (no one’s confused by the roasted corn salsa, though. You say “corn” and I know exactly what you’re talking about. Even though there’s onions, green bell peppers, jalapenos, and cilantro in it, too, making it more of a salsa. But not a relish. Stop fucking saying “corn relish”). I’m perfectly fine with people saying “tomatoes” in stead of “pico” at this point, because people say “tomatoes” and I’ve accepted that. But when you say “salsa” I want to stick our dehydrated hot peppers up your nose.

Oh, and I got promoted to “shift supervisor”. Woo woo.

Burritos

It’s time I talked about my job.

I am the shit at rolling burritos. I seriously roll burritos like a fucking pro.

I have four burns on my forearms. I got my first burn when I brushed it against the tortilla press, which is set to 410 degrees Fahrenheit. The other three are from pulling reheated black beans from a huge pot, while wearing oven mitts on the exposed area just above the oven mitt. I got two simultaneously, and they’re barely noticeable, and after hoping that would be my lesson, I got a huge burn, like, two days later. Today, while trying to carry a reheat pot over a boiling rice kit, I bumped the rice kit, opening the lid a crack and got a huge steam burn across my chest, through both shirts I was wearing. Had I been thinking, I would have taken the rice kit off before attempting to cook the reheat.

I’m developing a callous at the base of my right forefinger from/for cutting stuff. This is mostly from chopping cilantro and butterflying chicken breast, although I occasionally chop onions, jalapenos, and dice cooked chicken and steak.

I get along with most of my coworkers. This is a complete reversal from my previous job. There are three, however, who I wish would shut up. One is a fountain of useless information (mostly about his stunningly uninteresting personal life), one needlessly repeats information (mostly about what he’s doing), and the third slows everything down by trying to be chatty and funny (he isn’t funny). It’s all, however, annoying. Otherwise, they’re okay (except for one of them, who doesn’t know what he’s doing, like, ever, and acts like he does, and tells me to do things or how to do things, often incorrectly, even though I already know how to do them or already intend to do them, or am already doing them).

Nothing annoys me more than when people assume we’re exactly like Chipotle. No, we don’t substitute grilled veggies for beans. We do not have “green” salsa. We do not have “medium” salsa. Our hot salsa will not kill you. Our pinto beans are vegetarian. Guacamole is not free on veggie burritos. Our tortillas are made fresh when you order, not pulled from a bag and steamed (okay, that last one was just a jab at them).

Putting lettuce on a burrito is stupid, and that’s part of the reason we keep it hidden, and only offer it on tacos. If you put lettuce on a burrito, it will get heated up and it will wilt. Instantly. It will taste gross.

A man last week asked what a “Kwesa…Kweesa…” (“Um, quesadilla?” I replied) was. How have people gotten this far without knowing what a quesadilla is? Someone else asked what the difference between a quesadilla and a burrito was. Come on!

Another guy last week asked if we had hard shell tacos. “No, sir, we only have flour tortillas that we make fresh when you order.” “That’s not a taco,” he replied. He then ordered a quesadilla without a tortilla. “Do you want a burrito bowl?” “No, I don’t want a bowl. Just put it on a plate.” I, then, put meat, cheese, some beans, and some salsa directly onto a plate. While ringing him up, he said he said, “I guess this is the Minnesota version of Mexican food. I ate real tortillas this morning in Texas.” Then you hopped a plane to Minnesota to seek out a franchise Mexican restaurant and demean our food? Whatever floats your boat, dude.

So, when you come in to visit me (our food is fucking fantastic. I’d think that if I didn’t work there.), remember several things: Burrito Bowls are the easiest things to make, to go tacos are the worst, quesadillas are easy, but distracting and somewhat time consuming, but burritos are my absolute favorite, because I’m the shit at rolling burritos.

20 Questions

New era, new blog, new stuff.

No more video.

So let’s get going.

FAQ

1. So Where You Been?
Minneapolis, mostly.

2. Ok, dick, why haven’t you been blogging?
Well, that’s the interesting part. It started with the last Omega Wolf show, which made me crazy busy, so I only blogged to tell you to come to it. Then, I took a week or so to relax, regain my bearings, gearing up to blog again, when I got fired from my job. So that was a crappy day. It was a crappy weekend, actually. Since then, I’ve been a bit too depressy to blog.

3. Why did you get fired?
Spending too much time on the internet.

4. Seriously?
Well, that’s what they told me. However, I’d say that’s only part of the story. Back in January, I signed a ‘performance improvement plan’ saying that I’d stop going on the internet at work, and I’d fix 3-4 bugs a month. The following month I fixed 7 bugs, but continued to go on the internet, albeit more sparingly. However, since they were tracking my internet usage, any amount greater than 0 was considered a breach, and they canned me. Hm. So this seems a bit unfair. But I hardly fit in at work, and really didn’t like any of my coworkers, and I had an authority problem, by which I mean I called out one of my supervisors whenever he was wrong (which was often, to be fair) tactlessly, which was extremely stupid on my part. But none of that is quantifiable, but internet usage is.

5. Why were you on the internet so much?
Like I said, I didn’t get along with my coworkers. I ate lunch by myself, at my desk, and I looked stuff up. And these guys were taking hour-long lunch breaks. Then they would play ping-pong once or twice an afternoon. So I would go on breaks, at my desk. But this looks unproductive, whereas being away from your desk doesn’t look as unproductive, because an empty cubicle looks like you’re off doing something important. Plus, work was very tedious and monotonous, and I’d get bored quickly, and then I’d go spend a few minutes looking shit up.

6. So what have you been doing since then?
The first thing I did was go home and watch cartoons for several hours, then I got sloppy drunk. A couple of weeks later, I went and visited my parents for a week, and a couple of weeks after that, I went on a road trip to New York and DC with my friend Jesse. Since then, I’ve been looking for various jobs in coffee shops and restaurants.

7. Wait– why aren’t you looking for a computer job?
I guess I just don’t think it’s for me anymore. I worked in computers, and I kinda hated it. I don’t like corporate culture. I found very few people who I worked with who I enjoyed spending any amount of time with. I mean, I enjoy the work, but not the life. I don’t want to do that anymore.

8. Then what do you want to do?
I want to write.

9. Huh? Where’d that come from?
The most satisfying thing I’ve done since graduating from college has been to start a comedy troupe, turn it into a theater company, and write stuff. So that’s what I want to do.

10. Why weren’t you interested in that in college, and get a degree in English or something other than Math and Computer Science?
I was, but…I don’t know. I was good at math. And I was good at CS. And I liked them. And I got on that path, and I stuck to it. Making a decision to follow a framework while within that framework is so completely natural that looking back I would have wanted to take more classes along those lines, but I didn’t because I was behind in the major that I had practically chosen my senior year of high school, and then I ended up adding on another major, so my schedule was pretty set very early on. And I completely forgot how much I wanted to create, because I was driving and being driven toward a tech degree. And I don’t think I had any encouragement toward doing anything else, but I also don’t think I showed much interest. It’s how the system works, I think.

11. And now you’re all anti-establishment?
Sure.

12. Ok. So why do you want to work a shitty job when you can write while you have a tech job?
Having a tech job is so career-oriented that it makes what you’re doing seem like the most important thing in the world. I was worried about how the project was going two weeks after they fired me. Seriously. It’s something you start doing, and keep doing until you retire. Writing would have been a hobby, with no actual desire behind it– a cute way to pass the time. But if I’m doing something I don’t want to do for the rest of my life, it’s a different story. Then writing is what I do, and I go to work because I have to. It’s about creating a frame of mind to motivate myself. These are things I don’t say in job interviews.

13. So, um, why haven’t you gotten a job yet?
I don’t know. Shit luck. I’m scary and Mexican-looking. I was getting really depressed for a while. I reached a point where if I didn’t get a job soon, I would have to move in with my parents, which is incredibly frightening for a number of reasons. Mostly the fact that they live in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, and job prospects are slim, at best. And I have no friends there. Luckily, I got a job.

14. Oh, where?
It’s called Panchero’s Mexican Grill. It’s in Bloomington. It’s this chain restaurant, like Chipotle. Counter-service burritos ‘n’ shit.

15. What are you doing?
Everyone who works there does everything. So I’ll be doing prep cooking, serving, cashiering, cleaning toilets, etc.

16. Did they hire you because they thought you were Mexican?
Seriously, stop asking that. Everyone asks me that. My name is Matty Tucker. I’m clearly of some form of Anglo descent. I speak without an accent. I don’t think they hired me because of my skin color. So there.

17. Sorry. Jeez. So, um, what are you writing?
I’ve got a few things. I’ve got a couple of short stories I’m working on. They’re funny sci-fi/fantasy stories. I’m writing a short film. It’s a comedy-horror. My long-term goal is to write a novel. I’ve started researching on a topic I want to write about. It’s a straightforward sci-fi story. Cyberpunk, I guess. But the main thing I’m writing right now is a dark comedy play that I’d eventually like to turn into a feature-length film. It has nothing to do with sci-fi.

18. So can you tell me any more about any of your writing projects?
Not right now.

19. Fair enough. What else have you been up to this summer?
Well, I got into Karaoke after popping my karaoke cherry at a wedding after-party in DC. I’ve been playing on a kickball team. We came in 11th out of 12 in the league. I was on a team that won our division in the Aquatennial Sand Sculpture Competition. I’ve been drinking a lot, wrote two sketches for the upcoming Omega Wolf show (details forthcoming), watching movies. And I’ve got some combo between a mohawk and a mullet that I really like. And I’m clean-shaven for the first time since college. Oh, and I’ve been working on this dance mix in Garageband.

20. Anything else?
I’m glad to be blogging again. That’s handy. Check out the mix I’m working on (it’s an mp3), in the Music Section. I hope to actually update this thing regularly.