Turn up the Heat

whatever he feels like off random order slips!”
    “Yeah, Gavin’s a great chef,” Josh said with plenty of sarcasm. “Oh, and then there’s that time he blew up at me in the office, screaming that my food cost had gone up ten thousand dollars in one week.”
    “What? How the hell did that happen?” I felt sick. Could Josh have messed up that badly?
    “Oh, my food cost was fine. It had gone up by a hundred dollars, which is nothing, but Gavin didn’t figure that out for another few days! He’d entered something in the wrong column of his goddamn spreadsheet. Do you think I got an apology?” Josh shook his head and tossed his hands up in the air. “But it’s his restaurant, right? He can do whatever he wants.”
    “Did he really do that?” Blythe sounded genuinely surprised. “I had no idea he was that bad to you. I know what I've heard him say to the servers, but I didn’t know he treated you like that, too.”
    “Gavin doesn’t give Josh credit for much.” Snacker patted Josh’s back. “One time, one time,” he held his finger up in the air, “he told Josh he was the ‘heart and soul’ of the restaurant. But the few times he’s been interviewed for articles or reviews on Simmer, do you think he sings Josh’s praises? No way. All he tells reporters and reviewers is how Simmer was his dream, his vision, and he takes all the credit. That’s why you never see Josh’s name in the paper. Gavin doesn’t want to share any of the credit.”
    I was embarrassed to admit that I hadn’t noticed the omission. There had been only a few reviews of Simmer since it had opened. The first review, a memorable one, had mentioned Josh. For some reason, it hadn’t dawned on me that the subsequent reviews had been about Gavin Seymour’s new restaurant and not about Simmer’s brilliant chef. The reviews and articles had described and praised the decor, the atmosphere, and the food, but Josh’s name had not appeared. Josh must have noticed. I felt guilty that I had not.
    “Snacker, that’s how it works. You know that.” Josh tried to wave off his friend’s words. “Gavin’s attitude is that he put me in a position to do what I want to do, but he gets to reap all the glory. He’s not going to allow anyone to write an article about Simmer that doesn’t feature himself. Who cares about me, right? He wants the credit for how good the food is. Like he had something to do with it.”
    I felt terrible about how underappreciated Josh was. “Does Gavin ever pull you out of the kitchen to meet customers?”
    “Oh, sure. When it’s larger parties, or he wants me to explain the specials. If it will make him look good to diners, then he’ll bring me out and say wonderful things about me in front of people. But mostly he pushes the fact that Simmer is his restaurant. Which it is, right? It’s his money, his power, he’s the boss, right? I’m just a cook.” Josh spat out the word cook as if it meant that his talents extended only to frying eggs and slinging hash.
    I didn’t know whether the beer was causing or simply revealing such bitterness, but I suspected that hidden truths were creeping out. I was slowly learning that Josh had been protecting me from how tough things were for him, and I guessed that he had been working overtime to maintain my impression that life at Simmer was great. Not that I blamed Josh for resenting Gavin’s brushing aside his significant contribution to Simmer’s success. But I had had no idea how difficult Gavin was behind the scenes. Josh worked himself to chronic exhaustion for a penny-pinching salary with no benefits, while Gavin paid himself generously, took all the credit, and saw to it that he got all the recognition. The overall picture was nasty. The stories about sexism in the culinary world had been bad, but I now saw them as depicting only one part of a pervasively ugly scene. I’d intended to ask everyone here why the dishwashers and the cleaners were the only Hispanic employees at Simmer, but I decided to tackle that issue another day.
    I threw my hands up. “Why do you guys do this to yourselves? Why don’t you get out of the business?” Stupid question. I knew what the answer would be.
    Josh softened a bit, and I saw some of the twinkle return to his eyes. “I’m a chef. It’s who I am, and it’s what I do. I don’t know anything else. And I’ll put up with what I have to until I can get my own place."
    It was what Josh wanted more than anything