I had started my first real job in 2006 at a little seafood place called Captain D’s on 21st Street. The job wasn’t as bad as I suspected. I was making new friends who were my coworkers and managers and having laughs to pass the time while we were running a business making money. At first it took me a little while to get everything that I needed to know down but after a week or so I was running at the same pace as those who had been doing the work for a few years.
In the restaurant I was a cook/prep which meant that if I wasn’t busy cooking customers’ food I was supposed to be prepping for new customers or for days to come. Later on each night while working there I would have to clean all of the trays and pans used during the day, which wasn’t a very fun job, especially scrubbing the hard, dry macaroni and cheese off the walls of some pans. After dishes were done I would break out fish from the freezer to place on a rack in the cooler to thaw the fish needed for the next day. Once that task was taken care of I would gather up all of the broken down boxes from that day as well as the trash from all the kitchen trash cans and take all of it out to the dumpster. After doing that I usually smoked a cigarette as routine from being stressed from the work and to relax a bit which happened quite often most nights that I worked.
There were two employees in the kitchen with me that weren’t managers and from which I basically learned how to do everything. Their names were Nigel and Aaron. The two of them were quite a bit older than me but they still touch me under their wing and made a damn good seafood cook out of me.
From Aaron and Nigel taking me in under their wing caused me much grief because throughout the rest of the time that they worked there they used me for their fun at work by playing tricks on me basically everyday. The tricks started off by telling me to go back to the stock room and grab them a “can of steam for the bean warmer”. Yeah pretty ridiculous ay but I caught onto that one pretty quick but since them getting me with it I ended up getting a lot of later employees with that trick. Aaron was very good at making me mad at least once a day each and everyday that I worked. For example when I would go out to smoke he would be inside setting up a cup of water just inside the employee door rigging it up so that once I came back in and pushed open the door I would get a big cup of water all down my body.
I learned a lot from Aaron and Nigel’s tricks. I will have to say though that I still owe Aaron to this day for one of his tricks that he pulled on me. That trick consisted of talking one of the hot counter girls named Toshia to come back into the kitchen and stand there with her back to me and shake her nice fat ass in my face while Aaron would come up behind me with a three gallon bucket of water and just drench me. From that I can say that I still owe him for the water but I actually thanked him for the gesture from the counter girl which was quite a nice sight if I had ever seen one.
After working with the two of them for a little over a year they both quit from the place and left me as the best cook Captain D’s had which in a way sucked for me because I covered both of their missing shifts. I can honestly say that I wasted a whole summer in that place busting my ass for pennies. I say “pennies” because working 90 hours every two weeks for a pay of $5.65 per hour was basically working for pennies.
As I watched more and more people come and go from Captain D’s I just kept questioning myself why am I still here? I ended up getting a few of my friend’s jobs and they ended up quitting before I did. After two years of working at Captain D’s I went from a starting pay of $5.65 to an ending pay of $7.00 an hour and I basically said you guys suck and I no longer want to be a part of this place. From the time that I spent at that restaurant I had some of my best days and some of my worst days and I think I learned a lot about life from being there. So working at the mighty Captain D’s wasn’t a complete waste or at least I like to think it wasn‘t.
