Want to enter the food truck industry? Pt III

It's been a while since the last post but delays happens. I took vyvanse to make the next post yesterday but I ended up trolling on okcupid instead.

The new truck owner is going to be referred to as "Lucas," for the rest of the story. 

Lucas called me at 7am the next day to decide when and where to pick me up to go to the kitchen. I'm not even close to awake and just say ask him for 9am assuming that will make me look good. He shot down my answer swiftly and said "no that's way too early, let's make it 2pm." I agree and get pissed because he woke up and I'm a moody bastard in the morning, I already don't like him. I can't go back to sleep so I start my day and decided to call Rick later on in the day to ask him for advice on how to deal with Lucas.

Rick tells me he doesn't know much about Lucas other than he's a nice guy usually and he's from the corporate world. This didn't surprise me at all. Most food truck owners in this area are not chefs/cooks and don't have a culinary background, they all took some udemy.com course and opened a truck. Problem with Lucas is that he doesn't do any of the cooking, it's his right hand man "Wall-E." Wall-E is fresh out of culinary school so already I know he's better than me but that doesn't threaten me because I'm shadowing him for the day and I can pick up easily on what needs to be done. It's a problem because Wall-E is just an employee, not an owner/partner and he's the only employee besides me and that means I'm taking money out of his pockets now.

2pm rolls around and Lucas picks me up in front of my place. I get in and we start talking. He asks me about my experience and before I can finish most of my sentences, he tells me why his truck is different from what I'm used to. I just stop talking about whatever I've done in the past and start directing questions about the truck. We keep talking and eventually he just pulls out a cheap bottle of vodka and just takes a swig like nothing when driving to the kitchen. Immediately knew if I kept this job, I'm going to quit because of this somewhere down the line. He puts the bottle back in the center console and just keeps talking and I act like nothing happen but worrying like fucking crazy because I hate drunk drivers (whole other story). 

We arrive at the kitchen and I'm introduced to Wall-E and some other guy who I never see again. Wall-E greets me with the most blank face I've ever seen and the other guy just continues cooking lunch for them. I'm shown around the kitchen and its a lovely kitchen, old but filled with everything you could ever need. I'm there for 10 minutes tops before Wall-E says "I don't need help today, I think I can get everything done in 2 hours." I'm dismissed and Lucas drives me back to my house. I ask Lucas if Wall-E is my only co-worker and he says "Yeah but I do everything as well. We all do everything." I knew Wall-E was going to hate me for a while. Lucas takes another swig and tells me my first event is going to be tomorrow with him serving 300 people in 2 hours. Mind you, everything on the truck is just heated up and assembled, nothing is fresh and takes only 10 seconds to fill an order.

The next day comes and I arrive at the event. I walk into the truck and I could actually stand in it with a foot above me. I was shown what the "recipes," are and told to take an order and assemble it. This truck was very simple, way less work was required than compared to Rick's truck but it shows in the food. We open up and it went pretty smoothly other than my orders not looking pretty enough at first but I fixed that quickly. The day is over and Lucas pulls out a cheap gin bottle this time and take two swigs and pays me in cash for the day. A lot more money than I made with Rick, the main reason why I decided to stay with Lucase for so long. Lucas was impressed with me and told me I was really fast and good with the customers.  He tells me about the next couple of events and asks me to join. This was one of the few times I worked with Lucas for over the next 12 months. 

This is a long story, I know. I'm only writing these stories out this long is because I don't want to forget anything and when I finish it all, I will condense it for one or two articles.   For now, my break is over.