Chicken Sandwich

I made a fuckin chicken sandwich

Chef’s log. Star date, your sister's anus.

It’s been two weeks since I first landed on this strange planet they call culinary school. And honestly, it’s been two long weeks of food safety and hygiene until yesterday when they finally let me and the rest of my group of mostly eighteen-year-old retards loose in a commercial kitchen.

I’ve got to know a couple of people. One of them, Giannis, this Greek dude never shuts the fuck up about sport—any sport. Apparently, he is a squash champion. He’s one of those people where the more ya talk to them, the more ya think they’re one of those compulsive liars. I recognise them well cos I had it when I was young—the lying disease.

And this guy is 21, so he’s in that prime zone where ya so busy trying to get people to see you in a certain way that you forget to stop acting like a cunt, or ya haven’t quite learned what acting like a cunt looks like yet so yer unable to avoid it. According to Giannis, the national squash champion, his dad is a national poker champion. Giannis has been cooking professionally since he was six and has won ‘awards’.

Fucking lying cunt.

So we’re in the kitchen watching the head chef make this fucking sandwich

And she raises her voice mildly cos some young Gen Z knobhead is filming up close on her phone with a stupidly large lighting pad like she’s fucking Martina Scorcese on the set of ‘The Dramatic Onion.’

The chef made it damn clear that the sandwich assessment is not about the sandwich, it's about whether we can operate safely around a kitchen, particularly around raw chicken. And honestly, I’m looking around at this class of teenage ADHD, TikTok, fucking Gen Z cunts, and I’m thinking, fuck there’s gonna be at least one case of chicken poisoning today.

I pair up with the quiet guy who seems closest to my age. His name is Mikey. Turns out he is a smoker. That’s a good sign because none of the little pricks smoke, they only vape like knobheads. He also looks fucking knackered when we start class at 8.30 am. I’ve been around this luminous circuit and I know that look— the look of a late night weed smoker. Regardless, I like the guy. He’s quiet and clean, and he seems to have his shit mildly together, unlike fucking Giannis, who somehow is a nineteen-year-old with a full beard and who I noticed stinks like he hasn’t had a fucking shower.

And that’s strike one from me. It's not even that we have to endure his unpleasant stench. This is a kitchen, you fuck. You are cooking for people. If you are such a lazy cunt that you aren't gonna shower in the morning, then get the fuck away from me.

How can I fucking trust you in the house of fire and knives?

I decide he’ll get one chance with the body odour. If he stinks in the next class, I’m telling the head chef—not cos Im a rat, but cos if I tell him myself he might cry or some shit. It’s not my place. You need a proxy for cases of strong body odour.

Anyway, I tell Giannis he’ll have to go in a different group, and his eyebrows act like we’ve been friends for twenty years and I just fucked his wife, but I don't give a fuck.

Me n Mikey get our fuckin chicken in the oven and I start choppin onions

I get halfway and remember the chef said cutting the onions safely is in the assessment, so I chop half and tell Mikey he should chop the rest. The cunt picks up the big knife, grabs the onion and slices a fucking chunk out of his index finger. In literally the first chop of culinary school he nearly cut his fucking finger off. It’s fucking bizarre.

“That was quick,” I say as I watch his blood piss out into our onion. And Mikey fucks off to fix up his bleeding digit. So now I wash and sterilise everything, and then I get our chicken out, which is a tasty seventy-five degrees in the middle.

Then I start cutting the lettuce, and halfway, Giannis sticks his fucking big Greek head in.

“You should probably cut that a bit finer,” he tells me. And I wonder suddenly if this culinary life is for me when cunts say things and you have a giant fucking chef’s knife in your hand. It would only take a second to lose control and stick this fucking thing into his head.

But that would make an even bigger mess.

So I turn to Giannis, and I say,

“Don’t fucking worry about it, mate.”

I say it loudly, so half the kitchen turns round. If you ask me, it was a fucking mellow response. And it's strike two for Giannis. Cos the only person I want unsolicited advice from is the head chef, certainly not from a fucking stinking Greek teenager. Fuck’s sake, Giannis. He can’t know it’s another way of coming across as a cunt. I tell myself I’ll explain that one to him at some point cos, looking at the fucks in this class, it's almost certain he’ll end up bleeding all over this kitchen. And no one wants that.

And ya might think I’m being fuckin harsh, but this is the kitchen, and with all these little pricks around, I have to take this shit seriously cos there are too many things in here that might kill ya.

And look, we’re not making fucking lobster and crumpets here

This is a supermarket chicken breast with some margarine called carcinolex and whiter than white anus glue bread. And yet these kids are arranging their turd sandwiches like it's a fucking three-star Michelin restaurant, and they’re taking them up to try and impress the fucking chef, and she’s barely looking at them but continuing to write things with a scowl. I like her. She’s probably in her forties and has worked in Michelin restaurants. You can tell by how angry she is, and I whisper to Mikey, who is now back with a blue-wrapped finger, that I think she is at anger level 2/10 right now and that it's gonna get better.

I whack my chicken on the bread, add mayo, chopped blood-free onion, and lettuce, and then I start cleaning.

I’m not gonna make this fucking sandwich look fancy. It's a cunt of a sandwich. Im not even gonna season it, probably. It's not about the sandwich. It's about safety. And look, you might think Mikey failed because he made himself bleed, but it ain't about that. We’re all untrained children with knives right now, even Giannis that fuck.

After cleaning and a dressing down by the chef for some of the younger kids for being lazy fucks we all sit down and eat the sandwiches. Mine is under-seasoned and made with poor quality ingredients, but I have to eat it cos now we all wait two hours to see if there's any nausea, stomach cramping, or diarrhoea. That's the only way to know if we all passed this assessment.

On the way home I contemplate the fine balance required between being focused and being a good team player

Surely I have to remember these eighteen-year-olds are fresh out of the womb. What was I doing when I was eighteen?

One memory springs to mind. I was doing basic training in some fucking snowy mountains in the middle of winter at Penicuik, near Edinburgh. It was minus thirteen degrees and I was under a poncho, cuddling up to two of my mates, fast asleep, cos they said body heat keeps ya warm so ya dont get hypothermic. N my section commander ripped the poncho off us and kicked me square in the nuts.

“Get up, you fucking faggots,” he said.

It wasn’t gay. It was an army cuddle. It was about survival.

Fuck.

I get home and wash the chicken sandwich stink off as well as the memory of that cold gay night in Scotland.

I make a gin and tonic. Then I make a fucking orange cake (My second ever cake) to get the stink out of my head. And it was fuckin nice that orange cake.

Now that is gay.

Who the fuck am I?

Bird out.

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