Every morning it was the same damned thing... "Hey faggot- ham and cheese omelette and oatmeal." I was working as a night cook/baker on an Exxon rig in the 630 block of West Cameron way out in the Gulf of Mexico and this was my first assignment on an oil rig.
Everybody on a rig has a job to do and the way I see it, they all need to get done so they're all important. Not everybody sees it that way though- some people think they're more important than everybody else... too big for their britches as my Uncle Arthur would have said- he also taught me not to take any shit off nobody. Warren was one of those assholes- he didn't get along with hardly anybody... I'd have come over the counter and kicked his ass but the rigs are under Maritime Law and fighting was an automatic year with no good time- you have to do the whole bit! You see Warren was a welder and he was a legend in his own mind.Well, unbeknownst to Warren he was about to learn a very important lesson about the pecking order on the rigs- a lesson in fact that I hadn't even learned as of yet... NEVER piss off the cook.
There are two cooks on an oil rig, a day cook (who's the head cook) and a night cook who also does the baking too. They each have a galley hand that does the dishes, cleans up and helps out in the kitchen and mess hall. The day cook on this rig was a black guy from Sicily who was thrilled to see another Sicilian when I got out there. His name was Eugenio "Gene" Pasto... a really cool guy. So one morning Gene was in the kitchen having coffee when Warren came in and gave me his usual greeting. Gene looked at me but I just played it off like I wasn't paying attention. After breakfast when the galley hand was cleaning up, Gene takes me into the pantry...
"You don't have to take that shit," he tells me in his heavily accented English.
"What do you mean?" I ask him.
"When the galley hand cleans the grill just put a few grains of the grill brick aside- maybe 3-4 grains. I'll tell my guy to leave them there and tomorrow put them in his omelette... Then we watch the fun ("Dena we watcha da fun").
"What does it do?" I ask him, curious.
Gene puts his hand on my shoulder and gives me this fatherly look: "You just don't worry about that," he says with a big grin. "You do this for couplea days."
So the next morning Warren comes in with his usual opening and I follow Gene's advice. About half an hour later Warren gets up and hurries out of the galley. I watched with curiosity, wondering what was going on. I figured it made him sick or something. The next morning he comes in walking kinda funny. There was no "Hey faggot," this time- just "give me some oatmeal." So I put a few grains in his oatmeal and gave it to him like Gene said. I didn't see Warren again until the next day after breakfast. He had a bed sheet wrapped on his lower half like a diaper. Gene was there and hollered out...
"Hey big boy, you don't want the faggot make you no omelett?" he said to Warren with a wink. All he got in return was a dirty look. Apparently the grains from the grill brick go right through you causing symptoms a lot like dysentery. They had to have a helicopter come all the way out there to pick Warren up and take him to the hospital. I never saw him again, but what do you want to bet he never called a cook "faggot" again???
Being a cook may not be the most prestigious job on the rig, but it does have its perks. Oh and whatever you do, whether it's on an oil rig, a cafeteria, or anywhere else where someone else is preparing your food... treat them with respect- you just never know. So let this little story be a lesson, as you go through life... NEVER piss off the cook!
