An old restaurant I worked at hired a new chef. He came in, completely rearranged the kitchen, changed the menu top to bottom ON HIS FIRST DAY, and introduced a bunch of complicated specials. Dinner service hits, chaos ensues and dude disappears.

I was on expo watching everything fall apart when one of the line cooks is like, “get chef,I don’t know how to make this special because there’s no recipe or notes”

I go into the walk in and he’s haunched over in there and violently turns, around inhaling, all bug eyed. I told him we needed help. He doesn’t hide his annoyance goes on the line, makes the one dish in question and is like, “see, that wasn’t difficult” and disappeared again.

The line cook asked why I had the look on my face that I did and I said it was because chef was doing rails in the walk in. We both laughed, shook our heads and got through service eventually. Drugs are pretty common in the service industry but even that seemed extreme.

Anyhow we didn’t see him for the rest of the night. Next day, I get to work and the owner is there and he pulls me aside and told me what happened after.

Chef continued his one man party and went into the booze closet and proceeded to help himself. When the prep cook showed up the next morning the kitchen door was wide open so she called the police thinking the place had been robbed. The police went in and found Chef semi conscious and incoherent, giggling in the office. He was fired and since he was a keyholder all the locks and alarm codes had to be changed

I’ve never seen someone self destruct that spectacularly.

To have been a fly on the wall when they called the other guy chef beat out for the gig and told him he could start immediately…