jamey clayberg

It’s very 2010 to think you need to love your job; I hear the voice of my grandfathers generation grumbling “shut up and get to work,” and in some ways they’re right. Being diligent, that’s a great thing. Going quietly about your work and putting your back into it is commendable. You’re providing for yourself and/or your family and you’re adding something to the world. And then there are the cockroaches.

Watching Gordon Ramsay on Kitchen Nightmares (see them here on Hulu) you see how bad things can get when you stop caring. Chefs and managers and waitstaff who lose their passion let their environment and relationships deteriorate to an alarming extent. Spoiled food served to customers, horrible service, lying, laziness, and of course rats and cockroaches in the pantries and basements. When Ramsay points this out (in a foul-mouthed and over-the-top way) these people look at the roaches in a daze, as if they’re seeing them for the first time. In some way I think they are, they have disconnected so completely they can’t even honestly take in their surroundings, they are in a state of utter denial.

I’ve let roaches invade some areas of my life, more than once. No amount of external pressure explains it either, that love, that passion can only come from inside me and can only be allowed to dim by me. Here’s to never letting in the cockroaches again!