If you had told an eighteen year old Oscar Martinez that he'd be waking up hungover for the rest of his life he wouldn't have believed you. That was before he graduated culinary school and became an actual chef. For someone who was so eager to leave the pains of adolescence he sure had a way of prolonging it indefinitely.

He wakes up. Aches. Groans. Takes an aspirin and a shower. Drives to work for what he calls the quiet time. Believe it or not prep is his favorite part of the day. He got into cooking to be an artist which he defined as being so brilliant that you'd never have to talk to another human being again. Nope. He wanted to be a serious, mature professional. Nope. He wanted to be respected. Nope. He wanted to make good money. Oh, hell no.

He's a damn good chef. He knows that. But in high school he was also a damn good mathematician, a damn good figure skater, and a damn good tutor. That's where the confusion set in. He simply had too many options. His father would look at him and say, "Why are you complaining? When I came to this country the only option I had was to get a job or starve." Oscar never brought up that his dad came to America because he was transferred from his branch in Mexico City to the one in Carbondale.

He's never sure if he made the right choice. He thinks about what his life would be like if he was a teacher or a show skater or, heaven forbid, an accountant. He dreams of forty hour work weeks and weekends off. He salivates at the idea of working alone in a little cubicle all day where no one bothers him.

But reality comes crashing down. And it does that on a daily basis. Like today. It's a Thursday so fish delivery's coming in. Or should be. The Vance Fishery truck doesn't show up. He waits until ten and then call Bob Vance, Vance Fisheries himself.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Bob. It's Oscar."

"Hi, Oscar."

"Today I was think about cooking food. It's a hobby of mine. I do it every now and then. Thinking about making a salmon salad for lunch. So I go into the freezer and there's no salmon. I'm surprised because it's Thursday and I have tons of salmon in there on Thursdays. Then I remember I was supposed to get a delivery BUT THE FUCKING TRUCK NEVER SHOWED UP."

"It will be there right away."

"Thank you."

Sea Monster, one of his runners, stares at him.

"What?"

"You are ridiculously scary when you yell."

"Thank you."

Angela arrives first for lunch service. Angela is always first.

He kind of hates her. Thinks she wants his job.

He kind of likes her. She's mildly sane.

Her pastry corner is the quietest area in the entire restaurant. She doesn't allow her underlings to swear and if anyone outside that corner touched one of her "babies" she will kill him.

Angela opens up the freezer.

"Kevin!"

"What?"

"He forgot to feed the baby! How am I going to make--"

Oscar dimly recalls a phone call at four in the morning, right after he staggered into bed.

i"You have to feed it."

"What?"

"You have to feed the baby."

"Kevin?"

"I forgot to feed it. She'll kill me if she finds out."

He hangs and goes back to sleep./i

"He is always doing this! I give him one simple task..."

Schrute comes in. He always enters exactly five minutes after Angela. Oscar doesn't like to think about why.

The rest filter in gradually and they all prep for service.

He has a meeting with the owners. They're trying to be "proactive" which really means "pain in the ass" in restaurant terms. He feeds them samples of the day's specials along with the wait staff.

"So we were thinking about changing the theme."

"No."

"Come on, Oscar. You haven't even heard--"

"Michael, no."

"Holly, tell him what it is."

"The films of Mel Brooks!"

"Holly, no."

"It would be awesome!" Holly yells just a bit too loudly.

"Please! Pretty please with a jalapeno pepper on top..."

"No. When restaurants change themes or menus it makes the public think that the restaurant is failing. It gives the stench of death."

"You never let us have any fun," Michael pouts.

"Whoever told you that restaurant business was fun is a liar."

He gets up and walks away thinking he made an excellent final statement and an especially dramatic exit when Stanley accosts him.

"Artichokes!"

"What?"

"The lunch special is riddled with artichokes! How the ihell/i am I supposed to find a complementary wine for goddamn artichokes in two hours? Did you wake up today think how to ruin my life? 'Maybe I'll put the most difficult food to pair with wine on the menu today.' Are you stupid?"

Stanley is always difficult when upset. The man is keenly aware that he's the best (possibly the only) sommelier in Scranton. Oscar can't afford to fire him or make him angry enough to quit. Still, he can't let a goddamn sommelier challenge his authority in front of his staff.

"Stanley, sit down before your heart explodes. The only reason artichokes are on the menu is because we needed to use them all before they went bad. I'm sorry this had to happen. I'll understand if you'll need to sample more wine than usual today. You might need to sample an entire bottle of Merlot. Who knows."

He used to think he was above bribery. He also used to think he was above snorting coke in a public bathroom but then the eighties happened.

Speaking of that... "Where the fuck is my fucking tournant?"

Most of the cooks have no idea who Escoffier was let alone how to pronounce his name so Oscar gets a bunch of blank stares as a response. Their poissonnier, Andy, the only other person to go to culinary school, charitably translates, "He means where's Ryan?"

"You mean the biggest jerk in the entire world?" Kelly, the hostess asks. "I haven't seen him since Monday."

"Damn it, Jim!" Dwight yells from across the room.

Oscar feels a migraine coming on. "What's wrong, Dwight?"

"He put my squeeze bottle in Jell-o again!"

The rest of the staff grows quiet. To mess with someone else's mise-en-place was a mortal sin. Especially to fuck with a saucier's squeeze bottle. There were about fifty other squeeze bottles in the kitchen but Schrute only uses the ones he brought from home. He claims that it was steeped with the flavors of the Old Country. (Oscar's not exactly sure what the Old Country is but he humors him.)

"How do you know it was me?"

"It's always you!" Dwight picks up a santoku knife menacingly. "If you touch my stuff ever again I swear to God I will kill you!"

Jim looks adequately frightened so Oscar doesn't take him aside as he usually would. He gives a half-assed, "Settle down, boys," before going out to the bar.

"No," the bartender says as soon as she sees him.

"What?"

"No. It's not even lunch service yet."

"Schrute almost gutted Jim over a squeeze bottle."

"That's not my problem."

"Please. Pam, please. I just saved your boyfriend's life."

"He's not my boyfriend."

"Sure." He makes his best puppy dog eyes at her.

"Fine."

He gulps down a Red Bull and vodka. "Thank you."

Service starts. Ryan's nowhere to be found. He has to expedite along with running from station to station helping out. The steady stream trickles out around three. Time to prep for dinner. Stations are cleaned. Towels are hoarded. People go missing to do whatever it is they do.

Oscar runs to the dry goods closet for his stash of cigarettes. He opens the door to find Angela and Schrute copulating on a sack of quinoa. He rinses his eyes out in the bathroom sink.

Ryan strolls in. He looks like shit. Oscar takes him outside to talk. He scared because he looks at Ryan and sees himself years ago.

"Ryan, I'm suspending you."

"What? You can't suspend me! Do chefs even get suspended? I'm not a fucking cop!"

"Okay. You're fired then."

"This is ridiculous!"

"Watch your fucking mouth, kid. I'm giving you six months to clean up. If you come back clean, you can have your job back."

"Whatever, man." Ryan walks off.

The kid'll never get hired in Pennsylvania again. Oscar will make sure of that. He'll end up slinging burgers at some fast food place that doesn't require a drug test. Hopefully that will be his rock bottom. There's really nothing else he can do.

"Come on!" Andy shouts.

Oscar runs back inside. "What happened?"

"All my towels are gone. I went to the bathroom and they disappeared. How the hell am I supposed put out clean plates without any fucking towels?"

"Did you look around?"

"I looked everywhere!"

He can see Jim smirking. Halpert has a bulge in his pants. Oscar's the kind of guy who notices bulges and Jim definitely did not have that yesterday.

"Jim, take off your pants."

"What?"

"Take off your pants."

His pants drop to the floor along with the missing towels.

"Jim, what's the most important rule in the kitchen?"

"I don't know. Always wash your hands after jerking off?"

"It's 'if it not yours, don't touch it.' Can you say that, Jim? Say it."

"If it's not yours, don't touch it."

"Good boy. What a good boy. Who's a good boy? Oh, Jim's a good boy," he deadpans. Oscar finds that treating people like developmentally delayed kindergartners or Labrador Retrievers is quite an effective punishment. He winks at Andy before taking another cigarette break.

Creed, the ancient rôtisseur, joins him on the loading dock. Oscar readies himself to hear one of Creed's ridiculous claims like, "I used to peal potatoes for Escoffier," or "Eric Ripert's my godson," or "I'm Rasputin." Instead Oscar breathes in a sour, earthy smell.

"Is that weed?"

"It could be if you wanted it to."

He walks back inside.

Dinner is, as always, a giant blur.

Jim's bitchy because someone sent soup back for being cold. As soon as he starts to whine, Phyllis tells him maybe he shouldn't have let it sit in the window for five minutes. He's not that much of a baby to yell at a waitress who knows more than he does so he lets thing slide.

Andy has to descale fish as they're ordered because Vance didn't drop them off until ten minutes before service. By the end of the night he has more scales on his face than the Billy the Big Mouther Bass hanging in the dining room. (Oscar hates that fucking thing. He secretly replaces the working batteries with dead ones every time Michael or Holly notices that it's not on.)

A sauté pan falls on Meredith's head. She takes a shot of vodka and then she's fine. Schrute's pissed because the pan has Meredith's "filthy red hair smell" all over it and is positive that it won't come out in the wash. He's incredibly persnickety when it comes to odors.

Toby starts weeping while plating a Caesar salad. Everyone does their best to ignore him.

Kevin gets his hand stuck in a jar. Again.

Jim accidentally goes over the line that separates his and Schrute's workspace. It takes three men to disarm Schrute and one tiny blonde to get his blood pressure back to normal.

Meredith's hair catches on fire. Somewhere, Schrute's sauté pan smirks in satisfaction.

Oscar catches Creed trying to steal an entire tuna by shoving it down his pants. Jim remarks that Andy's stuff is getting in more pants than Andy is. There's a big laugh and Jim is redeemed.

Someone unseen grabs Oscar's ass while he's reading off a ticket. He has no time to wonder who that was or what that means.

Creed walks up ten minutes later and smacks Oscar on the butt.

"What are you doing?"

"Tapping you on the be-hind."

"Why?"

"I saw Andy do it. I thought it was a new thing we were doing."

"It's not!"

"Oh. Sorry about that."

Creed toddles back to his station, while Oscar locks eyes with the poissonnier and raises an eyebrow.

It's late enough that only desserts are coming out of the kitchen. "Jim, take over for me."

If he had one smell to remember Andy by it would be the mixture of fish and quinoa.

"Awesome."

When they crawl out out of the storage closet and into the kitchen, they get knowing looks and he swears he can hear Jim and Schrute whispering about teacher's pets. He flips everyone the bird because apparently that's how he communicates now.

Last ticket of the night comes in. Cheesecake. Toby plates it quickly putting some English on there as he slides it into the window. Obviously, Toby's more rapid cycling than usual today.

He sends everyone home which really means, "What bar are we going to tonight?"

They're stuck at Poor Richard's because Andy and Schrute are banned from that place in Wilkes-Barre for breaking a pool stick while pretending to fight with light sabers. He's tired but his adrenaline is pumping from serving a hundred orders tonight. He sits in a booth next to Andy, puts his head on his shoulder and his hand on his thigh. Andy whispers something French in his ear that Oscar can't understand because it has nothing to with cooking. To him, French has always sounded like Spanish spoken by someone who's just got done getting a root canal yet Andy makes it sound appealing.

"Te quieres ir a mi casa?"

"What?"

"You don't speak Spanish? You work in a kitchen how can you not speak Spanish? That was baby Spanish for chrissakes!"

"You don't speak French. How did they let you graduate culinary school without learning French?"

"I'm actually a good cook so I didn't need that."

"Oh, buuuurrrrn."

Andy might be the only person in the world to say that when he himself is getting burned. Oscar finds that oddly endearing. "Do you want to get out of here?"

--

He wakes up. Andy's asleep on his chest. He strokes his hair until he awakens.

"Hey."

"Hey."

"Are you on lunch today?"

"No. You?"

"No."

They drift off.