I cried at work today.

Let’s just follow that up with the fact that I despise girls who cry in inappropriate places like work or the bank. It really pisses me off. I have cried at work exactly twice before, and one of those times was along with all the other faculty at St. Paul’s during the last day of school 2005, so it doesn’t count.

It wasn’t a good day. I was on pastry and everything was fine, until Jean-Pierre (I know, how much more French can you get), the sous-chef, basically made a fool out of me during the lunch service saying that if I had my way, everyone upstairs would get their desserts tomorrow. Then Dewey left at 2:30. Two more dessert orders came in, and as I was starting them, the chef swept over and did them for me for no reason. I guess there is a reason: she has no confidence in me whatsoever.

I had a productive afternoon of prep-work. Just before I was to leave, Medi, the first-course kid, and David, the swing chef who does everything asked me to take this cream mixture, put it in a pastry bag, and fill the amuse bouche glasses. There were many glasses with a dollop of salmon mousse in them and some that were empty. I held up a glass that had salmon mousse in it and asked Medi how high up the glass I should go. He said ¾ the way up, like usual. I was all over this task.

I filled all the salmon mousse glasses, but ran out before I got to the empty ones. I turned to Medi, and before I could ask him what to do, he looked at the glasses and me with such a look of horror and disbelief I thought perhaps I had somehow left a body part in one of them. “David,” he said, horrified, “look what she did.”

It turns out that I was supposed to put a small dollop of cream, like a tablespoon, in the bottom of each empty glass. I had to salvage the cream and then throw out all the salmon mousse, wash the glasses, and refill them with cream. No one yelled or anything, it was just the way the looked at me, like I was literally the stupidest person to ever walk the planet. Like it was a miracle I had figured out how to walk and breathe at the same time. So, as I was washing the glasses, my eyes welled up and my nose ran, but not one tear came down my cheeks, nor were there sniffles or sobs. But it still was crying.

The only thing that is good about crying at this work is that it is all guys. There was no other girl like me there to get all righteous and pissy because I was humiliating her gender and perpetuating a stereotype. The boys all felt really bad, and were all apologetic and just kept saying, “Don’t worry, it’s not a big deal.” They fell all over themselves trying to make everything okay.

Except they can’t make it okay, because they can’t erase the fact that I cried at work.