Day 349: 420 Words About A Potato Peeler

It’s Thursday and you know what that means. Time for me to force somebody else to come up with a writing prompt for me! In other words, my favorite day of the week. Or maybe second. Or third. Whatever, it’s a good day. This weeks prompt came from my coworker, Jon, who had no idea what I was asking him to do, so he chose 420 and “potato peeler”. And although I’ve never peeled a potato in my life (I think?), here’s 420 words about them anyways:

It was never busy on weekdays. There were never any dishes to do. I’m not sure why I was ever scheduled weekdays. I did happen to be the shittiest dishwasher, so maybe they wanted the A Team on weekends. But I wasn’t even the B Team. I was a team of my own. I was Troy, the shitty dishwasher. I took very little pride in that, but I owned it. I kept at the job no matter how terrible I was. Not because I wanted to get any better, but I really wanted money for DVDs and smokes.

Because there was nothing for me to do and even if there was, I wouldn’t do it well, they left me in the back room to do low stakes prep work. By low stakes, I mean that they gave me the one job that was impossible to fuck up. I would roll scallops in bacon. And I would do it for hours. To this day, I don’t understand how they sold that many scallops. I would go through humongous mixing bowls and cases of bacon per night. Once I got in the zone, I found the task to be oddly comforting.

When I ran out of bacon, they would have me peel carrots with a carrot peeler. Or maybe it was a potato peeler. I think they’re the same? I don’t know, I never peeled a potato. But if I ever did, I would probably find it just as relaxing as it is to peel a carrot. It was like whittling, but safer and less outdoorsy. There’s just something so satisfying about the carrot skin cleanly being stripped away.

I’d struggle to carry the 50 pound bag of carrots to the prep room and get to peeling. For some reason, I enjoyed every last one of them. I would spend all night sitting in front of a trash can, filling it up with carrot skins. I don’t know if I was actually good at it, or if it’s even possible to be good at it, but it beat the shit out of washing dishes.

They say to never bring work home with you. That was inherently impossible for me. Despite the fact that I wore gloves, my hands would be bright Orange and reek of raw bacon. Some nights I would get home and couldn’t even play Dreamcast, because my hands would turn the controller Orange. But I had no regrets. Peeling carrots remains to be one of my favorite kitchen duties.

– TeeCoZee