“Imma MAN! I only got two rules — Don’t mess with my CARS, or my KIDS,” he said.

Steve and Eric were the same as Pokie in that regard, but all three of them had different ways of trying to assert their dominance over others. Scott was something else completely. He looked just like a Jack from a deck of cards but with an evil eye, and he had a very twitchy personality. It seemed like he was universally disliked. A server named Marina called him trailer trash, and Steve said Tampa cooks would’ve taken him out back a long time ago. One time he tried to say something about me having a Jheri Curl, and I told him, “I can get a haircut, but you can’t grow your teeth back.” Scott just stood there with an open-mouth smile as he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Greg and Eric were talking about it later after Scott left. For some reason people thought I wasn’t ever going to fire back on anyone.

“That was COLD…” Greg said.

Not long after that, Steve was sitting in the buffet area on a stool, like he often did, and he said to me,”Do me a favor. When you fight Scott, make sure you knock his last tooth out for me.” One of the senior managers named Dennis was laughing.

“I KNOW you didn’t go there, Steve!” he said.

As a reminder, these were managers talking like this.

Scott had nicknames for all the kitchen staff.

“Greg the black demon from within. Eric the redneck demon from within.”

“What am I?” I asked.

Scott leaned in like he was about to divulge some extra secret information.

“You the light-brown demon from within,” he said.

Sometimes Eric and Steve would go back and forth about things. Somehow they got on the topic of football. Eric was talking big like he could outdo Steve on the field. I already knew Steve used to play football back in school. He once told me a story about how he scored a touchdown, and to spite the opposing player who failed to tackle him, he signed the football and gave it to his girlfriend.

“Do you know why I talk so much ****? Because I can,” Steve said to me once.”

He definitely did. He didn’t seem to have anything better to do all day than to cut through people’s egos with his words. He sat there like a Mafia boss and seemed to take joy in other people’s suffering. But in cases where it was someone like Eric who talked even more than Steve, I didn’t mind watching.

Out the back door, the designated fighting area where the grease pit and dumpsters were was also where competitions took place. Eric took his shirt off, looking a bit out of shape, and Steve remained in his white button-up shirt and slacks but rolled his sleeves up. One of the mega bar cooks threw the football. Steve caught it, reversed on Eric and took off. I didn’t know if they were playing tackle on this hard concrete or if they were playing two-hand touch, but Eric couldn’t even touch him, so tackling wasn’t even a possibility. He looked like he wasn’t doing nearly what he thought he was going to do to Steve at all. I thought it was funny to see Eric get did.

A couple of days later, Steve came into the kitchen with another employee and asked me how much space there was between him and Eric that day they were playing football.

“It was from that wall…to that wall,” I exaggerated as I pointed to opposing walls in the kitchen.

Steve started laughing.

About an hour later, one of the dishwashers named Marshall came up to me. I had never talked to him before.

“You said Steve bursted on Eric’s ***?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said simply.

Then he started laughing.

It was common for people to gossip, and sometimes you’d hear parts of a conversation about you a room or two over.

“At least he had the ***** to show up and arm wrestle him,” I heard Steve say to someone in another room after the first time I arm wrestled Pokie.

Steve seemed to have my back most of the time, but there was definitely something about him that was way off. It was hard to get over my first impression of him, but he seemed to be decent sometimes, so I thought it wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t give him a chance. It almost seemed like he felt like he could trust me. He had stone-cold eyes and the face of a killer, but he had a soft side to him as well.

“Steve is using good and evil to his advantage,” General manager Sue said about him.

“Is that the same Andrew???” I heard Pokie say about me once to an unknown person.

I guess I had changed in this short time I had been away from home, but it was hard to know how much and in what way being far away from just about everything I identified with. My experiences down here in Florida had been very intense, so no doubt the impact on me and my personality was intense also.

Sometimes the things you heard people say in other rooms were extremely disrespectful too. I usually came into the room and let them know I heard them at that point.

Marshall didn’t last long. There’s a rule in Florida that you don’t fire anybody, but manager Paul broke the rule. I heard they got in a big argument, and it ended with Marshall getting fired. Later that day, it was discovered that someone let the air out of Paul’s tires. That must be why no one gets fired in Florida.

With all of Eric’s constant harassment, it was only so long until I would start to get him back. We just got an intercom installed in the kitchen we could use to let the servers know when an order was ready. Eric was outside of the kitchen at the carving bar wearing a chef’s uniform along with a hat.

A couple of times a week the carving bar was added to the buffet. It was a separate station where the cook would serve small medium-well steaks and larger medium-rare steaks that could be cut into pieces or taken whole. They would holler through the kitchen window what they needed when they were getting low. I decided to test our new intercom…on Eric.

“Eric, please report to the grease pit,” I said in a disguised voice, then fled the kitchen so Eric didn’t see me.

I didn’t think I was going to get him, but I saw Eric go running through the back area outside in his chef’s uniform and I started laughing.

“You seen it here,” Greg said in disbelief.

Eric came back looking frantic.

“Who said that??? I thought that was Steve!” he said.

Then he looked at me.

“You the only one who coulda done that!” he said.

I was too busy laughing to respond.

Another time, I was the one at the carving bar, and it was time for me to order more steaks from the kitchen. Eric just happened to be in the buffet area and I told him I needed more steaks.

“Right now I can’t! I got a buncha chops on ma grill!” he said and took off quickly back to the kitchen.

Steve was sitting on his stool again not far away.

I knew Eric couldn’t hear me, but I said,”You keep talking like that and you won’t have any chops left up on your grill.”

Steve covered his mouth.

“Ohhh!! That was a good one, Andrew!” he said.

That was only the second time I ever saw him laugh that hard. The first time was a month earlier.

“If I show you something, you promise not to tell anybody?” he asked.

“OK,” I agreed.

Steve took me out into the mega bar prep kitchen and pointed at one of the cooks as she was walking away from us. Her undergarments were hanging out of her pants, and I’ll just say, they were more colorful than they were supposed to be.

Steve hid in the meat cutting room and was struggling his hardest not to laugh out loud. It was very rare for him to show such emotion. I had no idea what he must’ve been through to become so emotionally self-contained.

Eric and I got into a small argument another time.

“A couple years ago I woulda shot you for talkin’ to me like that,” he said.

“You come into my neighborhood talking like that and YOU’LL get shot!” I said.

Manager Dennis peeps his head out of the office and he’s just laughing out loud.

Because of Pokie’s sometimes heated nature, I had to ask him the question.

“Have you ever killed anyone before?” I asked straightforwardly.

“See…I don’t KNOW if I did. There was a guy on the ground and I said like this a few times (making trigger pulling actions) as I was moving away with my head to the side.

I took that as a probably.

Pokie had a few nicknames for me: Drewster, The Drew, Drew Barrymoore, and The Drewminator. After telling me his short story, and based on what I had seen from him, I decided to give him a nickname too.

“What??? The Pokie ******??!??” he asked.

“Naaaaaaahhhh, MAN! The Pokinator!” I said.

After that, sometimes I’d see Pokie walking towards me with a big grin on his face. I’d reproduce part of The Terminator opening theme.

“Chh chh, chh chh chh!”

He’d start laughing.

This was such a strange place. It was like violent talk was normal conversation. Though I was starting to roll with the punches, I needed some balance in my life, and I knew just what I should do.