The Kitchen, Part 1

I got a job in the jail kitchen four days after sentencing.

Glorified delivery guy at first. Running food trays to the pods.

Here's what nobody tells you about jail kitchens. Everyone wants the job, and nobody wants to actually work.

The things I saw in that kitchen taught me more about people than any business I ever ran.

Not for any noble reason. Every day worked was time off my sentence.

That's the whole pitch. Work, and the number gets smaller. As a direct response guy, I'll tell you that's a great offer. Clear value. Clear mechanism. Low barrier to entry.

I figured everybody would take it.

Jail food is terrible. And it's the only food. So the kitchen runs everything.

Whoever controls the trays controls a small economy.

And the stealing was ridiculous. People would steal like their lives depended on it. Like they were starving. Keep in mind, this was jail food. It sucked. And grown men were hoarding it like it was the last supper.

We got double food sometimes. Not because it was good. Because if you didn't move fast, you got nothing.

That's what scarcity does. It doesn't matter if the thing is worth having. When you believe there isn't enough, you grab.

I've watched owners do the same thing with the worst client in the portfolio. Late payer, argues every invoice, burns out the team. They hoard that client like the last tray in the building.

Wrong-fit clients are just future problems with a down payment. And while your hands are full of garbage, you can't pick up anything good.

A walk-off is a guy quitting mid-shift. And since every day worked came off your sentence, walking off meant choosing to stay in jail longer.

Walk-off one. A guy walked off because he refused to clean up his own mess after he finished eating lunch.

Walk-off two. A guy walked off because he didn't want to work next to a specific person. Wouldn't say why. Just left.

Walk-off three, my favorite. A guy walked off because he didn't want to wear a beard net.

A beard net.

None of this work was hard. Tray lines. Deliveries. Cleanup. And men were choosing more days in jail over a little piece of mesh on their chin.

Now the part I still can't shake.

A handful of guys had real trouble with the concept. They'd use the restroom back at our pod and not wash their hands. Then we'd go to work, they'd put gloves on, and they'd handle food.

And the towels. They'd put the towels down their pants.

I was handling food next to men who'd just walked out of a bathroom without washing their hands, and I was supposed to pretend that was normal.

Because it was. That's what culture is. Not what's on the wall. What people do when nobody's checking.

You either laugh or you lose your mind. So I laughed. A lot.

Proverbs 17:22. "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones."

Before I climb too high on this horse, let me knock myself off it.

I was the walk-off guy for years. In my own life.

The thirteen-week cash forecast I never ran would have taken ninety minutes. I skipped it for months while my business ran out of oxygen. That was my beard net.

Just last week I told you I'd pushed podcast recording to the weekend two weeks in a row. Monday morning, before client calls. Simple. And I kept walking off it.

Those guys weren't a different species than me. They were me, with less practice hiding it.

That kitchen was a mirror for the whole system.

Simple work. Clear rules. And still, men choosing walk-offs over beard nets, stealing food that wasn't worth stealing, and skipping the one hygiene step between them and everyone's dinner.

You can't fix that with rules. The rules were already there.

Most people don't fail because the system is hard. They fail because the system is easy and they still won't do it.

Marcus Aurelius, the emperor of Rome, wrote himself a note about it: "At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: I have to go to work, as a human being."

Nobody feels like it. The walk-off guys thought the ones who worked were the ones who wanted to. Nobody wanted to. We did it anyway.

I decided I'd rather be the guy who works.

Not because I'm better than them. Because I wanted out.

That's the honest version. It wasn't character. It was desire, pointed in the right direction. And maybe that's all character is most days. Wanting the right thing more than the easy thing, for long enough that it becomes a habit.

Find your beard net.

The small, simple thing you keep walking off. The follow-up. The workout. The spreadsheet. The call.

Put it on. Every day this week. Don't make it bigger. Just stop walking off it.

Episode 14 is live now. Kitchen, Part 1. There's more coming. God, the stories.

One step, one day. Grace over guilt.