Chapter Text
Monday
“I swear if they’re giving us another lecture on staff-client/staff-staff conflict resolution, you owe me 5 pounds,” Marlene grumbled, holding her head on top of the broom that she had stopped using ever since their bitchy old executive chef told them about the meeting that was going to hold them back 15 minutes later. She’d had a long day of smiling at people, remembering tones of orders and pretending that her hands weren’t burning when she carried the plates so staying for ‘just a couple of minutes’ really didn’t strike her fancy.
“Alright you’re on,” Mary chirped, “keep sweeping though, I wanna to leave as soon as the meeting’s over for my date with Henry.”
Marlene nodded. Rare were the times when Mary didn’t date a guy that Marlene hated but that was one of those times. “Where are Lily and Pete?” She asked, suddenly noticing how they were the only two cleaning the restaurant floor.
“I dunno, I think they went snooping to find what the meeting will be about.”
Speaking of the devil, the two rushed in from the back of the restaurant, almost fighting over who gets to speak first.
“Guys guys guys!” They chorused, arriving in front of the two girls.
“Yes yes yes?!” Mary copied.
Peter and Lily turned to each other and both told the other to go first. Mary and Marlene watched the exchange of “no you first” like a game of ping-pong, then Marlene asked Peter to spit it out.
“Okay so basically James (the sous-chef) heard from Alejandro (the assistant cook) who heard it from Juliet (the cook) who heard Louis (the chef) speak to Clare (the executive chef) about how they were leaving!”
Both Mary and Marlene looked at each other with confused looks. Peter spoke really quickly when he was excited which was fun to observe but not to understand. It was almost closing time and Marlene didn’t feel like doing mental gymnastics to find out what happened. “The short version please?”
“Louis and Clare are leaving!” Lily squealed.
They didn’t particularly like their chefs. You could even say they disliked them… quite a bit. The only chef that everyone liked was James because, I mean, who wouldn’t like James?
Clare was ‘an old bat’ as Mary liked to call her who was so set in her old fashioned way of thinking that she constantly looked down on everyone of them. Specifically the girls and specifically Marlene. Marlene happens to be what some people call “a homo”, this didn’t escape Clare’s radar and she would always complain about Marlene’s outfits being too inappropriate or her behavior being too unladylike. She even asked her to take off her rainbow Cherry Bomb pin because it was “a display of political opinion” and that wasn’t allowed in the workplace. Marlene told her to suck her dick and Clare was appalled but then stopped bothering her.
She was sour, yelled at them all the time and then started applauding herself at their end of day meetings for ‘keeping the team together another day’.
Louis wasn’t much better. He constantly kept to himself even though the cooking people were supposed to be a team. Yelled out orders and commands and didn’t bother to help anyone that was behind or didn’t understand. Luckily, James was there but any time he let go of his post to help a junior, Louis would yell at him to keep to his job and not get distracted.
The two of them did create a sort of camaraderie in a sense that they were all in the same sinking ship. Anytime Clare would declare what a god’s gift she was to this restaurant or Louis would mutter on about how he always had to do everything himself, most of the staff looked at each other in disbelief then puffed out a small laugh.
They celebrated and hugged each other a bit before Marlene asked:
“Do you know who’s replacing them?”
“No not really but apparently they’re young, seeing as how Clare was speaking about them.”
“Oh and it’s also a girl and a boy. I think they know each other actually,” Peter added.
“It would make sense,” Mary nodded, “Alright I think the meeting’s already started we should go,” she clapped her hands together and they walked towards the meeting room, joining James on the way who was also late.