Jessica: How I Got Fired

What an intense episode for me to watch. I’ve been dreading this one for a while. I guess I’ll start with the details on losing my job. Everything happened so fast. 

I had stayed overnight in my office creating sales packets and spreadsheets of numbers for the past three nights. (My voice is not always as scratchy as it seems, mostly comes from lack of sleep). Harry Morton Holdings had a new Director of Operations who was later demoted to GM after I was gone, and eventually fired. His first order of business Week 1 at the company was cleaning house to bring in his team. I survived the first round of his firing, thinking I was safe. Week 2, he asked three members of my team and myself to submit to him a ton of info on Fuku Burger so he could analyze the sales and operations. I asked my team to stay late and help one night. No one stayed. Wanting to share the credit with my team I made a meeting with them (without Jim) to show them copies of the packets I had made the night before to submit in to him. I asked for their input and notes on all info, so we could revise as a group and submit the requested info with all of our names on it, since that is what was asked of us. The next day, I never got any notes back… never received any input. In fact I got a call from Jim asking why I had no part in doing the work to go in to these packets. I had no idea what he was talking about, and when I get to the office, I see all of my work had been submitted behind my back claimingthey had done it all without me. That was a rough realization. Definitely learned a lot. 

Quick side note, when I texted Kat and she told me she was at Tinga with Brenda, I was super excited because Tinga has a very specific liquor license where you can bring your own alcohol. I stopped at the five cent wine sale on the way. I don’t usually turn to drinking during emotional times, but I don’t really ever have emotional times either, so this was all kind of new for me. Super intense. 

Ooook, Santa Ynez. Let me tell you something: when you are the only non-cooker in a group of girls whose life revolves around food, it is extremely intimidating. I hope people understand that I wasn’t ungrateful while we were picking vegetables on the farm… and you didn’t get to see the cow wrangling part, but I definitely had a blast doing that. I really was having a rough time dealing with the fact I had no job to go back to. I think I’ll wait until next episode to really go in to the “white trash dip” comment, but just keep in mind that I really felt like my life was unraveling at the seems, so tensions were running high for me. Watching myself and how I handle that is not easy. 

The farm to table concept is interesting to me. I love the idea of restaurants being responsible for knowing where their ingredients are coming from. However, there are very loose rules right now on regulating what is considered an “organic” farm. It is also VERY expensive to get the certification for an organic farm, and a lot of mom and pop farms who truly are organic can not afford the certification. To me, eating local produce is more important than if the labeling is “organic”. 

Lastly, want to quickly mention the Lindsey/Brenda situation. Everyone in the industry knows Lindsey and Brenda’s boss are super duper close, they always have been. It became apparent that Lindsey was the bug in her ear talking about Brenda. Especially that week when we were at Santa Ynez, it seemed like Lindsey just had it out for Brenda in the workplace. Brenda is my best friend, and even though we’ve had ups and downs, I wanted to make it known that I had her back in that situation. Love you B!