about the author

My name is Mike, I go by Fat Mike.  I used to be fat, but now I'm either planning to get fat again or change my nickname.

I'm a 29 year old male, heavy drinker, moved to Colorado to smoke pot.  I'm married to a super hot young lady.  I've spent the last 15 years in F&B (except the three years I took off to manage a hotel front desk in Asheville, NC).  I've done mostly seasonal work.  Seasonal workers (or parkies) travel to and from resorts or national parks working in hotels or kitchens for 'seasons.'  In the Summer you work a national park and the company gives you food and housing for 6 months, then you move to a ski resort for the Winter- and they give you food and housing.

This is certainly not my first restaurant, not even my first corp restaurant.  This is my first kitchen where I routinely feel like the work is too hard, and that the corp gods allow us to by plowed with free alcohol after our shift.  I have an outstanding offer to manage Food and Beverage for a Xanterra property in Estes Park, CO.  This position starts May 16th- and I need to decide right now what I'm going to do.  My current restaurant (which this blog is basically about) is training me for kitchen super...but I seriously need more money.  I am hoping that today I get the nerve to demand more money.  The Xanterra job will be so much easier, but personally, I like a challenge.  And I'm turning 30 this July with no education and no other prospects.  I'm done being a parkie, my wife doesn't want to be a parkie, and frankly- I need a transfer to Boulder, CO.  This company can make that happen, but first I need them to pay me more.

I'm from Ohio, and I spent my only other significant amount of time in North Carolina.  I'm basically a Southerner and I do have a terrible accent.  Especially in Colorado.  I moved to Colorado with my wife and we did seasonal work, saved up and moved to Greeley, CO.  Greeley is where white trash and Mexicans live so they can work for the white people in Loveland, CO.  I know that seemed offensive, but I embrace my white trash roots- it's just part of who I am.  I also once quit a wonderful job over the treatment of immigrant Latinos.  I'm wing nut liberal, but my white trash roots cause me to say terribly offensive things.  You'll get use to that.

I smoke a ton of pot.  For those of you who still live in states where marijuana is illegal- you can't even imagine how awesome things are out here.  My wife and I got our red cards as soon as we arrived and got I.D.'s.  We go into a store and we buy pot- for like 150 an ounce.  Really, really good pot grown in soil in Colorado.  I grew illegally for many years, but now it's so cheap to buy that I no longer need to grow.  You can talk about marijuana at work without being fired or drug tested, because no one here gives a shit.  Need a smoke break?  Good...go smoke a doobie, no one gives a fuck.  This is the promised land for all stoners...it makes it a lot easier for me to survive the line dog life with my doobies in tact, and it doesn't hurt that I work in a brewery where the bosses love giving up the free beer.


So that's it, we'll get into detail about the restaurant and do some pictures and blah blah....