Knife horror stories (was Re: [Sca-cooks] Sabatier knives

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Gorgeous Muiredach:
>>when a local knight, whose father had been a kosher
>>butcher, I STR, was found with my chef's knife in one hand, and my
>>steel in the other, holding blade at 90 degrees to the steel in both
>>possible planes, dragging the burr edge of the knife, _hard_,
>>directly, straight, across the steel.
>
>And he survived????

Yep. And he probably thinks it was his intimidating reputation with
edged weapons that saved him, when in fact I just took a few minutes
to repair some of the damage. One of the things about the F. Dick
knives that I like is that they're pretty idiot-friendly. They're not
the hardest, sharpest knives out there, but because their steel is
maybe 90% as hard as that of, say, Sabatiers, they also repair that
much more quickly.

The world seems to be divided into two groups: those that think I'm
an inhuman monster (generally people with "eye contact" issues), and
those that think I'm all cuddly. But the way it works is that people
like this knight aren't the least bit afraid to mess with my knives
until one is actually prodtruding from the middle of his forehead.

>I've always prided myself in having my own knives, even when knives were
>provided in restaurants/hotels I worked at.

How do you feel about driving the mechanic's "loaner" car? ;-) Design
(and cost) limitations to compensate for the abuse non-owners,
lacking basic respect for proper tools, will undoubtedly heap upon
them are built-in.

>   Always prided myself on
>keeping my blades sharp.  Some idiot didn't realize the significance of
>that and assume that because I left my knives laying on my workstation he
>could just pick them up and use them.  Repeatedly I asked him not to do it,
>and repeatedly he said "it's just a knive"...

And that sounds like some kind of professional dominance game to me.

>Then one morning, just before service, I caught him using my Henckels
>fourstar10" chef directly on stainles steel.  Not a slicing motion, a "chop
>chop" motion.  The manager came running in the kitchen after he heard me
>scream to the top of my lung something along the lines of "leave my knives
>alone you f*cking moron".  (this is the guy who did mayonaise using
>French's mustard, in the robot-coupe, and came to me wondering why his
>mayonaise was glo-in-the--dark yello.....)

"Whutevah!" "Dey like it like dat!"

>The same guy ended up having to replace that very knife a few months
>later.  After he used it to crack open a 2liter canister of olive oil.  He
>argued about it.  But the manager basically told him to purchase a new
>knife or loose his job.  The good thing is he didn't touch my knives after
>that.

Interesting. I use my chef's knife to open tins of olive oil all the
time. I was also taught there's a right and a wrong way to do it (one
quick, sharp, whack with the absolute heel of the blade, which has a
rather obtuse, chisel-like bevel/edge. And there are knives I'll use
for the job, and ones I won't. Did he try to plunge the point in or
something amazingly stupid like that? Or am I just an abusive sodoff
without realizing it?

>Yeah, I know, the easy solution would have been not to use my own
>knives...  But...

Well, it's like this. See the loaner car reference above. If you
accept the limitations of loaner tools (especially ones that have
been abused), you're not going to do your best work. Which is not to
say that the tools make the cook; very far the opposite, if one has
to generalize, but let's say you'll need to use even more skill to do
the same work with bad tools than you would with good ones you're
used to.

Adamantius

--
"No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes
deserves to be called a scholar."
	-DONALD FOSTER