The Compulsion

It was another day for Arthur. Arthur had been out drinking until the early hours of the morning and was subsequently feeling worse for wear, though the hangover was by no means the worst thing on his mind. He woke up cocooned in three lacklustre sheets, sheltering himself from the extremely cold air that had been attacking him throughout the night with callous disregard for his wellbeing. What was particularly painful, however, wasn’t the cold, but the idea that he’d have to go and work as a chef for the day. He felt it to be extremely generous to be allowed to call this particular work ‘cheffing’, for he felt it to be glorified factory work. Though he was getting paid a premium for such work, he felt it to be of such a miserable intensity that for what was at least thirty minutes, he lay awake pondering whether he would go and subject himself to such unfortunate conditions. The truth was that Arthur didn’t have thirty minutes to be mulling such ideas, the time was already approaching nine o’clock and he had to be there for nine-thirty, leaving him just thirty minutes to complete what was a forty-five-minute journey. He had, of course, arrived late for his shift the day prior and no one had said a word to him in order to reproach him for his tardiness leading Arthur to believe that, perhaps, he could easily get away with such misdeeds again. Arthur was, in fact, an extremely punctual person, he actually loathed people who would waste others' time; it wasn’t a mistake that he had arrived late the day before, but merely that he had chosen to arrive late in order to minimise his own suffering.

It took, what was a serious amount of energy, to eventually rise himself and expose himself to the biting cold of the apartment he was staying in. For several moments after he had risen, he gave serious consideration to staying in the apartment despite its coldness, however, to stay in the apartment would be to forgo what was not an unsubstantial amount of money, and with the current state of affairs, it was an option that would be extremely ill-advised. Despite coming to this conclusion, he went on toiling and searching for a path that could justify his staying. There was the fact that it would be a significant strain upon his mental health to engulf himself in what was an extremely odious atmosphere, but despite this, due to the toughness of the times, he felt that it would, surely, be silly to turn down the money.

Thus, he quickly donned his clothes, a blue hoodie and pair of jeans that had gone unwashed for what was, now, fast approaching a month, grabbed his backpack, and set off into what was a characteristically grey, London morning. There was a light drizzle that was being spat gently into Arthur’s face, it was not so light as to go unnoticed, but was sufficiently heavy to cause Arthur to have to angrily squint in order to see what was in front of his tired face.

Despite his lateness, Arthur was not rushing to get to work. He had been working in hospitality for an ample amount of time, it was such a length, that it would cause Arthur a great amount of pain when he’d consider the fact that he’d given such large periods of his life to a cause that he didn’t fully believe in - to catering for rich people. Arthur had been privileged enough to go to a good school, and to a Russell group university, he had taught himself several languages and was a keen consumer of all cultures, but here he was, dragging himself to do something that involved no skill or creativity in one of the most miserable places he’d had the misfortune of visiting.

Arthur was now on the train which had a sickening yellow hue, the people on the train were mainly wearing faces similar to that of Arthur’s, faces that were devoid of any sort of excitement and colour, they were all the rage and had been gaining massive popularity in the Autumn season. There was a man next to Arthur with an irritating face rambling about politics. He kept stating that violence wasn’t an option for any political movement and that if you are to resort to violence it will discredit the progress you are trying to make. An example that he kept returning to was that if ‘you were to punch me in the face, I wouldn’t listen to what you were asking me to do’. The idiot man with the irritating face was talking at such a volume as to disturb poor and weary Arthur, and for a considerable amount of time, Arthur thought to himself in this particularly strenuous moment ‘perhaps I could punch this man repeatedly in the face until he is left unconscious on the ground’. Such thoughts provided Arthur with solace until it was that he arrived at his stop. It was at this point where he seriously considered what would be worse, having to talk to the idiot-man with the annoying face for the next eight hours or having to work in the kitchen that he was approaching with an unrelenting pace, causing him more and more discomfort by the second.

Arthur smoked two cigarettes in what was a five-minute walk from the station to his workplace as he bitterly cursed himself and the world for having created such an unfortunate situation.

The restaurant was in Mayfair, it was a large windowless venue that was almost entirely underground. The decor was abrasively kitsch; a nauseous myriad of gold, green and purple was sprayed around the room in an entirely nonsensical manner. He walked down the stairs into the self-contained grill room that he’d been working in on the last two occasions he’d been there. There were however, many other sections that one could have the fortune of working on for it was a, simply, massive kitchen with approximately eight different sections. It was so large that you’d certainly never speak to every single chef or perhaps even see every single chef. The lighting was dim, it wasn’t the hospital-like light that he was so used to but was a soft yellow that made the atmosphere feel even more cavernous.

Upon his arrival, he was informed by Sunil that he’d be working at the back with the angry little man with small man syndrome who was a constant fixture in any and every kitchen. After plodding to the back, the small man at the back told him that Sunil was wrong and that he should go back to the grill room and take instructions there. Arthur wasn’t particularly bothered where he’d be working, and though he’d certainly like to avoid working with the small angry man, Sunil was definitely not much of an improvement. Sunil had a manner that approached rudeness, he had a tactlessness to the way he spoke and the misery in his voice was sickeningly infectious. Arthur had been in the restaurant for no less than ten minutes and was already beginning to lose his patience.

Sunil gave him eight kilograms of broccoli and was told to trim the stems and clean the leaves from the plastic-wrapped vegetables that looked to be of a similar quality to those that you’d find at a supermarket. Thus, Arthur got to work, with a deafening joylessness and began to trim the broccoli. He felt it best to go about the task with a reasonable speed on the basis that he didn’t want to be castigated for working slowly which ‘would, surely, be extremely embarrassing’ Arthur thought to himself. He was working in close proximity to two other gentlemen who were also going about tasks of an aggressively mundane order and there was a distinct and suffocating stillness to the room he’d been forced to work in. Time felt as if it wasn’t moving, it was as if Arthur had entered into some sort of nether zone where the laws of physics ceased to exist, he wondered if the laws of physics were affected by excessive levels of anguish, and concluded that they must be to some degree for he had never experienced such slowness in his entire life.

With each artless chop of his knife, Arthur would wonder how it had come to this. Where had it all gone wrong? He did enjoy cooking at one point in his life, but that time period had come and gone quite swiftly and he was unsure as to why he was still bound to such trivial work that did, in no way, resembled cooking.

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