Typhoid Mary

The true instigator of social revolution was starvation.

Fine-looking women, smoking and drinking and gambling and doing whatever they like? Sounds good!

When pride and proficiency turn to bitterness and sloth. When outside forces corrupt the desire to do a job well and take pleasure in the doing. It’s an awful thing to watch. It’s awful when it happens to you.

It’s what happened to the cook, Mary Mallon.

Try not to hold it against her.

The central question when examining the career of Mary Mallon, cook, is always, ‘Why did she go on cooking when she had every reason to believe she was spreading a possibly fatal disease?’ Many of you who’ve worked in greasy spoons, coffee shops, cafeterias, failing, not-very-good restaurants, institutional food services, know the answer already. I won’t blame you if you don’t care to admit it. But you know what the ‘three-second rule’ is. Don’t you?

Cooks work sick. They always have. Most jobs, you don’t work, you don’t get paid. You wake up with a sniffle and a runny nose, a sore throat? You soldier on. You put in your hours.

In exactly the reverse of the ignorant dictum that ‘Women Should Stay In The Kitchen – Preferably While Barefoot and Pregnant’, in the hotel/restaurant kitchen it was always, ‘They’re not strong enough to lift heavy stockpots!’