b"Once you were working for the City, was there someone on your job who encouraged you in your job? There were a few people.I had been a cook for at least the last 20 years, but the amounts of food I had to preparenow was so different than in private industry.I worked in a restaurant at one time with eight tables. I'm cooking for eightpeople. Now, I'm cooking for eight-thousand. So, I had some menu adjustments to make. I remember for the first month,I watched people like crazy, because I was like: Can I do that? Can I do that? And then, after watching, I said: You knowsomething, I can do that. I can do that.Cooks have a way of stealing ability from the next cook, so that's what I did. You see somebody else doing that, okayyou do it like that, okay, now I know how to do it that way.What happened after I got the job, the man that was supposed to be training me got sick.I was on the job for lessthan two weeks after the initial training. They opened the new jail, Mr. Kraffe got sick, and I found myself workingovernight on Rikers Island in the jail with 20 inmates under me in the kitchen at night and I had never worked in a jail before. What I did have was the ability to run kitchens working private industry. I knew how to run a kitchen. What I did iswhen inmates come down, I started giving everybody jobs: You do this, you do that, you do this, you do that, you know,you're sanitation tonight, you know, you clean up behind everybody else, rake up the boxes. I gave everybody jobs to do.You know, I had to delegate.In the kitchen you worked in, what would the structure be like?Well, at the time, it was a lot of disarray. There was no one more or less that was totally in charge. If there was, theyweren't on my tour because I worked midnights. Nobody wants to work overnight, you know. I was the low man on the totempole, so I got the tour that nobody else wanted. You're the new man, you get stuck, you got to work overnight, sorry.So, it was you and just the inmates, there was no one else?Well there was supposed to be someone there to train me, but he got sick. I had to fall back on my kitchen experi-ence in what to do. I did a lot of praying and I got through it because I found that in that situation, I could not show fear. I usually had at least eight eight to 20 inmates working under me for that midnight shift.I had very little training. Maybe a week. And it was more or less: Do this like this and do this like that. What I fell back onwas my kitchen experience, so, I wasn't going in blindly, so like I say, I had that. And this was the principle that I workedon, I remember when I used to work under a French chef, he used to always say: Pernell, it's always something to do inthe kitchen. And it is, the kitchen was big enough, when I had 20 guys, everybody was working. It's always something todo, even if nothing but washing down the walls, it's something to do.The men who worked for you, what were they like? Did they have some skills?Some had skills, some had no skills at all. Being that I had worked in other places before, I was accustomed to that. I knew how to handle that situation: You don't know what to do? You never worked in a kitchen before? Come here, I gotsomething for you, come here, you know? Even nothing but taking cases out the storeroom and bringing them out intothe kitchen, going to the refrigerator: I needwhat?10 cases of lettuce, go on in and get that, you know, bring it and putit here, I'll show you how to cut it, I'll show you how to cut it up, whatever the case may be, I'll show you what to do.174 "