This post was inspired by the recent news that Playboy will stop publishing nudes in their magazines beginning March 2016.
I had been working as a prep cook in an independent restaurant for about two weeks when I was asked to work the line for a dinner shift. For those of you who don't know, this is a huge deal. A prep cook works during the day to prepare and store the food that will be used during the restaurant's busier evening shifts. Working as a prep person meant I never got to see any real action at night, when the restaurant was hopping and the true bonds were formed between cooks. Being asked to work the line is like a minor league-er getting called up to the show. This was my chance.
Six o'clock came and went and I waited with one other cook in the restaurant's secondary kitchen for the tickets to start rolling in. I was nervous, chatty, and raring to go. The experienced cook was exactly the opposite of me; he was stoned out of his mind and not talking. Suddenly, he reached down into the refrigerator and pulled something out. Propping it up on the cutting board, he proceeded to open a Playboy magazine to the centerfold and read it right in front of me.
What a dick.
He knew we weren't going to get any business that night, and as it turns out, he was right. I made about two salads -- maybe. It was not a memorable evening in any other regard than the fact that this asshole flipped through a skin mag right in front of me.
A month or two later, the restaurant owner stopped to get the mail and dropped it in front of me on the prep table. The chef exclaimed "It's nudie magazine day!" as I stared blankly at THREE plastic-wrapped copies of that month's Playboy magazine. I inquired as to what the hell was going on, and he explained that even though no one in the restaurant ordered or paid for these subscriptions, Playboy faithfully sent out three copies of their magazine every month. The cooks usually snatched them up (totally intended, in case you were wondering) and took them home or read them at work when it was slow.
Well, the young lady who was disgusted by the cook reading them in front of her during a dinner shift began to casually flip through those Playboys. There were nudes, sure, but there were also articles (everything I know about the Somali pirates I learned in October 2009), celebrity interviews, and cartoons. What can I say? They were good! Full disclosure: I love most magazines. At one point or another I have had subscriptions to Vogue, Vanity Fair, Time, Newsweek, GQ, Bon Appetit, Good Housekeeping, Oprah, Real Simple, Entertainment Weekly, The Economist, National Geographic, Money, Cooks Illustrated, Food &Wine, Glamour and People. But the Playboys? I got those for free. There were perks to being the prep cook who got to work early.