Polishing Forks

I told you before that I could write more about The Bear’s S2E7. Here we are. I came across this clip from that episode this week and decided now’s the time.

The scene is a dialogue between Ritchie, who works in a high-class restaurant for the first time, and Garrett, who’s worked there for a while and oversees Ritchie’s work:

Ritchie: Yo. Garrett. Chef. I've been doing this forever. Can I... wash dishes or something?

Garrett: No, we got the best dishwashers in the world. You're just gonna slow 'em down. That wasn't clean.

R: I've been doing this for nine hours. I think I know what's clean.

G: I'm telling you, that's not clean. That was not clean either. Please do them properly--

R: Yo. They're goddamn forks.

G: Outside.

[they go outside]

G: Do you think this is below you or something?

R: Man, I think I'm 45 years old, polishing forks.

G: No one is asking you to be here. I don't think anybody remembers your name.

R: Nice try. You think I don't know how hard it is hiring people since COVID?

G: We don't have that problem.

R: You really drink this Kool-Aid, huh?

G: Yeah, I do.

R: Why?

G: Because I love this, Richie. I love this so much, dude. Did you know that when this restaurant opened 12 years ago, it won the best restaurant in the world the same year? It's retained three stars because we have a waiting list that's long. Five thousand people waiting at any given moment long. Do you see their faces when they walk in here? How stoked they are to see us and how stoked we have to be to serve them? It takes 200 people to keep this place in orbit. And at any given moment, one of those people that is waiting in line gets to eat here. They get to spend their time and their money here. I'm sorry, bro, but we need to have some forks without streaks in them. Every day here is the freaking Super Bowl. You don't have to drink the Kool-Aid, Richie. I just need you to respect me. I need you to respect the staff. I need you to respect the diners. And I need you to respect yourself.

R: I can do respect.

G: Lovely. I'll see you inside.

I’ve watched this scene a couple of months ago and think of it very often. Not only because it’s a great scene in a great show, but because I’ve given the exact same speech as Garrett here.

Instead of working in a restaurant it was about building software. Instead of polishing forks someone would complain about why they should bother about formatting the code, or writing a proper commit message, or communicating to others properly, or fixing typos in a comment, or removing unnecessary blank lines.

And I’d tell them: because this is the job, man, this is it. You’re working for one of the best software companies in the world, with some of the best software engineers in the world, building software for the other great software companies in the world — this is it. This is the NBA of programming and I need you to show up to practice every day and if you don’t want to do that, then you shouldn’t be playing here.

Do I care that much about typos in comments? No, but what I do care about is people respecting the opportunity they have and doing their job properly.