“Oh, he’ll be in the kitchen, dear.”
“Right, but we had a meeting scheduled,” I say, still smiling. “In the conference room.”
Mary just shrugs. “You know how chefs are.”
Do I?
“Okay, I’ll just pop down to the kitchen and find him there.”
“I’ll show you the way,” Mary says. “Kitchen’s a bit tricky to find if you don’t know where you’re going.”
We wind through what feels like half the castle before she pushes through a set of heavy doors. Gone is the stately, ancientcharm. In here, it’s stainless-steel surfaces, clanging pans, and loud swearing.
A rogue potato skitters across the floor.
I clutch my briefcase, clear my throat, and declare with boldness I do not feel: “Hi! I’m Georgie. I have a meeting with Chef MacLeod.”
The kitchen swallows my words whole. I could’ve declared myself Queen of the Sausage Rolls and gotten the same result.
“Where’s my fucking salmon?” someone bellows, and my first instinct is to apologize even though I have nothing to do with the missing fish.
“Chef MacLeod.” Mary nods toward a man barking orders near the stoves. “From Glasgow. Two Michelin stars. Bit of a temper on him.”
He’s about mid-thirties. His chef whites are spotless except for one ominous red splatter that could be jam… or blood.
Mary slams her fist onto a stainless-steel counter. “Chef! You’ve got a visitor!”
The chopping slows. A few heads turn.
Chef finally turns and graces me with a glare. “We don’t have time for this now.” He waves a very large, very sharp knife in my direction. “Ten minutes, lass.”
“Right, ten minutes,” I say, trying to salvage some authority. “It’s not ideal but I’ll work with it. Can you come with me to the meeting room?”
He jabs the knife toward a small stretch of counter that’s just been vacated by a vat of potatoes. “Set up there.”
I blink. “Oh—I really think it would be much better if we could just pop into the conference room where—”
“Come on, lass. We don’t have time for fannying about.”
Right. Of course.IT demonstration in an active professional kitchen during what appears to be lunch prep. Exactly howallsmooth corporate rollouts begin.
This was not the plan. The plan was me, Chef MacLeod, maybe two senior staff, all sitting in a quiet room with a projector and proper chairs. I’d walk them through IRIS, answer thoughtful questions, sip tea like reasonable humans. Then, once they saw how brilliant it was, we’d ease it onto the wider team.
Instead, I’m about to attempt a software demo in the middle of a Michelin-starred war zone.
Craig assured me everything had been “sorted.” This feels distinctly... not sorted. This feels like Craig fired off one vague email about a “quick IT thing” and considered the matter closed.
“Of course! No problem.”
I wrestle with the clasp on my briefcase, hands fumbling, trying to get the laptop out.
“So!” I begin, placing my laptop onto the steel counter. “I’m here to show you IRIS—the new kitchen management system for ingredient tracking, order forecasting—”
He cuts me off with a grunt. “Aye. I heard.”
Mary, my one ally in this stainless-steel hell, pats my shoulder. “Good luck, dear,” she says, then abandons me.
I open the laptop, palms slick with nerves.
