The owner of a restaurant is outraged when he discovers that one of the cleaners is stealing the scraps from the customer’s plates and follows her to find out why.
George Carson was the proud owner of one of New York’s most prestigious and famous restaurants, The Kettle of Fish. George had inherited the restaurant from his father, who’d inherited it from his father.
Even though George had a supremely efficient manager, Colt Farlow, he kept a close eye on his restaurant, often dropping in at odd hours when the staff least expected and that was how he discovered that Consuelo Ruiz was stealing.
The kitchen usually closes at 10:30 and that’s when the cleaning staff takes over. The chef and his assistants would go home to their well-deserved rest, leaving their workstations spotless.
The dirty glasses, dishes, and cutlery are cleared and placed into the huge industrial dishwashing machines by a team of three.
When the staff walks in the next day, they would find everything spotless.
One day, George walked in at 1:00 am and sauntered through the kitchen towards the back to check on his beloved wine collection for which The Kettle of Fish was justly famous.
As he was passing, he noticed that one of the women was scraping the leftover steak from one of the dishes on a tray into a plastic bag tied to her waist under her apron. When she finished, she carefully rinsed the dish and placed it in the dishwasher.
She picked up the next dish and did the same. This time the leftovers were an almost intact serving of Chicken Kyiv.
George stood back and watched. The woman looked to be in her mid-forties and had a thin, drawn face.
As she worked, she hummed softly to herself. “Ruiz!” George was startled to hear the sharp tones of his manager Colt Farrow.
“Shut your trap and stop your pilfering. I want to close up!”
The woman flushed, ducked her head and closed the door to the dishwasher, poured in the detergent, and set the huge steel machine to humming. Then she dashed into the locker room, while another woman started cleaning the kitchen floor.
George, who’d kept himself carefully out of sight, slipped out and waited in the shadows by the back door.
Soon the three cleaners exited, followed by the grumbling Farrow.
The woman Farrow had called Ruiz pulled a thin coat closer around her and hurried away down a dark, narrow alley and George followed. Three blocks away, the woman opened a door and vanished into an industrial building.
George frowned when he read the huge plaque outside: ‘CONDEMNED.’ That meant that this large former factory was deemed unsafe, so what was the woman doing there?
Remember your own past, and help those trying to build a better future
George opened the door and walked in. He followed the sound of voices and the glow of lights until he came to what must once have been an administrative office with glass walls.
The walls were intact, and inside George could see the woman Ruiz, and what appeared to be four children of different ages.
Ruiz was carefully removing a series of plastic bags from her purse and setting them on a table.
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