They call me Cornbread.

Write about your most epic baking or cooking fail.

I’ve been cooking in kitchens for nearly my entire working career. I started when I was 14, I worked at a food stand in Hershey Park. After that I worked at Wendy’s and after quite a few years there I got my first real cooking job at an upscale restaurant.

I did my first hour at the restaurant in the dish room before immediately being promoted to Pantry cook. Many years later I ascended the ranks and could practically run a shift doing every position myself. Of course only on a few occasions did I need to grill, sautee, and work fryers at the same time.

Fast forward 15 years. I’m now burnt out, been working my life in kitchens and never took the advice an older gentleman gave me while I was young. He said, “Get out of the kitchen while you still can, if you don’t, you’ll be in your 40s still doing this crap job for little money.”

I finally took his advice in my 30s and completely left the kitchen to start a new career in counseling. That lasted maybe a year before I got a job at the State Prison instructed inmates in the kitchen.

About 3 months into my job at the prison I was moved to Cook. The cook is responsible for leading a team of 15 inmates to instruct, prepare, and cook the meal for General Population.

We were done serving breakfast and at this point it’s now time for my workers to eat. They got in line and started serving food when one of them says to me, “Hey, this breakfast cake tastes a lot like cornbread.”

It was at that very moment I realized that the cornbread for lunch that was supposed to be served with chili and rice was, in fact, now completely served to the inmate population for breakfast.

All the breakfast cake was still in the cooler. I made the decision to serve the breakfast cake for lunch and to my surprise, I received very few complaints.

Ever since that day though, I earned the nickname ‘Cornbread’ and even today, 5 years afterwards, the inmates still call me Cornbread, a name they will never forget. The name doesn’t bother me, it’s endearing and funny. Life isn’t perfect, and neither was breakfast and lunch that day, but everything still kept moving on.

Despite my epic mixup, I laugh about it and own it. If you ever hear someone call me Cornbread, you know why.