Intro Podcast

All right, welcome to I had to say it, the podcast. My name is Aaron Deshotel. today's gonna be kind of a introduction, I guess the people that know me who will probably be the initial people listening to this really don't need this particular podcast, it's more so you can get a feel of who the person on the other end of this microphone is. A little bit about myself, background history, you know, why you may or may not really care what I have to say about things.

Ultimately,

what can I say I am

a big bald headed white dude in his early 40s you know exactly what America needs telling them what to think and what to do right now another one of those.

But that, you know,

doesn't hold a ton of bearing on everything. I mean, obviously, it's part of it's, it's, that's, that's physically who I am. That's part of, you know, shaped all my experiences, etc, etc. It's not to be discounted, but to me, it's not important either. Ultimately, a little background information I am from Kenosha, Wisconsin. That's a small town in the southeast corner, Wisconsin. Yeah, about about 15 minutes away from the state line. And yes, I do have that Midwestern thing where I refer to distances in terms of time. It's just I don't know, it's a Midwest thing. You either get it or you don't. Obviously, that being said, I am from Wisconsin. I'm not one of those guy hater. How you doing? I'm not one of them. Counties. That's that's the up north folks, you know. You know, I'm from the state line. I I'm not a Green Bay Packers fan. I know that's gonna be heresy to some of my, you know, friends and family. But I mean, yeah, you know, they're a great team. And if everybody else I like is knocked out of the running shit, I'll root for them. But it's not I'm not. I don't bleed, I don't bleed green and gold.

You know, ultimately, initially, I'm a 49'ers fan, you know,

that being said, You love me or hate me, it's the it's not that critical to my life, where I think it really makes a difference. But you know, that was the first football team I ever, you know, really got into because when I started getting into football, they were the team, they were unstoppable.

And, you know,

I'm just I don't have I guess it is a Wisconsin thing. I don't got an enemy to be a fair weather fan. So, you know, that being said, That's that. Beyond that, like I said, I'm from Kenosha, it's, you know, it's where I'm from
that head of hand and,

you know, shaping and molding, the way I view things, the way I see things to a certain extent. Having moved around the country a little bit, lived a few different places I've seen, I've seen the difference, cuz most people have a slightly different take on some stuff. You know,  growing up, you know, music and the arts weren't necessarily treated like, you know, a lot of things weren't the way you'd see them in, you know, movies portraying teenagers in high school and things like that, you know, our band didn't have marching uniforms, and we weren't, you know, the skinny narrow guys getting shoved in a locker. I played football. Yes. You know, some. I was in the school band. Yes. I was on the yearbook route. You know, my senior year I was in yearbook. I was in a lot of smart people classes. I'm not trying to toot my own horn. It's just, you know, it is though it is what I was by no means a great student. I was, you know, lazy and screw off. And, yeah, conceptually, everything came really easy to me, just like some of the other people. I mean, I met I met some of the smartest people I know, personally, when I was in high school in those classes that were every bit as smart as I am and way brighter when it comes to common sense because they actually did something with it. Whereas I was content to coast by, you know, pass the classes, maintain a decent GPA, but not put in the work in the effort that I should have done. Which has also colored the way I look at life today.

Um,

it's, it's, you know, part of who I am, early on, you know, young mid teens, starting my professional life. I started working in food service at 15 years old. I got my first real job I worked in a hospital kitchen, which, you know, to some people's minds conjures up you know, terrible images bland food, awful food. The food that was for the people that weren't specifically being fed bland, awful food was actually pretty good. It was not by no means the worst food I've ever had. The employee and guest cafeteria had a pretty decent you know, selection. Yes, there were meals that were specifically made to be bland but if you were in there delivering a kid you got a pretty nice dinner with your with your 18 year commitment. So, you know, it was not it wasn't everything people thought it was when they think hospital food. But it was also my introduction to the service industry which I basically stayed in, more or less for the rest of my my life. I did take a couple years off what I was working, I worked in a video stores as a clerk I was worked in a warehouse for for a few months, I worked with some computer stuff with some buddies of mine for a little while. And, you know, none of those things really wanted to be in what I was looking for, and wound up back in the service industry. I mean, Hell, I was even a janitor in a warehouse for a while I, I worked because I needed to work, it's, it's, it's what you're supposed to do. If you don't have everything handed to you on a silver platter, you got to go out there and get it somehow, you got to earn it wasn't raised where you know, you go out and take something you haven't earned, and you don't deserve it. If somebody else has it, it's theirs. If you want it, you got to get it, and you've got to earn it. That being said, you know, it's kind of how I spent, you know, my, my younger years. You know, being from southeastern Wisconsin, you know, we like to party, we like to have fun, it's one of those concepts that a lot of people don't get out there to Midwest, sometimes they're in a lot else to do besides go to a party. You know, people always think, you know, like, urban Metro kids have this, you know, if you're watching TV, it's if you live in a smaller town, and you're in the country, you're either tipping cows and drinking beers on a pasture, or you're, you know, just you're sitting at the local, you know, church functional, or whatever. And that's, and that's a big swing and a mess. As far as I'm concerned. You know, we, in Wisconsin, we've got UW Madison, which is like, one of if not the top party campuses, pretty much every year that anybody that rates, that kind of stuff, rates it. And that's, you know, it's, that's a good and a bad thing, too. And so, you know, but in the early days of my young adulthood, that was a deciding factor. And you know, what made me me as much as anything else, I'd run it go out and run the streets and party and work Monday through Friday and spend the weekend in a stupor, just like a lot of other people would never really let that aspect of my life impact my job directly. Staying in the service industry, and working in restaurants and food service, there was a certain amount of a lot of the stories you hear true, let's put it that way. If somebody tells you, they're a professional food service person, and they're not, you know, somebody that will just doing this until my career in in search, random thing here takes off, they're going to tell you, you know, some messed up story at some point about them, and a bunch of people they work with, you know, doing some insane amounts of you know, partying or drinking or whatever the case may be. And realistically, they're probably telling you the truth. It may sound outlandish, it may sound ridiculous. To us, it sounds like a Thursday night. And I don't know it goes with a certain mindset and a certain personality that goes along with that. And, you know, I I drank the Kool Aid, I bought into it just like everybody else did. And, and I did it, I did it just like everyone else did. And for all that, again, you know, not great, not necessarily something to be proud of, but it got me to where I am and helped make me who I who I am.

So that being said, it's

you know, what can I say I am a food guy, I'm I was a chef, I've been a head chef, I've been a chef manager, I've been an executive chef, they're different, you know, different variants on the same theme. People in the industry get it we we got a lot of titles for a lot of different things. I was the guy in charge of making sure the back of the house did its job, got everything done, delivered, delivered everything so the front of the house could get it to the people so that people could be happy. And, you know, for the people in the business, you get it. It's that tells you probably everything you need to hear right there for the people that don't, you know, don't get it. They're not, you know, food service people. You know, we appreciate you, we love you, you keep us working. That being said, with everything that's going on right now, I'm recording this here in August of 2020. And that should tell you if depending on when you're here in this, yeah, it's a weird time for for my people for the service industry. in general. We've had the covid 19 pandemic come through and basically slaughter our industry restaurants have closed at an astronomical rate. Every week that this goes by more of them will not open back up. It's it's a very real issue for us. So I'm not going to go into that too deeply. Now, maybe maybe in another time. But you know, just so that's part of where I'm at today. Again, got here by doing a lot of strange things in the meantime, moved to you know, about an hour south of Chicago, when I was in my early 20s went back to school to get a culinary degree. When I went to culinary school, I did it, I did eventually get my degree. Like everything else, I did it kind of backwards. I went to culinary school for, for about three years had way more than enough credits to graduate and took a job in Milwaukee to move back to Wisconsin, instead of getting my diploma. And worked in Milwaukee for about a year and a half. Shortly prior to moving to Milwaukee, I met my wife, and while I was working in Joliet, Illinois, got, we got together after meeting and being friends and running around and kind of, you know, it's what happens, happens, got married, got a wife got a kid, got, you know, that whole thing going on. So, you know, some of my views, they are the views of a husband and a father, and I promise you, I'm gonna say the same thing there to qualify, say with everything else, I'm far from perfect I, I make mistakes, hopefully I learn, I live I grow, maybe, you know, listen to some of my experiences, and some of my mistakes can help you guys avoid making the same ones. And again, you know, learn live grow. You know, as you know, some of the things on the internet learn from my failure. I, and not everything I did was failures, either. I'm not saying that, but it's definitely, you know, I have experience and I'm more than happy to share it more than happy to answer questions. There will be a, a thing on this podcast on the homepage, where you can actually submit questions or recorded recorded questions type of questions. And they will get back to me and I will be more than happy to answer them at some point, either, you know, depending on what it merits a direct email, if it's something private, if it's something you want people to hear, and you want me to talk about, I'll you know, play your player audio recording into the end of the podcast and answer it or just read the email and answer whatever, whatever works for you. Anyway, so you know, back to back to me, I am currently living in Illinois, and that also, you know, has a certain flavor and a certain degree to things. Like, can I say I stay I stayed in the industry, I'm 25 years of food service at this point. And, you know, like I said, I've done it all, I've been a chef, I've been a line cook, I've been, you know, the guy doing the dishes, I used to joke when I was in the executive chef in Chicago, and I was in the dish pit because, you know, that guy's overwhelmed. I was the best looking and most overpaid dishwasher on the crew. And, you know, I was the only one who thought it was funny, but whatever it's it is what it is. I've worked catering I've worked, you know, a country clubs I've done, I've done a lot of stuff at this point. And that all kind of comes to bear in the way I've taken to looking at life. You know, I've got I've got stories to tell I, you know, generally, I believe that honesty's the best policy, but sometimes, you know, certain little details will get altered to protect the guilty more than anything else. Sometimes Other people may not necessarily appreciate their role in my story. And in that case, you know, the the identifying features may be altered enough to

protect the other party, the story will still be as honest and true as I can keep it but on the off chance that somebody I'm talking about, here's something I'm saying, bear that in mind, if you recognize the story, but you don't recognize your part in it, I may have changed it enough to keep you from having to answer for it. Personally, I'm putting all my business out there. So you want

to call me on something, you know, here I am.

And that is more or less a brief summary of how we got to where I am today. That gives you a little bit of flavoring as to how my views and opinions lie. How it is I'm going to look at things how the things I've come to think and believe kind of got shaped. You know, I mean, nobody wants a full on psychological profile. And you know, some people may be clicking on these things just go in here. I heard you might make me laugh. So make with the funny, fatty. And, you know, that's okay, too. You know, I believe everybody's entitled to their opinion. Nobody has to have my opinion. But I'm fine with putting it out there.

And I've always been,

you know, an honest guy, I I'm at the point I told my kid when he was growing up, he's a young man and a young adult now and, and, you know, his friends when I've had tried to influence them, I've always told them, you know, it's just too much work to lie. You shouldn't do it. And and you know, I mean, yeah, it's the right thing to do with but without getting on your moral high horse. The truth is easier when you lie. You have to remember stuff or you're going to get caught and if you're lying, it's because you're scared. If you're scared of getting caught, you shouldn't be doing whatever it is you're doing that you got to lie about in the first place. And so That's the major guideline I try and live my life by. And that's how I apply it to my personal world view of things. You know, and the simple fact of the matter is, at the end of the day I am I've gotten to a point I'm not,

I'm not afraid of whatever,

you can only do so much to me. So here's the truth and be damned if you don't like it.

And

so, that being said, I'm gonna wrap this one up, I don't want these things to get too long and out of hand. So, you know, I'll help you guys get a little better feel for who it is you're listening to and hopefully, you know, people will want to listen to what I've got to say. So thanks for listening.