Oh, brother. Here we go again. I was a trained chef. A good one. And yet BPG kept giving me tasks that weren’t aligned with my skills, and then yelling at me when I failed.

“Sir, I don’t know anything about negotiating.” He could have sent my mom, though. The woman could make a deal with a field mouse and come out ahead.

“Doesn’t matter.” Burton grabbed a printout from the folder and tucked it into a BPG envelope. Then he handed it to me. “The goods and the prices are listed right on these pages. All you have to do is stop by each farm and offer to purchase the items on the list. Just fill out the sheet with who’s supplying what. These guys will be eager to sell their organic produce to upscale Boston restaurants. It’s good exposure for them. Here.”

I took the sheet of paper from him and scanned it. It was a list of farms and addresses. They all had cute, scenic names. Muscle In Arm Farm. Misty Hollow. The Lazy Turkey Farm.

The task sounded easy enough. But I’d worked here long enough to be suspicious. Nothing was ever simple when it came to BPG. “Why aren’t we doing this over the phone?” I asked. It had to be cheaper than sending me off to Vermont in a rental car to go door to door. And a hotel, too? BPG hated spending money. Something about this whole idea was just weird.

“Farmers don’t answer their phones,” Burton said. “They’re too busy growing things. So off you go. Pack a bag and get on the road already. It’s a two-hour drive.”

I stood up, clutching the envelope, hoping for the best.

“Do a good job, Audrey,” he said as I turned toward the door. “If this doesn’t work out, I don’t know if we can give you another chance.”

“I will, sir.”

* * *

Two and a half hours was a long time to ponder one’s failings, even if the scenery was beautiful. I wound the rental car higher and higher along a country road on a pretty Vermont hillside. Out the driver’s side window I caught glimpses of the Green Mountains in the distance.

I was still a bit stunned that Bill Burton hadn’t fired me. But the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that my mother’s stake in the company wasn’t the reason. Premier Group was famous for chewing up and spitting out culinary grads. Having their corporate name on your resume was like a badge of honor. It was the Purple Heart of the foodie world. There was even a Facebook group called I Survived BPG.

Their business model seemed to depend on slaves like me. As an intern, I was expected to work seventy hours a week for very low pay. They called the paycheck a “stipend” only because it sounded better than “slave wages.” If they fired one of us every time something went wrong, there would be nobody left to do the shitty jobs and fetch the coffee.