Bam! Just like that everything was gone. A bead of sweat dripped from Alex's forehead.
"How can it be? I don't understand. I bet everything. My career, my money, my things..."
Alex didn't know if he was going to cry or scream in frustration. He was in complete and total shock.
You might be wondering what happened to Alex Smith. Why would he lose everything? What could possible happen to someone to where they would lose everything? Within one day Alex went from working in the kitchen of a five star restaurant to working in a dump of a restaurant.
It all started at 3:00pm on Friday. Alex was preparing his kitchen, cutting vegetables, marinating meat, talking to his team of chefs about how crowed they were expecting the restaurant to be that night. While Alex was speaking to his team of chefs, Randy Augustine strolled in.
Randy was Alex's biggest competitor and head chef and the restaurant across the street and Randy always loved to taunt Alex and poke at him until Alex's head was steaming with anger. Today was not a good day for Randy to walk in and bother Alex.
"Alex, what kind of crap food are you preparing for tonight?" asked Randy.
"Randy, not now" exclaimed Alex through his gritted teeth.
"What? Not up for a little bit of chatting?" asked Randy.
Alex continued to ignore Randy while Randy taunted him some more.
It finally got to the point where Alex had had enough and Alex said to Randy, "What do you really want?"
"I just want a little bit of friendly competition," replied Randy.
"Really, friendly competition? Nothing about you is friendly," laughed Alex.
"How about who ever can get more customers into their kitchen tonight will not only win the other person's kitchen but also their staff and salary for one year?"
Alex was so caught off guard about this that he laughed so hard until his stomach hurt. But then he got to thinking and realized how he could actually win. Alex's restaurant always had more customers. So Alex agreed to the competition and the two shook on it.
Little did Alex know though that Randy had a trick up his sleeve. Randy's restaurant was about to go out of business and to get more people to come in they were offering huge discounts on people who made reservations for parties of ten or more.
The night went by and the entire time Alex didn't worry about the competition one bit. He knew he was going to win.
When midnight approached and bills were counted, Randy came back by Alex's restaurant with a huge smile on his face. They sat at a table and counted the bills in front of each other. And as soon as the totals were announced Alex's face dropped.
Author's Note:
This story is based on a Jataka Tale called "Spend a Pound to Win A Penny," from The Giant Crab, and Other Tales from Old India by W. H. D. Rouse. In the tale "Spend a Pound to Win A Penny," a monkey sits up in a tree waiting for a pot of peas to cook inside of someone's house. The peas finish cooking and the people from the house leave the kitchen. The monkey hops down from the tree to get a hand full of peas from the pot and after getting back in the tree the monkey drops one pea. While looking for the one pea, the people come back and start pelting the monkey with rocks and the monkey drops the rest of his peas just because he was looking for one pea.
In my story I focus on the part of the original tale where the monkey lost everything because of one pea. My story talks about a cook, Alex who looses everything because of his hatred towards another cook, Randy. Because winning a bet was so important to Alex he ended up losing everything.
Bibliography:
The Giant Crab, and Other Tales from Old India by W. H. D. Rouse
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