One of the most interesting people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing was Joseph Roberts. The first day I ever met Joseph, he yelled at me.

“BUDDY, YOU GOTTA FIND SOME OTHER PLACE TO PUT THESE TRAYS AT I SWEAR TO GOD.” Those were some of the first words he ever said to me. It was my first day of work at my first job ever. I was a dishwasher at Friendship Brew Company and he was a line cook. The job was simple- clean trays and bring them back to the kitchen. However, this was an incredibly small kitchen which barely fit all the necessary equipment, let alone a full team of cooks. While my first boss, Alonzo, had trained me how to use the dishwasher, he had failed to mention where to put all the clean trays and left shortly after he finished training me. So, I just guessed, and Joseph did not appreciate it.

I decided the best place for the trays was on top of the kitchen’s hotbox, where all the food was heated, so the cooks could easily grab the food and put it on a tray. But this was wrong. After about two hours on the job, I walked into the kitchen with a stack of trays and placed them on top of the hotbox. Joseph immediately whipped around and grabbed the trays off the hotbox, thrusting them back into my arms. Like I said before, he asked me to find another place to put the trays and I did. That was the end of it.

Joseph liked to talk. He would talk and talk and talk about anything you asked him about. One day, we’d be discussing the mysteries of life and what happened after you die, and the next, we’d be talking about which Kardashian we thought was the hottest. I learned alot from my talks with Joseph. He told me about his life, his struggles with drugs, his strained relationship with his family, among other things. Joseph opened my eyes to the world in front of me; he showed me how many opportunities I had and told me not to waste them. 

Joseph hated everyone around him, but for some reason, he always seemed to have a soft spot for me. Maybe it’s because we had worked together the longest, long after Alonzo was fired and even after our next boss, Dan, was “transferred to another location”. I’m not sure why Joseph liked me so much but I know that when I broke up with my first girlfriend, Joseph was there to help me through it. When I fought with my parents, Joseph always had some advice. When the world weighed too heavy on my shoulders, Joseph took some of my load. 

Even though Joseph’s first words to me were in the form of yelling, I didn’t hold that against him. That’s just the way Joseph talked. His temper was a result of his upbringing; no one sugar coated anything for him so he didn’t sweeten anything for anyone. But, sometimes, that’s what you need in life - someone to tell you things straight and get to the point. I really believe Joseph gave me a small crash course for life; he made a lot of mistakes and wanted me to learn from him. During that point in my life, Joseph was really one of the only people that I felt truly had my back and would never steer me wrong. Joseph cared, and that’s really all you can need from a friend.