It’s a silly pun but it’s not actually funny to call Juan “one of a kind”, because he is. Somehow this fits him, though - the whole capacity to be simultaneously silly while deep as the sea kinda fits right.
I don’t get to meet everyone at Bon Bon Bon on the first day - let alone “work with them” on their first day. I will never forget Juan’s first day because it was a bit of a hap-hazard emergency. We had just completed our annual “mastermind” meeting the night before and capped it off with drinks. It was my first day back - I had newborn twins and took the night easy. I also took this as my opportunity to encourage the rest of the managers, including newly-hired Juan’s manager, to have a big, big night. Before dawn the next AM, I get a call from our security company and message on our group chat from Juan. It was his first official day of work and, showing up early (because he’s reliably wonderful like that), he tripped the alarm. I had not been the primary on the alarm in years at this point. This means that the security company had unsuccessfully called through the entire list of my hungover managers before landing on seemingly-always-awake-with-a-baby me. With a crying baby I am trying to remember what they changed up our code words to. I will, of course, not disclose but hope (or assume) that if you are reading this, you are familiar enough with us to know that guessing “secret passwords” at Bon Bon Bon can yield some funny outputs. Meanwhile, Juan and I are on a mission to re-set the really loud sound thing from the inside. It was chaos and we MacGyvered it. Success!
Juan’s energy seems to remove chaos instinctively - which in our kitchens during busy season, especially, is more than appreciated. Somehow, when the whole place is whirring with clanking and packaging and piping galore, his world feels settled and it feels settling to be near him. And, you can see this in his work. He’ll act like he’s “just a normal guy” and then drop bombs of ABSOLUTE BON PERFECTION in the group chat like it’s not a big deal to pipe a completely perfect tray of a Bon with absolutely zero mistakes (a less than .03% error rate). Unbelievable.
Cool, collected, hyper talented, detail oriented, funny-so-watch-out and a force of the best kind of grounded nature, we are so exceptionally lucky that he decided not to quit after his debacle of a first day.
Thank you for being you and for being here, Juan! We appreciate you.
