-As the time for rehiring Stephen Dreim to Feast Fest 2012 continues to run out, Feast Fest and 27 chefs will meet on Wednesday to discuss the terms of a pact the chefs signed opposing and threatening raise requests and possible cases of resignation and walk-away in the event the flashy, yet haughty, former chef who resigned in October due to being false implication in a bribery scandal, is re-signed.
According to Feast Fest rules, if a chef is not signed to the event by the roll call at the beginning of the week-and-a-half-long convention period preceding Feast Fest--in this case, by Monday--the chef will have to wait until the following year to be signed.
"The roll call is the official rundown of all of the chefs for a particular year," said Scouter Jon Maguw. "Once it has been held, everything is concrete: nope, sorry, too late, try again next year. That's what we're trying to avoid."
The chefs take on a completely separate position. Andrew Cgrewnyr, a representative for the 44 chefs who signed the pact, said, "The strategy here is to take the juice out of the movement to sign Dreim until and through Monday. I represent chefs who believe Dreim has personally aggrieved them and who believe that a rehiring of Dreim has the potential to dramatically and drastically alter the atmosphere on the Feast Fest floor towards the worse. And we know this is an ugly fight. This is precisely why we want to keep the scouters' negotiations with Dreim stifled until Monday. Doing so will guarantee that Dreim will NOT be a member of this event in 2012, and it guarantees that we will have the entire offseason to hash this battle out in 2013. To work against the clock is stressful and is unfair to everybody involved, especially the chef body I represent."
The chefs' goal is to convince the scouters to drop negotiations until the offseason sometime tomorrow or Thursday, so that they won't be left holding their breath until Monday.
Dreim himself has indirectly helped the chefs' cause. His indecisiveness, wherein he has been "contemplating" a $764,000 offer for over a week with no word back, is delaying the negotiations significantly. Some believe that's a quiet way of saying "no". Mike Vilshire, an analyst, says that "I believe that Dreim wants to scare the scouters into upping the offer, but he doesn't want to alienate or turn off the scouters by coming out and saying that sharply and directly. That, I believe, is why we're seeing Dreim lingering. He's waiting for the scouters to give him a new offer. And they may soon as time is running out."
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