Stuff You Should Know - How Mercenaries Work

Episode Date: January 8, 2010

Mercenaries are soldiers of fortune who fight in wars and conflicts for profit. Join Josh and Chuck as they explore the fascinating history of mercenaries past and present in this episode of Stuff You Should Know. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is always a smiling Chuck Bryant. I'm smiling.

How are you doing, Chuck? I feel like I was just whisked in here like a Elvis or something. You were. You're like Krusty the Clown when he comes in to do the recording for Krusty at all. Right. You remember that? Hey, hey. Yeah.

Again, hey, hey. That's my best. Yeah. So Chuck came in on a sick day. On a wing and a prayer. I just walked in. Yeah. Traffic's bad.

It's nasty out. Raining. Raining. Cold. Mm-hmm. And we're going to talk about something else that is cold. Hey. Nice.

Mercenaries. We've talked about Delta Force before. Uh-huh. I remember we had to keep our composure. Sure. Because we were tittering and excited and all that. Yes. We were taken to task a little bit by liking violence.

That's not necessarily going to happen in this one. I have a feeling. Nah. No. Mercenaries, which are, as I think everybody knows, are soldiers for hire are pretty much universally hated by everybody. Are they? Yeah.

Okay. I didn't get that. Yeah. The reason why is because when you go to war, most people go to war because somebody's getting pushed around by some other big jerk country. Sure. Or, you know, there's some dictator that should be toppled. It's ideological on the surface, and that's what attracts brave men and women, braver

people than us, who go into service not for money, but because they want to protect democracy or freedom. What have you? Gotcha. I mean, don't do that. They go and say, this country's paying a lot right now for this war that they're in, and I'm going to go kill for them. Sure.

For money. I'm killing for money. They're pretty much hitmen. Yeah. I didn't realize the fascinating history of the mercenary until I read this. No. And William Harris, by the way, did a humdinger of a job. He did.

He did a fine job. Yeah. So, Chuck, let's talk about mercenaries. Where do they come from? Well, Josh, the earliest account that we know of is about 2,400 years ago. In Persian prints, in general, Cyrus the Younger, which I like that, Cyrus the Younger. Right. Not to be confused with Cyrus the elderly guy.

Right. The bald. Right. He hired the 10,000, which was an army of Greek mercenaries, to seize the throne in Persia. Right. And from his own brother? Yeah.

What, Cereses? Yeah. And Stacey's? I'm not sure, but I've seen the movie 300. So, I bet the 10,000 were pretty tough. Yeah. And I was wondering, are the 300 and the 10,000 related, are the 300 the remains of the decimated 10,000?

If so, they're tough dudes. They were tough dudes. That was a great movie. I enjoyed it. That stupid disfigured guy gave them up. Yeah. And oh, the abs. Did you know in that movie, they wanted to recreate what these guys probably looked like?

So, when they were training, they didn't use any equipment. They did things like roll tires up hills. Oh, really? They did like real earthy stuff. The strongman competition. Very much. They carry concrete beer kegs and stuff. Right.

And like pick up tractor trailers. Yeah. Like the concrete beer kegs. What a waste of beer. Yeah. Seriously. So, yeah. So, that was back in what?

401 BCE? Yeah. Right? And since then, we've pretty much used mercenaries, almost uninterrupted. Yeah. So, they made a pretty big splash, I guess you could say, in the Hundred Years War. Which lasted longer than 100 years, by the way. It did.

So, I'm not going to say what the 100 and 16 year war. Yeah. That doesn't have the same ring to it. Between the English and the French, from 1337 to 1453. Well, that's the problem with the long war, is that your armies are going to be decimated. Precisely. So, you have to turn to the paid for hire guys. Well, not only that, the standing political army didn't really appear until I think the

17th century. So, back in this time, all these disparate land-owning earls and dukes and princes, they had their own private armies and they were all for pay. But, a lot of them were drawn from their own countrymen. But, yeah, you make an excellent point. When you have a 100 year war, you're going to go through a lot of your countrymen. That's just kind of one of the aspects of war. So, yeah.

In the 100 year war, a guy named Edward of Woodstock, who's known as the Black Prince. By the way, from now on, I want you to call me the Black Prince. That's awesome. I was going to call you Josh of Woodstock. No? No. Okay. Not for many years, buddy.

Yeah. He made use of mercenaries in what, how do you pronounce this, Chuck? I'm going to go with Chevalier. Yes. Which basically means burn, pillage, loot and rape. Yes. And that's our war. I think fans of Blazing Saddles might know that better as the number six.

Oh, yeah. Where they go riding into town, whooping in a wamp in every living thing. Yeah. Yeah. That's what they say in Blazing Saddles. Yeah. But they also had a number six dance later on, which was a really great line. Nice.

I wonder if that is Chevalier dance. Maybe so. Maybe. Probably not. I think it's a little more bloody and horrifying. Yeah. And then the, the 100 years war ends and I guess the use of mercenaries kind of dried up for a little while, right?

Yeah. So my earlier comment about them being used uninterrupted was totally baseless. Well, I bet you there were some mercenaries used here and there. Right. Just not as widely. Right. Let's talk about some famous mercenaries. They're Chuck.

Okay. Like the Swiss guard. I think that's a good example. Pretty tough. Yeah. They made the point in here, William made the point in here that sometimes a soldier would get a specialty, a combat specialty. So they would be sought out because of a particular war or a battle they might be in.

And the Swiss guard was such because they were masters of the pike. Right. And they're still around. Pretty cool photo of them and they are holding their pikes really and they look, yeah, it's, it's pretty awesome. It sounds like a euphemism. They're holding their pikes. Yeah.

I'm not going to go there. What about the other one? You speak German. I found out Chuck speaks German. I knew you were going to. So Chuck, how do you pronounce this one? I knew you were going to ask this and I practiced it. I'm going to go with, uh, launch, uh, launch, okay, that's better than what I was going

to go with. I don't speak German, but that's a really tough one, even if you are German, I'm going to say. Can you, uh, can you say, say hello to my little friends? Zacht Hallo zu meinen kleinen Freunden. Yeah. Chuck's a Beverly Hills Chihuahua fan, by the way. Right.

So yes, those German soldiers actually also use the pike and, uh, but they also used, uh, guns, which was kind of new in the 15th and 16th century. Right. Uh, muskets. Archibus. Archibus. Yeah. So those guys made a pretty big, um, impression.

One of the reasons why they were, uh, I guess heavily sought after was because unlike the Swiss guard, they, I mean, they specialized in different weapons, but they had like different aspects of their companies. Like, you know, somebody would use the musket, somebody else would use a pike, somebody else would use a sword. So they were like everything you needed all in one. Right. Yeah.

And actually did you know that, um, in the Revolutionary War, there were tons and tons of mercenaries. Not until this, and I'm surprised they have not made a film about it yet because William and he even has this, uh, uh, sourced said that during the Revolutionary War, Americans probably fought more Germans than they did English, British. Right. Is that true? Is that possible?

I could see that. Yeah. Wow. It's crazy. You never hear about that. And, uh, the, one of those, um, one of those mercenaries, German mercenaries, I think they're called Hessians, um, turned out to be the headless horsemen. Oh yeah.

Yeah. They're called Ichabod. Ichabod's foe. Oh yeah. That's right. Yeah. Sorry. Ichabod was the, yeah, he was the, he was the nerve-racked man.

Sure. So, uh, yeah. Like we said, standing armies kind of became popular in the 16th century and never really yet. Their popularity never waned much in like the, the twist, um, they, so, you know, political standing armies have been around for a while, right? You mean the dance, the twist? Yeah.

Um, so, as a result, mercenaries have kind of fallen to the wayside, uh, until, um, World War II. Yeah. Which kind of changed everything. And a lot of, a lot of, World War II was a, probably the most landmark event in the last, I don't know, since the Magna Carta. Maybe. Everything changed after that.

Yeah. You know, Germans got volunteers actually, so technically they weren't mercenaries. We'll go over in a minute what the Geneva, Geneva convention actually says as a mercenary, but I think the Germans actually had volunteers from other country. Yeah. Um, Frywell. Just call them free willy. Free willies.

So, yeah, that was in World War II actually. Right. They were, um, yeah. And since they were volunteers and they weren't paid, they weren't technically mercenaries, but they fulfill a lot of the other stuff, a lot of the other criteria. Right. So then yeah, after World War II, um, part of the Geneva convention, this agreement, uh, among all of the, uh, warring nations and the allies on the rules of war, um, mercenaries

and their use and their definition is very much addressed. Right, Chuck? Yes. In the first protocol of 1977, uh, should we go with the criteria? Yes. In order to be considered a mercenary, Josh, you must be, uh, specially recruited to take part in the conflict, but not a member of the armed forces of the state that recruited you.

Right. That's kind of a big one. Yeah. Like the German volunteers in World War II there from other countries. Exactly. Uh, you need to actively engage in hostilities. Otherwise, I guess you probably wouldn't be a very good mercenary. If not, you're just some guy standing on the sideline.

Exactly. Uh, you are motivated by private gain and you're paid substantially more than the ordinary armed forces of that state. Mm-hmm. Soldier of fortune. Yeah, we'll get into that too though. It's, uh, quite as lucrative when you factor in some other things. No.

You know? I was kind of surprised about that. And, um, what else? Is that the last one? Yeah, no, Chuck. That pretty much does wrap it up. I think you covered all the big points, um, and even earlier than that, mercenaries were kind of put on the fringes, um, right after World War II when the original Geneva Convention

was established because they created the definition for a lawful combatant. Yeah. That's basically what we think of as a soldier, somebody who belongs to a nation. That's important too. That's a war. Right. Because if you're a lawful combatant, um, you can engage in offensive conflict. Yeah.

With people in other countries. You can kill people and if you're caught, you are, um, expected to be treated as a prisoner of war. Exactly. If you're a mercenary, you are way far out there on the edge. Yeah. You're kind of on your own. Like you can be tried for murder.

Yeah. And have you tortured? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Whatever. Sure. Um, and remember, uh, I think in September 2007. Yeah.

Blackwater. Oh yeah. Very, very famous, um, outfit. I thought you were talking about the Doobie Brothers song. No. Oh, Blackwater? No. No.

We're not talking about that one. Okay. Different guys. Um, yeah. You know Blackwater, right? Actually, I responded to someone asked to do something on Blackwater. Mm-hmm. And I responded, yeah, maybe we should do one on the Doobie Brothers as a whole.

And he didn't get the joke at all. He wrote back and said, no, that's weird that you thought that. I was really talking about Blackwater. That's weird that you thought that. I know. You burned out. Well, that's weird. Um, oh, you remember, okay, so you are aware of Blackwater.

Sure. Okay. And they, I think that right after this, they changed their name to Blackwater worldwide and now they're Z, XZ. Oh, really? Yeah. They keep changing their name with every horrible travesty. Right.

But, um, you know, a lot of people call them mercenaries. They're now called private military contractors, but basically they supply soldiers of fortune, right? Yeah. For security, mainly. Uh huh. In 2007, there was this horrible thing that went down in Baghdad, where I think 17 Iraqi civilians were killed, um, when, when Blackwater, um, contractors opened fire at the trigger

section. Yeah. Got real trigger happy. And, uh, I think they, they found that 14 of those deaths were unjustified. Yeah. They broke the, uh, deadly force rules. Right. And Iraq was chomping at the bit to prosecute these guys.

I believe the U S stepped in and protected them. But I mean, they, it was very possible for them to be prosecuted because they weren't lawful combatants. Well, the U S uses a lot of these, uh, contractors as it turns out, because I saw the UN passed a resolution in the late eighties outlawing this kind of mercenary, but the U S conveniently has still not signed that document because we want to hire the mercenaries because they, what happened is, and William makes a great point is with, uh, the different rules of warfare now, you have lots of weapon systems and, um, soldiers that are trained to man

these systems and operate these systems. So what happens is they're spread a little thin with, um, some of these day to day duties like, uh, security of like high ranking civil servants, that kind of thing, right? Which the military would usually take care of. Right. Um, anytime you see Hamid Karzai, you'll see a couple of white guys who wear Oakley sunglasses and have beards with, um, I guess, uh, heckler and cock, um, guns. Yeah.

And they are, I think former Delta force, but now they work for Z. Yeah. They're not, they're not smiling. No, but they provide security and they can do that lawfully. You can provide security. You can provide, um, a def, defensive security where you're not engaging in any offense whatsoever. Right. Um, supposedly.

Right. You're a lawful or you're, you're a mercenary under the Geneva convention and guidelines and the protocol and all that, right? Yeah. I got a stat for you. Okay. Uh, I said that the U S likes to use these, these soldiers of fortune. There's a, there's no hard numbers, but they suggest that more than 180,000 of these contractors

are working in Iraq alone and that all together all over the world that they outnumber the United States military in total. Yeah. And then we've spent about a hundred billion dollars in the Iraq war on these mercenaries. Right. Which I think is something like a quarter or a third of the total that we had spent. Yeah. Uh, when this article was written, I think in late 2008, right?

Yeah. Which of course is smaller now. So Chuck, you know, Africa has been a big site for mercenaries and it still continues to be. That's what I hear. There's pretty much any time there's a revolution, a coup attempt, something like that and anybody has some cash, they hire outside mercenaries, right? Yeah.

Uh, and there was a guy named Simon Mann. You remember this? Yeah. Back in 2004, March, 2004, Mann, um, was the head of two companies, um, that were private military companies, contractors, but basically mercenary outfits, right? Yeah. Sandline International and I love the name of this one, Executive Outcomes. Right.

I don't know what that means. Uh, yeah, but it sounds so shady. Yeah, it does. Like you can just see like their, their company headquarters, Executive Outcomes, it's like one of those offices that you wander into to ask like to use the bathroom and you're like, what is this place? What do you guys do here? And you're just escorted out when you wake up and on a park bench, you make a lump on

your head. You have like ink on your fingers. All right. So, uh, well Mann, um, in March, 2004, led a group, um, of mercenaries from South Africa and I guess his company, um, to Equatorial Guinea and he didn't make it. He got picked up in Zimbabwe as a coup attempt. They were going to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea, um, the president, Teodoro Obang.

All right. Nice. And, uh, they got picked up and held and apparently he was just recently pardoned by President Obang and released in November, um, and he's out and he is naming names. The story that he tells now he's back in Great Britain is that, uh, Mark Thatcher, Sir Mark Thatcher, whose last name you might recognize his mom was the PM for a while. Nice March. Um, and some other people, uh, from around the world had an interest in the oil fields

at Equatorial Guinea and hired allegedly hired time and man to go over through the government so they could move in, uh, and get these oil revenues or control these oil fields. Yeah. And he was condemned pretty roundly. Man was, but he was fully pardoned by. Oh, bang. He was. Yeah.

It was in prison for five and a half years. But he did have to shut down, uh, executive outcomes apparently, right? Yeah. And Sandline. Yeah. They're, they're probably opened up under another name though. Probably probably not. But if you think about, think about how people think of black water, right?

Or, um, you know, Simon Mann, no one cared that he was in prison for five and a half years. Right. Like in the reason why is because he was a soldier of fortune. These are mercenaries. Yeah. You know, and people just don't think of them very highly. That's true.

Can we name some of these other companies? Uh, yeah. Sure. Just cause I thought it was kind of funny. Some of them. And if I had a mercenary company, I don't know what I would name it, but it would probably not be the olive group. That was one of them.

Yeah. And triple canopy. That's a weird one. That's probably a military term. And what's another goal in it? This one's good. Crawl. K-R-O-L-L. Crawl.

Yeah. Yeah. Crawl will crush your government. Yeah. That probably stands for something. Yeah. The one that I think stands out above all the rest is global risk strategies. Yeah.

I can see us, if we go to Guatemala, calling on global risk strategies to come get us out. You know? I'd love to have that number actually handy. Yeah. Maybe we should look that up and have it on us. So Chuck, let's talk about another famous group of mercenaries that aren't necessarily kind of looked down upon.

The French foreign legion. You know the guys with the white caps? The cap et blanc. With the, do you remember in the 80s, like when, did you break dance? No. Do you remember those hats though? They were like baseball caps, but then they had the flap in back. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They were kind of based on legionnaires hats. Yeah, you're right. What's up with that? Oh, who knows. Weird time for fashion. The French are always leading the way, fashion forward. All right. So these guys with the white caps, right?

Yes. The French foreign legion are technically, you could call them mercenaries, although they, they can't eventually gain French citizenship through joining the foreign legion. Right. After three years and they have to sign up for a five year tour of duty. Five year contract. And the French foreign legion was established in 1831 because when the French revolution happened in July of 1830, apparently this opened the floodgates for people, I guess,

seeking their fortune in France and the newly free France for French Republic. And so the French said, well, you know what, let's put all these ragamuffins and no good nicks to good use. And they started the French foreign legion. So if you came in, if you wanted to become a Frenchman, and I guess you were an able bodied man, they said, sure, you can become a Frenchman. Sign up five years. We'll put you in the foreign legion after three years.

You can become a citizen. After the fifth year, you can come back and do whatever you like. And many were no good nicks actually in the early days. And still it's like joining the circus. Right. Or sometimes we have some no good nicks that join up in the army at 18 because their parole officer says that might be a good move for them. And the army will shape them up and turn them into good citizens, hopefully.

Right. Yeah. Pretty cool. Vengeant killers. So can we talk more about the legionnaires? I think we should. Yeah. Okay.

Well, they get recruited and they get approved for preselection. And that means you get a little medical checkup and what they call a, quote, confirmation of motivation. Right. They want to make sure you actually do want to do this. Right. You're aware that you're signing up for five years to go be in the military. Right.

And once you pass through that stage, you go to another set of like more thorough questioning and medical checkups. And then you go to basic training for 15 weeks in a little country town in the south of France. And at the end of that, they introduce you to your, you know, your comrades and your military life. They teach you French. Ideally, you can speak a little French at the end of this and then at the end you get your Capet Blanc, which is that goofy looking white hat.

Right. And it is goofy looking, isn't it? It is. And it kind of stands out. It's not very practical. No. And there's a picture of a modern foreign legionnaire, French foreign legionnaire. Oh, really?

And he does. He's wearing like a beret and camo and all that stuff. Oh, okay. So I think it's kind of like their dress thing. Right. But so, okay. So if you have gone through basic training, you're a legionnaire now, apparently there's 8,000 of them at any given point in time.

Right now they hail from 136 different countries. Isn't that strange? We're strangely including France itself. Yeah. How does that work? So I don't know. We'll have to find out. Yeah.

So the, after you get through basic training and you're now a legionnaire, they send you to, I guess, one of 11 regiments all over the world. Yeah. Chad, Ivory Coast, Afghanistan. All over the place. Some places you don't really want to be. I would imagine you'd want to get a Chad. No.

I got another stat for you. Okay. 1831, Josh, since then, more than 35,000 legionnaires have been killed in combat. Right. That's a lot. Yeah. I think part of the reason, and we mentioned that legionnaires aren't necessarily looked down upon, even though they are pretty much a mercenary group, because they do get paid

and they're not doing it for ideology, but I think the fact that you sign up for five years, you can attain citizenship through this and you're serving a specific nation sure kind of adds like kind of a military tinge to it. You know what I mean? Well, they're no more soldiers instead of contractors. Right. Let's talk about the contractors there, Chuck. Yeah.

These guys are typically ex-military or former police officers. The better the better, you know, like Green Berets, British SAS, Delta Force. This is who you want in your PMC. Yeah, like Simon Mann was a SAS guy. Right. Yeah. So these dudes are brought in. They are paid, it says, $600 to $700 a day, sometimes up to $1,000 a day for their work.

Yeah. Not bad. It's substantial. But what we were saying earlier is, and this is kind of funny, is they typically don't get benefits, which surprised me. I thought any company would want to get a benefit paid together. I know, but no, you can't get a break as a mercenary. Yeah, too risky.

Yeah, too risky. Sometimes you have to cover your own taxes and all that. Yeah. And how much is life insurance if you're a soldier of fortune? I have no idea. But it's astronomical. Yeah. So at the end of the day, once you take out all the money for all those things and for,

you know, milk and sugar, they're probably not paid a whole lot more than a regular military personnel. Right. They're probably not. Maybe. Who knows. I think if you went to work for Blackwater or something, you could probably make a pretty decent amount of cash.

Right. And there's some other things that private military companies and contractors do that aren't necessarily war-based and are actually kind of cool. There is a group that train, guide to combat poachers in the Congo to prevent the extinction of things like the Black Rhino. That's pretty cool work. It's pretty cool. Private security for corporations, obviously when De Beers is poking around Africa and Exxon

and BP. De Beers definitely needs the private security. They're traveling around the country in hostile areas, so they need the best of the best. And like you said, guarding high-risk dignitaries, like comic cars, that kind of thing. And then apparently they also are used in counter-drug operations. Yeah. I didn't realize that. I didn't either.

I mean, hey, DEA can't do it all, right? Yeah. Good point. Yeah. And the use of private military contractors really exploded in the 90s, and they become, like you said, so far entrenched in our military that there's almost no separating and we become so dependent on them. Yeah.

And they also don't necessarily engage exclusively in gun-toting missions, like they could cook. The same company can send cooks, drivers, like all this stuff that frees up our soldiers. Yeah. I didn't even think about that. But there are some risks, some definite downsides to using mercenaries, right? Yeah. I would say the one that stood out to me the most is what you really want in a situation like war is loyalty above all else.

Definitely. And when you're hiring a mercenary, they're after the buck and they're not necessarily even from your country, so you can't really count on that nationalism. Right. That ideology that motivates you to go kill. Yeah. That's the biggest issue, I would say. There's actually a famous story from the 14th century about the Almogoveris.

Yeah. That's... Almogoveris. Yeah. That's good. How you say. Almogoveris. Spanish frontiersmen.

Right. Some Byzantine leaders hired these guys to defend Byzantium, right? Against the Turks. Yeah. And they did successfully and then they turned on the Byzantines and basically just walloped them. Did a what? A number six on them for the next two years.

Yeah. That didn't work out too well. Yeah. The very people you hire to defend you can say, you know what, let's just go ahead and take everything you got afterward. You know? Yeah. It's much like hiring a hitman.

Yeah. A really, really trained former military hitman. Right. There's also... If you're in a military detachment, a standing military detachment, right, a political army, there's a lot of, like you said, loyalty to the state, but there's also a lot of interpersonal loyalty. Right.

Among soldiers. Sure. That doesn't necessarily happen with mercenaries. Yeah. So there can be a communication breakdown. They're not sharing intelligence. That kind of thing. Yeah.

I imagine they look out for each other and that's about it. Right. And whoever, probably they were hired to protect specifically. Right. But all bets are off at the end of the day when you got a mercenary. I think that's pretty much the key takeaway here, Chuck. All bets are off. All bets are off when you hire a mercenary.

Yeah. You know what you're getting into. Buddy. Sure. That's in the fine print. Yes, sir. When you write that initial contract. Chuck, we talked about this article.

I think we covered most of it, but there's a bunch more information that we didn't get in this fine article by William Harris. And if you want to learn more about mercenaries, just type that word into the handysearchbar at howstuffworks.com, which leads us, of course, to listener mail. Yes, Josh. I'm going to call this one from Anya from Boston. Just simple. Okay.

And this is about a near-death experience, and we got a few of these, but I like Anya's. I just listened to your podcast on NDE's. If you couldn't tell from the subject, I had one that I find interesting. I had one myself. I can't remember it, but my mom told me when I said about it at the time, I was three years old and was sick in the hospital. I can't remember why now, but my lungs were mostly solid. Not a good way to be born.

Or I guess, yeah, she had to be born that way. It's like breathing through butter. Yeah. Suddenly, she flatlined and she lived through it. And she woke up, her mom said, she had a dream, or the girl had a dream where I was standing at the entrance to the hospital, and a big yellow school bus pulled up. There was no driver, and when I tried to get on the bus, a little bald girl about a year older than me told me I could not get on the bus because I was too young.

Just a note, I had no idea what even a school bus was at this point in time, because I'd been living in England. So that is my near-death experience. She tried to board, sounds like a bus to heaven, and the little gatekeeper said, you're too young, you're not ready to go. So go back. She went back. So look out for bald school girls.

Yeah, I guess so. You know you're dead when you encounter one of those. And that's Anya from Boston. Well, thanks a lot. Anya, we did get a lot of pretty cool emails. Thanks to everybody who sent in and shared their near-death experience with us. Some were just off the charts chilling. Indeed.

Yeah. If you have any kind of story you want to share with Chuck or I, if you are a soldier of fortune, somebody for hire, if you are a line cook in a chain restaurant, we want to hear from you. Send us an email to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Want more HowStuffWorks? Check out our blogs on the HowStuffWorks.com homepage.

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