That’s what we had to do yesterday when we could no longer look in the other direction. We had to face the music and do what’s right. That’s why we had to fire the Pollstar.com chef.

It wasn’t an easy decision. For years Pollstar.com employees enjoyed the most delicious meals this side of Madison Square Garden. Served by our own in-house gourmet cook, there was nothing like pheasant under glass after processing tours by Jefferson Starship and Roni Size Reprazent, or a nice soufflé after adding additional dates for John Scofield. However, sometimes you just have to do what’s right.

It started a couple of weeks ago when management determined the final list of employees traveling to Las Vegas next week for the Concert Industry Consortium. Even though our staffers exist only for the pleasure of entering dates for acts like Mudvayne and Spineshank, they do look forward to this annual event of weeklong debauchery thinly disguised as a business trip in advertising brochures and on tax returns.

However, there’s not nearly enough room on the bus for all of the 9,212 employees based in our Fresno headquarters. Clearly, someone had to stay behind. We drew lots, and the chef lost.

Needless to say, he wasn’t a happy camper. He stopped cooking our favorites, like Backstreet Boys chicken, 3 Doors Down fettucine and eggs ala Marilyn Manson. In fact, he refused to vary the menu even one iota, and insisted on force feeding us pancakes for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

And they weren’t even good pancakes. Thin and wispy, they could barely contain the mountains of butter and gallons of syrup needed to bring flavor to the wimpy little anorexic hotcakes. A good tour date person relies on his (or her) gut to make decisions, and when the tummy is filled with tastelessly flat flapjacks, one is hardly left with enough energy to enter dates for Twiztid and Terri Clark.

Now the chef is history, and we have to prepare our own meals at the Pollstar.com campus. Of course, microwaved popcorn after processing dates for Catch 22, Stan Ridgway and George Strait Country Music Festival hardly matches the biscotti or the shrimp oreganato of the past. But the chef is gone, as are his grotesque little griddlecakes.

And we no longer have to face his crepes of wrath.