DEADLOCK: Two cooks, one cutting board, one knife

deadlock detected (timeout 300s)
  cook-1: holds knife, waits for board
  cook-2: holds board, waits for knife
both processes blocked.
onions: unchopped. conversation: tense.

Impact

Dinner delayed 11 minutes. Both parties remained polite, technically.

Root cause

Shared resources acquired in different orders. Cook 1 picked up the knife first. Cook 2 claimed the board first. Neither would release.

Resolution

A second cutting board was found in the cabinet above the fridge, where it had been all along.

Action items

• Lock ordering: always take the board before the knife.
• Keep two boards in rotation: one for raw meat and one for everything else, which you should be doing anyway.
• Say what you need before you grab it.

# This is a blameless postmortem. The kitchen is a system. Systems fail. Cooks learn.