It is for a lot of people. If you watch them, they literally attack cutting boards.
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I like a sharp knife but I don't particularly care to sharpen knives.
Here is a photo from last November. I was doing some prep for the salad station I was running. I like to cut on a towel. It keeps everything in place better and the knife edge off of the cutting board underneath.
True about the steel. I was showing this to the guy next to me at the fry station who does appetizers.
After using the steel, I wiped the blade and showed him the metal residue. One of the "cooks" was laughing because I was using the steel because the restaurant has a sharpening service and thought what I was doing was funny.
People would be surprised how that very sharp edge gets our of wack just cutting vegetables. The skin on cucumbers is very tough. If you don't keep a sharp edge on your blade, they become difficult to cut through.
I'm definitely a sharpening nerd.
I'm impressed by your knife work on that cucumber. Achieving that level of neatness and uniformity would take me 45 minutes. I'm guessing I'd get moved to dishwashing pretty fast at that rate.
My wife goes at the cutting board like Paul Bunyon. I don't leave my good knives where she can grab them. They get put in a roll and stored out of the kitchen. I have at least finally gotten through to her about using the spine, and not the cutting edge, to move things around on the board. I cringe every time I see somebody do that.