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twotimer
Jul 19, 2013

Psychobabble posted:

I think the ratio of assholes stays pretty much the same through all levels of wealth. Though it's definitely the "new money" that go out of the way to cause trouble, the "old money" just ignores you.

In my experience, royalty are always easier to deal with than tech bros.

royalty arent a problem themselves, but their handlers are a nightmare.

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Secret Spoon
Mar 22, 2009

I had a customer who had 6 cards bounce tonight. He ordered the wagyu tomahawk and a bottle of chateauneuf du pape domaine de la solitude as well as our most expensive app. His wife showed up to bail him and his buddy out of 500$ tab. She tipped me right but boy did I witness something that was going that was going to be brought up during the divorce proceedings.

Kenning
Jan 11, 2009

I really want to post goatse. Instead I only have these🍄.



Holy poo poo. That's a bad one. My favorite is when people fight over who gets to pay the tab and then the winner's card gets declined. That's always a great moment.

JacquelineDempsey
Aug 6, 2008

Women's Circuit Bender Union Local 34



Secret Spoon posted:

You see them swiping their cards right?

Naw, I'm too busy in the dish room scraping all the uneaten food off their plates. Man, we could probably shave the military budget in half just by getting my WW2 vet grandfather to stand by the serving line and yell what he used to say to us as kids: "Take all you want, but eat all you take!" I've been on food stamps for the last year, so I weep a little inside, throwing out untouched fruit, unopened containers of yogurt, whole slices of delicious-looking pie, etc.

Seriously, though, thanks for the info, I didn't know that about the mil-eatin' schedule. That definitely tempers my crankiness. Not at all like that "school teachers sneaking in the back entrance" craziness.

(As an aside, what's an alpo? Because I'm picturing this:
)

Psychobabble
Jan 17, 2006

twotimer posted:

royalty arent a problem themselves, but their handlers are a nightmare.

Luckily we're in a unique position in that the only real handlers we deal with are from the state department and they're just here for security.

Secret Spoon
Mar 22, 2009

JacquelineDempsey posted:

I weep a little inside, throwing out untouched fruit, unopened containers of yogurt, whole slices of delicious-looking pie, etc.

Seriously, though, thanks for the info, I didn't know that about the mil-eatin' schedule. That definitely tempers my crankiness. Not at all like that "school teachers sneaking in the back entrance" craziness.

(As an aside, what's an alpo? Because I'm picturing this:
)

Assistant lead petty officer, it's like a Sergeant. Also, that's nuts that there is that much wasted food. I ate what I got at the Air Force dfac, mostly because those dudes eat amazing. Also do they not need to clear their trash from the tray? Because if I didn't do that I would have had the dishers boss coming out of the kitchen to let me know how wrong I was.

TheSnowySoviet
May 12, 2004

It never got weird enough for me.

Simoom posted:

What's the position for? Line cook, kitchen helper, station chef? I've been hired by more than one semi-famous chef and I'm a real loving idiot, so honestly I think what most experienced chefs look for is someone enthusiastic and exceptionally impressionable. If you conveyed those two things you'll probably get in. If you did convey those two things, your lack of culinary schooling background will only make them think you are more worthwhile. im not sure how that works but it does. good luck

Got the job offer this afternoon; I'm just waiting to hear back about when I start. They need me ASAP -- the staff is in overtime and they're looking to get me trained before business picks up. It's an established joint for AM service, but they started doing PM service with a different menu not too long ago. I guess once word gets out they're expecting it to be really goddamn busy, on account of it being (1) in an urban center, and (2) run by some semi-famous folks.

So excited!. Also nervous. Mostly excited! Now how to go about quitting from the other place...

Oldsrocket_27
Apr 28, 2009
Never ever ever use Lavu for your POS system, because holy poo poo is it a loving piece of trash. It's been failing to print tickets in the kitchen here and there for a little while now, but never more than once or twice a service. Today, it printed roughly 60% of the tickets our servers sent us on the first send, and even multiple re-sends sometimes didn't print. By the time we realized how bad it was, we were deep in the weeds, and some of our servers just couldn't get their poo poo together. SOP when we know Lavu is dropping tickets is stop back when you send in an order, check to make sure it printed, and get anything else you need to do like grab drinks, side salads, etc. handled. Every server has been trained to do this. Still, some of them were wandering back saying "I sent you this ticket 30 minutes ago, why don't I have my food? My table's pissed!" having never checked to see if the ticket ever printed in the first place. One server never stopped sending back orders for items we told her were 86'd at the start of her shift. One server tried just walking back and yelling orders at us instead of sending them through the system. That didn't last long. I'm glad I'm at my other job tomorrow, because head will probably roll FOH. Chef owners told me they were glad I kept my poo poo together, so it sounds like they're not pissed at me, at least. We're already planning to switch POS's, because it's costing us money and could fuckup our reputation, at only 3-ish weeks of being open.

TLDR: Lavu is a bad POS system, and gently caress today's lunch service.

A Man and his dog
Oct 24, 2013

by R. Guyovich
Oh my god I'm so worried about that. New owner is great. But he's about to change to a new POS. l don't want to say anything, but he just needs to update with the current Aloha POS.

Going through a bunch of stress right now, that doesn't even have to deal with the POS bullshit.

They refuse to pay the salad / expo person more then $7.25 an hour(who dose a gently caress ton of work) and wonders why we go through a revolving door of that position....

Also hiring a bunch of sever chicks who only want to work 1-2 days a week. Cutting into my hours and always asking me to cover when they don't want to work.

The whole thing is coming off to me like a slow train wreck. Me and all the other guys who aren't management can see it.

TLDR: The ship is tilting over.

Chef De Cuisinart
Oct 31, 2010

Brandy does in fact, in my experience, contribute to Getting Down.
Crosspost from tattoo thread. Austin's best artist, IMO, Ray Wallace!

Hauki
May 11, 2010


A Man and his dog posted:

They refuse to pay the salad / expo person more then $7.25 an hour(who dose a gently caress ton of work) and wonders why we go through a revolving door of that position...
And this right here is why I left the industry

Vorenus
Jul 14, 2013

A Man and his dog posted:



They refuse to pay the salad / expo person more then $7.25 an hour(who dose a gently caress ton of work) and wonders why we go through a revolving door of that position....

I remember a PF Chang's Drahma person complaining one night- keep in mind, this position requires you to know 75-70% of the menu off the top of your head and you're the initiator for line orders so if you don't have wok buried in ready-to-cook plates you're hearing all hell.

They had just lost several cooks, needed this girl to work drahma all weekend every weekend, had her training new staff and refused her a raise for the second time in 6 months, so she was thinking about going down to Shithole McGee's for a 25c raise to $8.50 an hour or something like that. I wouldn't work a Chang's line for 150% of what I make now, and what I make now is more than 150% of what most of their poor cooks make. I cannot imagine dealing with that level of stress for so little money. In my mind, it is morally indistinguishable from literal slave labor. Not to say this particular issue is at all exclusive to foodservice; restaurants are just the most egregious offenders.

I've ranted to no end in this thread how I absolutely hate this industry, but my pay is way above industry standard and I try to be mindful to thank God for that every day. I deal with stupid people and stupid procedures and sometimes it's maddening, but at the end of the day it's also stupid simple and a fair deal.

The other important part is re: turnover. I fully believe people should be accountable for having a solid work ethic, but you get what you pay for and you can't expect someone to do a physically/mentally/emotionally draining job for a sub-poverty line income any more than you should expect a $1000 used car to get you across Death Valley in July.

Vorenus fucked around with this message at 05:39 on Jun 17, 2015

Splizwarf
Jun 15, 2007
It's like there's a soup can in front of me!
Aside from servers and other tipped jobs, federal minimum wage @ 40 hours a week is $3,310 over the current 2015 poverty line.
:goonsay:

But your point is good. Personnel-destroying minimum-wage jobs are either a revolving door or you get stuck with someone stupid enough (or depressed enough) to stay. And they're just great to work with.

gently caress, I just described me. I was both, and probably awful to work with. :negative:

Electric Charity
Mar 22, 2009

Secret Spoon posted:

I had a customer who had 6 cards bounce tonight. He ordered the wagyu tomahawk and a bottle of chateauneuf du pape domaine de la solitude as well as our most expensive app. His wife showed up to bail him and his buddy out of 500$ tab. She tipped me right but boy did I witness something that was going that was going to be brought up during the divorce proceedings.

was he alone in paying wat about the buddy, who tipped

content;

buffalo ranch octopus

Electric Charity fucked around with this message at 11:06 on Jun 17, 2015

Secret Spoon
Mar 22, 2009

Rajjoble posted:

was he alone in paying wat about the buddy, who tipped

content;

buffalo ranch octopus

buddy left a little after the check was dropped. Wife payed and tipped.

A Man and his dog
Oct 24, 2013

by R. Guyovich
That whole situation had to be really awkward and hilarious at the same time.

Republicans
Oct 14, 2003

- More money for us

- Fuck you


Is it weird I'm inherently uncomfortable eating/drinking things I don't pay for up-front?

A Man and his dog
Oct 24, 2013

by R. Guyovich
Uhhhh that's normal everywhere???

I guess if your a regular at some dive bar it's cool to have a tab.

Secret Spoon
Mar 22, 2009

A Man and his dog posted:

Uhhhh that's normal everywhere???

I guess if your a regular at some dive bar it's cool to have a tab.

uhhh....what? Im all tab all the time, and every restaurant I have ever been to takes the check at the end. At bars I also run tabs. Who pays by the drink? Is that even a thing? If it is I would hate to be a bartender at those places.

A Man and his dog
Oct 24, 2013

by R. Guyovich
That's what I meant. Misunderstanding. Lol got that all confused.

Mercedes Colomar
Nov 1, 2008

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Chef De Cuisinart posted:

Crosspost from tattoo thread. Austin's best artist, IMO, Ray Wallace!



That's pretty nice!


I've a question for y'all. I'm waiting to hear back for a second interview/shadowing for a hospital. Anyone worked one before, opinions? Experiences? I didn't ask about pay or anything yet since I only did the first interview. I'll ask all that if I get the shadowing call.

twotimer
Jul 19, 2013

Manuel Calavera posted:

That's pretty nice!


I've a question for y'all. I'm waiting to hear back for a second interview/shadowing for a hospital. Anyone worked one before, opinions? Experiences? I didn't ask about pay or anything yet since I only did the first interview. I'll ask all that if I get the shadowing call.

ive done agency work in hospital kitchens before.
its pretty cruisy, but imo its a place people go to retire. you will be making lots of jello, broths, vitamised meals, special dietary meals, tons of 'just add water' stuff, steam-and-serve, etc.
its as far from sexy as you can get.

12 rats tied together
Sep 7, 2006

Vorenus posted:

I remember a PF Chang's Drahma person complaining one night- keep in mind, this position requires you to know 75-70% of the menu off the top of your head and you're the initiator for line orders so if you don't have wok buried in ready-to-cook plates you're hearing all hell.

I worked Drahma for about 1.5 years at a changs. It's really loving awfully bad at first but, if you're good, you get used to it quick. I can probably still tong out exactly 10oz of various types of chopped meats, first time every time. Our store's tolerance for weight consistency was 0.1oz in either direction - if your chang's chicken measured out to 10.15oz you were going to hear about it.

Apparently our store was also backwards, so, the Meat drahma person gets the tickets printed to them. This is really, really loving stupid because every diced chicken dish on the menu comes with 10oz of diced chicken. This plate gets passed to the veggie drahma person who needs to decipher what the gently caress it is from a ticket that has probably been stuck to a damp plate for 3-4 minutes and then assemble the appropriate vegetables and aromatics for it. Compared to, if Veggie dude gets the ticket first then he hands meat dude a plate with 6oz of broccoli, 2oz of green onion (white part only) with 1/2tsp ginger on it... meat guy knows that it Can Only Be Ginger Chicken and adds a meat plate with the appropriate ~10oz of sliced (not diced, strips, or ground) chicken.

So yeah, in our store Veggie was the harder station that you didn't get to work at until you proved yourself with 8+ months of not quitting and not ridiculously loving up orders through 30k days. And yeah, if you don't have your entire station full of stacked orders for the next drahma person, who doesn't (in turn) have their entire station stacked full of orders for the chef to distribute to the wok cooks, you start getting poo poo about it.

If it makes you feel any better, I eventually got "promoted" to wok cook and it's just as loving bad because you never get to see any of the tickets, are constantly drowning in plates to the point where you can't even ladle your sauces without moving poo poo out of the way, and asking anybody what you're supposed to cook next results in people looking at you like you are literally insane. The strategy is just to cook everything they throw at you as fast as humanly possible and let Expo worry about it. Make sure you talk a lot of poo poo to Expo at all times also. Because, I mean, if the entire line is banging out ~15 dishes per minute, chances are you're going to have whatever you need already up in the window to complete a given order. Even if it's not necessarily intentionally prepared that way.

mindphlux
Jan 8, 2004

by R. Guyovich

Reiz posted:

I worked Drahma for about 1.5 years at a changs. It's really loving awfully bad at first but, if you're good, you get used to it quick. I can probably still tong out exactly 10oz of various types of chopped meats, first time every time. Our store's tolerance for weight consistency was 0.1oz in either direction - if your chang's chicken measured out to 10.15oz you were going to hear about it.

Apparently our store was also backwards, so, the Meat drahma person gets the tickets printed to them. This is really, really loving stupid because every diced chicken dish on the menu comes with 10oz of diced chicken. This plate gets passed to the veggie drahma person who needs to decipher what the gently caress it is from a ticket that has probably been stuck to a damp plate for 3-4 minutes and then assemble the appropriate vegetables and aromatics for it. Compared to, if Veggie dude gets the ticket first then he hands meat dude a plate with 6oz of broccoli, 2oz of green onion (white part only) with 1/2tsp ginger on it... meat guy knows that it Can Only Be Ginger Chicken and adds a meat plate with the appropriate ~10oz of sliced (not diced, strips, or ground) chicken.

So yeah, in our store Veggie was the harder station that you didn't get to work at until you proved yourself with 8+ months of not quitting and not ridiculously loving up orders through 30k days. And yeah, if you don't have your entire station full of stacked orders for the next drahma person, who doesn't (in turn) have their entire station stacked full of orders for the chef to distribute to the wok cooks, you start getting poo poo about it.

If it makes you feel any better, I eventually got "promoted" to wok cook and it's just as loving bad because you never get to see any of the tickets, are constantly drowning in plates to the point where you can't even ladle your sauces without moving poo poo out of the way, and asking anybody what you're supposed to cook next results in people looking at you like you are literally insane. The strategy is just to cook everything they throw at you as fast as humanly possible and let Expo worry about it. Make sure you talk a lot of poo poo to Expo at all times also. Because, I mean, if the entire line is banging out ~15 dishes per minute, chances are you're going to have whatever you need already up in the window to complete a given order. Even if it's not necessarily intentionally prepared that way.

lol this sounds pretty loving ridiculous. I am glad I have never been to a PF changs. I'm guessing "drahma" means like pre-assembling components so someone can cook them in a wok? pre-cooking meat?

JacquelineDempsey
Aug 6, 2008

Women's Circuit Bender Union Local 34



Secret Spoon posted:

Also do they not need to clear their trash from the tray? Because if I didn't do that I would have had the dishers boss coming out of the kitchen to let me know how wrong I was.

God, I wish. Nope, trays come down the line with both actual garbage (napkins, straws, single-serve cereal bowls, and my personal skeeve, those disposable dental floss picks) and all the uneaten food. There are literally no trash cans on the dining floor, solely BOH, so the GIs couldn't dump their trash somewhere if they wanted to. I have to pick up the trash from the trays and chuck it, then all food (except bones) goes into the disposal trough. They do not provide gloves*, so until I get paid Friday and can afford my own, I've been doing this barehanded. :gonk:

*Technically they do, but you have to go to the admin office and beg an E-7 for 'em, which they dispense like they're made of unicorn hides. Easier just to bareback it and dunk my hands in the hot bleach water when they get covered in oatmeal and maple syrup every morning.

Today I was so off my game. Started with being chewed out for being 2 minutes late (for some reason gate security was slammed), and just got worse from there. In the weeds keeping up with trays/dishes during service; then during the 90 minutes to clean the dishroom my boss was following me and kept barking "Why are you doing that?" "Uh, 'cause that's what the guy training me on Sunday told me to do?" "Why are you doing THAT?" "Uh, 'cause that's what I was told?" [repeat 12x]. I felt like a class A gently caress up all day. :(

I pray to St Martha, who as best I can tell would be the patron saint of dishwashers, that tomorrow is better. (St Lawrence is your man for the cooking crowd, if you're curious.)

Secret Spoon
Mar 22, 2009

JacquelineDempsey posted:

God, I wish. Nope, trays come down the line with both actual garbage (napkins, straws, single-serve cereal bowls, and my personal skeeve, those disposable dental floss picks) and all the uneaten food. There are literally no trash cans on the dining floor, solely BOH, so the GIs couldn't dump their trash somewhere if they wanted to. I have to pick up the trash from the trays and chuck it, then all food (except bones) goes into the disposal trough. They do not provide gloves*, so until I get paid Friday and can afford my own, I've been doing this barehanded. :gonk:

*Technically they do, but you have to go to the admin office and beg an E-7 for 'em, which they dispense like they're made of unicorn hides. Easier just to bareback it and dunk my hands in the hot bleach water when they get covered in oatmeal and maple syrup every morning.

Today I was so off my game. Started with being chewed out for being 2 minutes late (for some reason gate security was slammed), and just got worse from there. In the weeds keeping up with trays/dishes during service; then during the 90 minutes to clean the dishroom my boss was following me and kept barking "Why are you doing that?" "Uh, 'cause that's what the guy training me on Sunday told me to do?" "Why are you doing THAT?" "Uh, 'cause that's what I was told?" [repeat 12x]. I felt like a class A gently caress up all day. :(

I pray to St Martha, who as best I can tell would be the patron saint of dishwashers, that tomorrow is better. (St Lawrence is your man for the cooking crowd, if you're curious.)

That sounds super lovely. The E7 who is no more than a baby sitter who either A. hosed up so bad they put him somewhere that he really doesn't have any power, or B. is on his way out. The fact that he cares about glove costs and not the health of those who he is entrusted with tells me he is probably a poo poo bag. I would fight every day to get those gloves. If it isn't addressed find a way to access the anymouse, or whatever the army calls it, suggestion box. You should not have to pay for BASIC things like this. The military is one big bad spending habit, they can afford a 2$ box of gloves a week. Find out what channels are available to you to make sure you are taken care of. The DoD and its contractors have a vested interest in keeping its employees healthy, mostly because healthy workers are cheaper and more productive. I would also not worry about making that dick head mad or look bad.

twotimer
Jul 19, 2013

imo if you need dockets then whoever is working the pass isnt doing their job very well. some of the most well-oiled kitchens ive ever worked in had one docket for the guy on the pass and we all just followed his voice.

Vorenus
Jul 14, 2013

mindphlux posted:

lol this sounds pretty loving ridiculous. I am glad I have never been to a PF changs. I'm guessing "drahma" means like pre-assembling components so someone can cook them in a wok? pre-cooking meat?

Yeah, for every dish that's ordered, drahma knows and assembles the exact portions of each ingredient, raw, on a plate and sends it down. Sometimes it's one guy for meat and one for veggies but sometimes it's Saturday night rush and you're doing both by yourself.

Chang's is the only place I've paid this much attention, but I can only assume that it follows the rest of the industry in that there is literally zero, no, loving none whatsoever reason to work BoH unless you actually want to experience 10x the stress and hard work for less loving money. I'd always heard it, but it never really sank in until I watched the wok line on a weekend rush.

The more I think about it, if it wasn't a 30-min drive to get to the nearest one I'd work there again. Backwaiting was a joke 90% of the time.

Oldsrocket_27
Apr 28, 2009

Manuel Calavera posted:

I've a question for y'all. I'm waiting to hear back for a second interview/shadowing for a hospital. Anyone worked one before, opinions? Experiences? I didn't ask about pay or anything yet since I only did the first interview. I'll ask all that if I get the shadowing call.

A hospital kitchen was my first industry job. I still do part time there to get insurance. The work is easy as hell. Coworkers range from nice lunch lady types, to cool old dudes who've cooked forever but can't physically hack it in (or don't want to put up with) a restaurant any more, to people who barely passed culinary school and insist they belong in the industry despite barely being able to handle the easy-rear end hospital kitchen.

Honestly, what hurts the job the most is the absolute lack of creativity or flexibility. It makes sense and I understand it, but overcooking everything, under seasoning everything, and painstakingly measuring out and pre-portioning absolutely everything is boring and uninspiring work. It's a decent job, it was a good place for me to learn the basics, but there's a reason the buddy who got me the job there left, and still calls it the kitchen that killed his joy for cooking.

12 rats tied together
Sep 7, 2006

twotimer posted:

imo if you need dockets then whoever is working the pass isnt doing their job very well. some of the most well-oiled kitchens ive ever worked in had one docket for the guy on the pass and we all just followed his voice.

Same, actually. One printer, one guy at the pass who was a cook working a station called "the window". If that guy is good, you're good. My first day after being moved up to that station, my trainer just said "here you go" and threw me right in. This was at like a, Chilis plus(?) sort of place. Local barbeque restaurant, smallish 13 store chain, surprisingly authentic and good barbeque but it was a pretty small menu. Most of the effort on window was coordinating the various Ribs + Thing combos with the guy in charge of cutting ribs. 6 possible sauces + a rub, 3 rib sizes, and then you had your "ribs + pork, chicken (wings/fried/grilled/smoked(light/dark)), or brisket" + two sides out of a possible 8 sides... that got hectic pretty quick.

So generally we had cooks that would slowly Not Get Fired long enough to get promoted onto the window, and then gently caress it up massively and quit. My training was just loving it up until it got really bad, then he'd hop in and fix everything. Repeat for ~3 days until he didn't have to fix things anymore. Was a really fun gig. There's a huge sense of accomplishment and teamwork when you work together like that, but it can also cause some cook drama which is (IMO) the worst drama. People don't really like you being their boss, generally speaking, and I wasn't a very imposing or bosslike person at 20 years old, 5'5, ~120 pounds so it got pretty awkward when management would tell me to "crack the whip" and poo poo like that. My solution to cooks not wanting to close, or not cleaning their station enough was to say "looks great dude, we did an awesome loving job tonight" and then clean all of their poo poo after they left.

mindphlux posted:

I'm guessing "drahma" means like pre-assembling components so someone can cook them in a wok? pre-cooking meat?
They told me drahma means "to pick and choose" in chinese and yeah, thats basically it. You get every ticket and you set everything up for the cooks. The only thing the wok cooks have in their area is two woks (and holy poo poo you better be using both at all times or you are going to get some poo poo), a bigass hoak, you have garlic, chili paste, and sugar on-station since pretty much every dish uses some/all of these and then you have ~8 different base sauces, cornstarch slurry, a large colander with vegetable stock (you use this for noodles as well as in sauces), and there are a handful of those plastic jugs with the metal snap-back lid that hold some of the more specialized sauces like chili honey sauce or curry starters.

edit: I kinda sperged out and went into way too much detail. Most of the meat isn't pre-cooked, with the except of one drahma cook who acts as a pre-cooker and mini expo for the primary wok cook. The actual "drahma station" is a pair of ticket rails and very large lowboy coolers + cold tops. The butcher preps all of the meats and marinades them, you pull them out of the cooler as needed and pass perfectly portioned plates to the cooks, who should only need to throw the stuff you give them into their wok in the right order with the right sauces and then the dish is done.

12 rats tied together fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Jun 18, 2015

twotimer
Jul 19, 2013

Reiz posted:

There's a huge sense of accomplishment and teamwork when you work together like that, but it can also cause some cook drama which is (IMO) the worst drama. People don't really like you being their boss, generally speaking, and I wasn't a very imposing or bosslike person at 20 years old, 5'5, ~120 pounds so it got pretty awkward when management would tell me to "crack the whip" and poo poo like that. My solution to cooks not wanting to close, or not cleaning their station enough was to say "looks great dude, we did an awesome loving job tonight" and then clean all of their poo poo after they left.

one joint i was at, the head chef pretty much set the standard as to how we were supposed to treat the guy at the pass. when the guy would call something out, the only things the head chef ever replied with were 'oui chef', 'yes chef', or 'x in 3 minutes, chef'. it was kind of hard for anyone to get a complex when the head chef himself took direct orders from the guy on the pass.

12 rats tied together
Sep 7, 2006

Yeah it was kind of like that at that place, until I started being on the pass anyway. Kind of convinced me that I don't really have the type of personality for a management job in restaurants. It wasn't entirely my fault, but we did lose a bunch of really strong, older, "KM in training" types for various reasons and they were promptly replaced with... two little scrawny kids and a nepotism promotion. I tried to keep it going but eh, it's not really my job to manage the "kitchen culture" and a lot of our cooks had already been there way longer than me, at that point.

I took it as: my job is to get the food out without loving anything up, and then oversee the closing of the kitchen to make sure we had meat in the smokers for tomorrow and everything was clean. As long as those two things got done, I didn't really care how and I definitely appreciated the overtime.

Aside from changs, people ribbed on me at every single other kitchen I've ever worked in for having such short communication with expo. I'm "the 'heard' dude", all I ever say is "heard" or "x minutes". We didn't append the chef or talk in french because it wasn't terribly appropriate, but one of my regrets after having left the industry is that I never did actually work in a place where you say "yes chef". :kiddo:

Mercedes Colomar
Nov 1, 2008

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Oldsrocket_27 posted:

A hospital kitchen was my first industry job. I still do part time there to get insurance. The work is easy as hell. Coworkers range from nice lunch lady types, to cool old dudes who've cooked forever but can't physically hack it in (or don't want to put up with) a restaurant any more, to people who barely passed culinary school and insist they belong in the industry despite barely being able to handle the easy-rear end hospital kitchen.

Honestly, what hurts the job the most is the absolute lack of creativity or flexibility. It makes sense and I understand it, but overcooking everything, under seasoning everything, and painstakingly measuring out and pre-portioning absolutely everything is boring and uninspiring work. It's a decent job, it was a good place for me to learn the basics, but there's a reason the buddy who got me the job there left, and still calls it the kitchen that killed his joy for cooking.

twotimer posted:

ive done agency work in hospital kitchens before.
its pretty cruisy, but imo its a place people go to retire. you will be making lots of jello, broths, vitamised meals, special dietary meals, tons of 'just add water' stuff, steam-and-serve, etc.
its as far from sexy as you can get.

All sounds reasonable, I could deal with that for hopefully full-time straight off the bat and at least equal if not greater pay to what I'm getting now for being fry bitch for a "restaurant and tavern" to quote the logo. The little walkthrough I did yesterday morning made it sound semi-reasonable, and less stressful. Thanks for the input.

pile of brown
Dec 31, 2004
I call back whatever I think the order was, to make sure I got it all

battlemonk
Dec 10, 2008
My restaurant runs a front of house manager on the one side of the window, across from a chef who calls the wheel. The FoH manager expedites and it's usually pretty depressingly difficult for them. One ticket for the line, one ticket for the expediter with everything on it, one ticket for pantry with their stuff.

It's a routine clusterfuck. (Not only when I've had a bad night.)

At least we get to read our tickets over the chef's shoulder.

The Maestro
Feb 21, 2006
I used to expo, when 350 was a record. Now I bartend, when 650 is a record. I loved expoing, but I really really love bartending, and talking poo poo to the new expo. Oh you have a mat to stand on? And training? And food runners? Plus your cooks get the yellows, and the chef is working saute? Wow must be soooo hard. Lmfao I really am just so stoked to be working on the exciting summer menu and not rearranging tickets all night.

virinvictus
Nov 10, 2014
As a kitchen supervisor, should I always expect to be the buffer and softer hand of the chef?

Kimitsu
Jan 11, 2012

Bear with me for a moment.
Yes, we are closed.

Yes, we closed "only" fifteen minutes ago.

Yes, I just said we did the last call already.

No, I will not seat you anyway.

gently caress you, my kitchen/bar staff need to rest.

the great deceiver
Sep 23, 2003

why the feds worried bout me clockin on this corner/
when there's politicians out here gettin popped in arizona
So I just got home from my shift that I believe marked my one month anniversary of actually working in the industry as opposed to just going to culinary school. To celebrate my milestone I had to work a shift where we hosted a politician's birthday party (we are across the street from the state capitol building in Sacramento) with 60+ guests. I feel like I stared into the depths of hell tonight.

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Pile of Kittens
Apr 23, 2005

Why does everything STILL smell like pussy?

the great deceiver posted:

So I just got home from my shift that I believe marked my one month anniversary of actually working in the industry as opposed to just going to culinary school. To celebrate my milestone I had to work a shift where we hosted a politician's birthday party (we are across the street from the state capitol building in Sacramento) with 60+ guests. I feel like I stared into the depths of hell tonight.

Whenever I have to be around politicians I repeat in my head the following mantra: "Politics is Hollywood for ugly people."

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