Quote:
Originally Posted by
reneeannem
Professional kitchens are nasty, mean, greasy, yucky places, even when they're clean. Often the environment is incredibly sexist, as well. It's a tough job that requires a very thick skin, long hours, hard work, and constant passion to do well.
Well said. Not to mention EVERYONE is abusing one substance or another. I've seen it all, literally. I'm still rocking but there were certainly hard years and I'm sure there are more to come, I just don't see myself doing anything else. I started as a young teenager with a pocket full of dreams. Then reality come in. You're in a hot small steel box filled with knives, stress, grease, fire, attitudes and chaos. The tickets are printing over and over making a huge pile of paper on the floor. The expediter is screaming out orders non stop, "WALKIN' IN! 4 orders sweet fries, 2 portabella steaks extra blue cheese, 7 lasater burgers 2 medium, 2 midrare, 1 well done, 1 medium no seasoning, 1 midwell, 3 crab cakes, 1 cheese plate on the fly, 3 mizuna salads, 8 latke cakes 2 no brie 3 extra corn salsa, 5 warm guagamole 2 cold, 7 peel and eat shrimp-DROP AN ORDER OF POMME FRITES ON THE FLY- 6 chimi beef, 6 chimi shrimp, 8 tempura veggies, 7 calamari steaks-HOW MANY ORDERS OF VEG YOU GOT DOWN- 4 hummus platters! WALKIN IN! 3 orders sweet fries! That's 7 all day!..." and on and on and on for 7 hours. That's just the line too, that doesn't include prep time and cleaning time. And your rushing to make your 7 minute ticket times. In the mean time your friends are cutting their fingers in half, your throwing bleach on bloody work surfaces, flipping the crab cakes, water gets in the fryer and it explodes, you make a cheese plate on the fly for the folks who's fried food will take a little longer, flip the crab cakes, the whole while calling back everything the expediter yells at you, yelling for constant updates on food items your waiting for down the line, dish washers running in like kamikaze pilots trying to remove pans and wash them and get them back to the line in record time. You yell at you salad cook to keep his bloody hand above his head, the dishwasher doesn't use a towel to grab a stack of pans and burns all the flesh off his hand, then he splits to the emergency room, you grab all your dirty 400 degree pans and toss them in a sink, the mairtre d' grabs the buss boy to do dishes. Flip all the fish, lay the cheese on the latkes and throw them in the oven, still yelling everything back at the expo, he runs out of dark island dressing, you kick the fry cook off to go make more, then you are dropping the fry items and running saute, the grill cook is just laughing at you, blaring Stephen Marley so loud you can barely hear your self think, yelling back at the expo for all day counts, plating food, making it look pretty and putting it in the window then flipping back around and continuing to rock. And, yes, the salad cook, stops bleeding, puts on a glove and returns to his post. Welcome to the world of modern kitchens!
When we stab the last ticket everyone heads outside to crack down cigarettes, burn the green off bowls of shwag, and take shots of tequila, then return to work, trying to let their minds relax.