Let’s dig in to the world of the corporate restaurant; you know the ones “chain free standing restaurants”, the ones you find on every fucken street corner eating the real food establishments alive like cancer.
There are three kinds of cooks that you will find in these kitchens; one is going to be that of a self trained junkie, a rebel only to work, get paid, find the weekend whore and score on some drugs, the one who get hired as fast as he gets fired. The second will be a vato loco from South of the Border who dose not understand any English, but he can cook, oh brother can he cook.They understand food, take pride in it and perfect anything in repetition that you want. They are clean, work hard for there check and pay bill’s, they look to make a better life for themselves and family here. The third will be a recently graduated culinary student, you know the ones that I referred to in recent pages; C.P.S. they clog the line with lack of speed, not understanding what to do with the product and listening to intently on what the kitchen manager wanted. Sadly they are in high hopes for becoming a “line trainer” or one day the kitchen manager of this fast paced monster.
Regardless everybody has high hopes and there own dreams of working for this chain restaurant.
I am going to walk you though some steps as what is waiting for you here, what it is truly like behind the closed doors, who, why and what you work for. The life, the hours the recipes and the blistering line of to many chiefs and not enough Indians.
It all starts out -
one day your driving down the road or maybe have picked up a paper and have noticed this “fun” and creative new restaurant that is advertising for line cooks, prep god’s and pastry positions. And you think to yourself, I have never heard of this place before, maybe it would offer me a great opportunity, something that I could brag about a little to my friends of how wonderful it is, how many covers we do in a night and all the respect one might find with his or her friends for working there, “if you think so”.
So you stop, park your car and walk up to the black steel doors with perfect acid engraving logos etched in both sides. You open the doors and walk in, the smell of fresh paint and leather hit you, as you look around you are amazed. New glasses at the bar that have never been used, no unseen bacteria growing on them, not chips where you could possibly cut yourself and no crusty shit on the bottom of some of the pints.
The new beer tapes go on for miles, chairs still wrapped in plastic, tile still being laid, plasma screens for as far as your eye can see, and the kitchen; the kitchen is in open view for all to see, forty red heat lamps hung from the ceiling on thin shinny cables reflecting off of miles of stainless steel and kitchen equipment.
Trying not to act or let anybody see that you are in amazement of this place, you walk over and ask for an application, you sit there and think to yourself; I really want this job, who could I put down as a good reference for me? What boss did I fuck over one to many times that I know I wouldn’t get a good recommendation from? How much should I ask for, I’m good; should I go high and smoke them or should I just leave it as open?
So after thirty minutes of cooking your brain on how you should complete this application you turn it in to the managers standing at the front of the bar whispering.
May I just add if your new to the blood sucking, cancer causing chain industry don’t worry, get some time under your belt with working all of the fly by night locations and you will have the application in the future filled out in five minutes. It becomes an art; fill out the application, think of who they are going to call and drive home as fast as you can to give a heads up to all of your friends and some past employers and
by friends I mean Alexia the line cook at your last job you got shit canned from, because realize it or not she just became your boss for this new company to contact on your work experience, ethical habits, attendance and most important; “would they rehire you”.
Just make sure you take care of Alexia later on, you know buy her that bottle that she likes, the one she cant afford, grab her some White Widow or
whatever.
She could be the one that gets you hired and you may need to use her again in the future.
As the young managers gather around and look over your application they ask you to have a seat. You go and grab a comfy chair at a table and wait. You see the management in the corner discussing what you have wrote down. Don’t worry about what they are saying, I could guaranty you probably have the job already, they are filling the place with bodies to train, open the doors and see who is going to handle the pressure and stay.
All they are really talking about is the tall blond that just walked in the door with a lace top, tight white jeans and a bright green thong showing as she sits filling out her application for "any position available" and where can
they use this pimple fuck who just finished filling out his application.
Note to self for future; eighty percent of
managers don’t even call your past employers or do any personal reference checks at this point for this crafty job your applying too.
Now you notice the kitchen manager walking over to you, there are two things to look for here, one if he is Hispanic your probably going to be in good hands even if he is young; he has had to prove himself and work his ass off to get here.
Second if this kitchen manager is white, you’re fucked, especially a young ass mother fucker who may I add really believes his shit don’t stink, and he is the best in the company. When I see this in a restaurant, all I think of is how did it go so wrong for this bitch, nine times out of ten this no balls cock sucker has attended and graduated from some on-line university to get his culinary degree from North Korea, you know the place; they advertise how to double bread dough into plastic explosive and Jack Daniels bottles into Molotov cocktails.
Could this guy have made a better career choice, could he have been the next Keller if he tried really hard? Fuck, snap out of it man your thinking in the deep end.
The first five minutes of the conversation are the same, how are you, what have you liked best in your past restaurants, what positions have to held on the line and what do you feel you are the best at.
Now here it gets important, sauteé and grill will pay the most, with pantry, pastry, prep, fry and pizza stations following up in the rear.
So if you want the money go for the sauteé or grill station, if you want a little less money and your work not to be so scrutinized as much, fall in line for the other stations. Just note that you will get your ass kicked the most in these two positions and when you’re at the breaking point with sixty or seventy orders on the line that need to go out, the other stations are not going to be busy; this means they will start meal breaks with other stations and you will get hit will all of the employee food at the same time.
You on the other hand will be ready for them all; Burger you want mother fucker, I have a great black piece of charred non-kobe patty for you that has been sitting for about an hour. Pasta you say! ya no shit and no problem let me grab these clams out of the back of my drawer that have been sitting their own piss for two days that management thinks is fine. Note to self; this is not ok.
Bottom line is this to all of you cooks who happen to be on break at a point when your team mates are going down like a Jerry Lewis concert in Mississippi, you don’t need to eat right then, grab a smoke, a beer, go smoke some AK-47, take a piss or fondle some server in the walk-in cooler; but don’t load your brothers down when you know they are getting slammed with your burger, pasta or charred chicken wings to top it off.
So it is up to you where and what station that you want to work really. Majority will be that you’re going to be hired on the spot and given a start date for training, this is where the bore comes in. You arrive bright and early eager to get your new job under way, but it takes all of the other lazy fuckers who have been hired an additional hour past the start time to show up for the meeting.
At this time you realize that there are about twenty cooks for each station, but you know that they are only going to need three or four per station; Don’t worry, three quarters of them will never show up the first day of opening and another
three will snap and loose
their shit on the line -
your good to go.
As with all establishments in this corporate world of killing off the best little food joints around them its going to start off with the general packet of information.
It is to let you know where you stand within the company and what options you have; basically you have none, they can hire and fire you in the same minute and they don’t want a person with there own idea’s, all they want is for you to listen, conform and produce, basically feed the machine day in and day out.
If you are the part that breaks in this machine they will make it very clear for you that you are not only very
expendable but quickly replaceable, you know that old saying on mans trash is another mans treasure; well here Friday nights jewel on the grill station could be Saturday nights unemployed grill man; you will find yourself filling out another application at another cancer breading establishment "possibly named of a drink or alcoholic town if you show that you have a brain and your willing to use it to work smarter.
A big item will be the safety program, sure all of these places talk about it like it was there golden rule of thumb to live by, but do you think they actually practice it? No! You will learn about burns, types of burns and treatment of burns. You know first, second and third degree burns and the basic shit that comes along with them. Don’t clean burns, break blisters, remove clothing, no ointment or medication or don’t use cotton items on burns.
First degree -
they are going to happen every night, don’t be a nut less fuck and go complaining that you lost some arm hair.
Second degree, wear them with pride and if you should be stupid enough to receive a third degree burn than you probably deserved to go through the pain, like some pimple fuck that I watched plunge his arm into the deep fryer on reaction because his Timex wrist watch
fell into it.
Please go and get this fixed, none of us want to see your wounds or hear you scream in pain. And please when you come back to work make sure you have enough pain killers for everyone on the line sharing is love.
Another one will be food hazards, biological, chemical and physical. Lets go through some of these; most of this stuff we all know, but sometimes people come up with funny shit to cover like, “wear adequate hair restraints” I don’t know what goofy bastard thought this one up but I have never seen anyone actually wear this face and beard entrapment after I gave them a wrath of shit about wearing it. Come on, what about arm hairs, upper chest hairs, shit hairs that just seem to fly around at times. Look, there are more unidentified objects in our foods everyday that we remove then you would want to know. And bugs; fuck I think I have found new types of bugs from imported parts of the world that just don't show up on Wikipidia.
A personal favorite I saw one time in a manual “be cautious with knifes, they may inflict injury or accidental cutting” I’m not even going to respond to that one.
One to take serious,
“do not use glasses to scoop ice: use commercial scoops”. I only wish everybody would follow that rule, but the truth is people in this business do this all the time. Broken glass ends up in somebodies ice tea, soda, water or drink at the bar; this will really fuck somebody up - so please don't do it.
Others would be food temperatures, hand washing, employee illnesses, sanitizing, water and ice as
foods and all of the miscellaneous. And what kind of shit is “always cut away from you and you’ll never cut yourself”? “Wear cut resistant gloves”. Have you ever tried working with this chain mail attached to you? It does not work! And my favorite is “ remember: oil and water don’t mix”.
Look, they are going to hit on food safety and hygiene hard, but the bottom line is this goes out the window when the store opens its doors for business. I am not even going to go into detail as to what I have witnessed in the kitchens with personal hygiene let alone basic food safety, some of it is sinful, disgusting and just plain wrong – a lot of cooks and chef’s have no moral when it comes to this, but to tell you the truth out of all my years in the industry I have never seen anything wrong or bad out of a professional kitchen. On the other hand I have witnessed shit out of chain restaurants that makes me band them from my choice of fast
meals with my beer. Cut fingers and still working on an order in the back, no problem.
Someone re-adjusting his briefs and then making your
club; ya I saw that too. Fish and chicken in the same bin
spawning new fucken cures for sexual warts and at the same time gearing up for
making the next super bug, saw that too. there is just to much to go on at this time.
Then comes the line cook training manual’s, it’s going to be loaded with your basic bull shit back to school information; some kind of mission statement, appearance standards and why, training information, your job description, how to use a measuring cup, tools and equipment, recipe information, portion control, employee menu items and some food standards.
In this type of restaurant you’re not going to have
your job descriptions spell out for you, they like to leave it open and blank.
A no mans land in case they need to shit can you stat.
In a hotel you will most likely find a very outlined job description for you, but as always they are subject to change at anytime, but please don’t think the nut less fucks in charge actually take the time to update this information for you, most of the material you are reading was typed and printed in 1960.
You will have to sit through the conversations of how to identify a knife, how to use a knife and how to sharpen the knife. They will beat you over the head to make sure that you conform to there recipes and there recipes only, not to deviate from there path at all, remember what I said, they are looking for people to reproduce and replicate the plates, they don’t want a loose canon in the kitchen, and by that I mean a creative cook, one who cuts against the grain constantly, and is willing to do a little tweaking to the dish to give it that extra it may need.
Some of these companies may think it necessary to school you on food definitions. Class can we say “aioli”? Or what is the definition of blackened? What is feta? Or do you know where the enchilada comes from? Folks, it gets worse, it goes on and on.
I would think to myself, does this fucker who is asking these questions even know how to make a basic mayo from scratch? You just need to sit back and put up with it, I guess. Remember it was you who wanted the job here not me. Don’t get me wrong, if this is your thing then more power to you, hey all chefs and cooks need a place to grab a beer and have a snack.
Finally the day that you have been waiting for comes; it is the day that you get to cook some food on the line. Wait! nothing is that simple. First you’re going to be placed with some under trained irresponsible mother fucker who is going to teach you how to cook. Yes I said teach you. I don't care if you have ten years on the line or ten days.
You need to have a lot of even temper here for this, and by that I mean if you have cooked three or four thousand hamburgers in your life, well it has been wrong. Your entire cut the corners to cooking the ground piece of meat has just went out the window. You are going to learn their way, and they will stand there to make sure that you do. Thought that you put that cheese on right before? No! Place your cheese on the meat and some trainer will take his time to stop you from what you are doing and tell you that the cheese is in the wrong position. What you ask? Yes the trainer will move your cheese about a half of centimeter to the left, then he will tell you there!
You may have the urge to nail him over the back of the head with your tongs after about the twelfth time he does this, and there is no difference between what you are doing and what he has done. Don’t worry, he will be gone soon and you can go about your business and placing the cheese the right way.
One of the biggest problems that you’re going to find with the opening of one of these places is that there are way too many managers and trainers as expected. When it comes to the kitchen, don’t be surprised to find up to
forty percent of the staff in the kitchen are trainers.
Here is where the frustration and confusion are. One fucker tells you to put the plate together and cook it like so; you listen and pump out this product until the next fucker tells you stop! Your doing that wrong, it goes like this. Then you of course comply and follow that procedure until twenty minutes later
some other no brain fucker in the kitchen tells you the two previous fuckers don’t know what they are talking about, and to please do it like this.
Don’t even try to argue, just listen and do it. You could talk until you blue in the face, its not going to matter. Sooner or later all of the managers will get together and have a discussions and come to the conclusion that each of them has to conform to one standard. Confusing? It gets worst when your there.
So you usually will have one or two nights of cooking on a limited menu before the grand opening, and I will bet its on a weekend night when you open, get ready. One you don’t know the menu, all of the time that you have sat back and thought, fuck this is going to be easy, a cake walk for me. Well, when the tickets start rolling in, you see shit being ordered that you haven’t been trained on, well its because it would cost that company way to much money to let you train on high priced items of beef and seafood.
You’re going to have to pull your shit together and learn as you go. Eventually some time during the night your ticket board is going to fill up and the tickets that are coming out of the printer are going to hit the floor, if you don’t have your head together you will loose it and have the opportunity in bringing the whole line down with you on ticket times, this would be you finding a new job if that happened.
Night after night, it’s not going to let up, you will find yourself struggling to keep up, trying to grasp all of the shit that is new to you, and trying to deal with that fucken trainer who wont get off your back.
Just as you know you have the process down, a trainer or manager will come by and tell you it’s still not right! One thing that I found out talking with trainers is if there is a mistake on the line that is caused by them, they will point the finger at you.
It gets old, nobody likes being blamed for shit they didn’t do or they were misinformed on doing, some jack ass trainer who is not bold enough to fess up to his mistakes rolls them off on the F.N.G., not like its surprising but I just wanted to make you aware that even if you are doing a great job, chances are your boss doesn’t think so thanks to the nut less fuck who is training you.
The good thing is prep is usually to a minimum in these places, your going to find that to improve on production in today’s world your going to have designated prep cooks at your disposal, what does this mean for you? Basically your going to fill out an inventory sheet at the end of your night, this is going to let the kitchen managers and prep cooks know were you are on product and how much product you used for that night, basically creating what we call a par sheet.
In the morning the prep cooks will come in and take control cooking, reducing, slicing, dicing, mincing, searing, mashing and marinating for you.
As they are doing this for you they are setting up your line for you also, everything will be setup the same way everyday with the same amount of product, so basically when you come to work and punch in you go strait to work on the line, no time for a smoke, a drink or have a ten minute conversation about how you banged your buddies wife last night while he was at the bar.
It has a good concept behind it, it’s a great process to enroll if you have the financial backing for it to employ the prep cooks just for this purpose.
Cleaning, let’s talk about cleaning in this restaurant, you will become a cleaning god! if you didn’t like cleaning that much before, well this job may not be for you. After you have had a long night of cooking, dealing with the trainers and managers who seem to agree on nothing, you have cleaning to look foreword to. I’m not talking about just wiping down your station; I’m talking about cleaning so good that no chances of bacterial life are surviving the night.
You will have to hunt the kitchen over for clean towels to do your job, or save one of the “two” that you were issued at the beginning of your shift, it’s a cost cutting measure for them, the less linen they have to rent and clean, the more money they will save at the end of the year. I personally need a huge stack of towels; I have been referred to in the past many times as the towel whore. It just seems that every towel in the
kitchen eventually ends up on my station that I’m working.
Grab two sanitizing buckets, place your towels in them and start taking out all of the drawers on your station, turn off the grill, broiler, oven, steam tables, shams and steamers. You will scrub, scrape and change out the aluminum foil on the grill, sanitize the steamer, scrape the melted cheese out of the broiler, spray down the ovens with chemicals and wipe out, get down on your hands and knees to wipe out the interior of all your cooler drawers and inserts.
Wipe, sanitize and polish all of your work top counter space and place all of your old dirty towels in the soiled linen baskets, and return you sani-buckets to the dish room.
Done! no not yet. Now you have to wait around for the kitchen manager to get off of his ass and come inspect your work station for cleanliness. He looks around and seems to agree with your work until he breaks out his L.E.D. flash light. Now he’s angling his beam to reflect across the surface and reveals all
tiny spots that you missed, not like you could have ever seen them with out
this flash light. Then he will look at you and tell you how unacceptable your stations is, that it’s a pit, and to please wipe down the station again. You will keep this up until he agrees that your station is clean and ready. You will come close to blowing a gasket at this point, and frankly I don’t blame you. The best bet is to go buy a flashlight for yourself and keep it in you pocket so you can self inspect before he hits your station.
Like I said before, if this place works for you, and it makes you excited, well more power to you my brother! I on the other side do not agree, I find these places disgustingly programmed total lack of creativity, no taste, no emotion, no heart and soul. The majority of all the products are pre-made and shipped frozen for the cooks, pre-diced, no assembly required.
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