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My Little Puni posted:I spilled the cheese. I knew it Babylon Astronaut posted:Jesus you guys work in shitholes! I've worked in some bad places, and some really great ones, too. The best stories usually come from everyone's worst jobs, but sometimes you get a shock when a buddy of yours who works at an upscale catering company and only has good things to say about his work environment casually tells you "if you go to that charity thing we're catering tonight, stay away from the chicken, because the cart tipped over and it all fell on the floor. We didn't have time to make more, so..."
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Oct 28, 2015 14:37
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Also, in the restaurant world, you do not ever do anything that prevents you from selling food. Ever. I cut my thumb to the bone ... this is not true and you're dumb I just remembered something nasty: Some of our line cooks have a bad habit of forgetting to replace the lids on the grease barrels when they dispose of the fryer oil. A poor little squirrel met what I can only imagine was a horrible death when he fell into the grease barrel. I'm no forensic scientist but he must have been there for a couple of weeks before he floated to the top all hard n' bloated. Seeing as I am of strong constitution I gloved and bagged my arm and pulled the poor guy out. Even through the glove and garbage bag, I felt its hide slough off. Our GM stood by with his phone as a flashlight, and he was puking the whole time. We triple-bagged the squirrel carcass and threw it in the dumpster. No funeral.
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Oct 28, 2015 18:26
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AnonSpore posted:Make your stand, you might be evicted and die like a starving dog on the streets but your honor will be intact This but completely seriously.
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Oct 28, 2015 19:04
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Babylon Astronaut posted:I'm so spoiled by our bulk oil system. I drain 150 lbs of oil by flipping a switch to empty and opening a drain valve. The filter loving rocks too. We get about 9 days on our high temp vegetable oil. Ok horror story I guess. This comforts me in a weird way.
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Oct 28, 2015 19:46
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After high school, I worked for about a year at a little restaurant in a former Wendy's building that did short order food as well as frozen yogurt, which was pretty popular in the late 80's/early 90's. Occasionally, a couple buses from the local home for the mentally challenged would come in. They'd let them place their own orders and pay with their own money, etc. Usually these visits were pretty routine and normal. One afternoon while I was in the back, I heard a commotion in the dining room. I went up to see what was going on. One of the guys with Downs was head first and waist deep in one of our trash bins (the usual fast food type with the swinging door on the top front). Two of the caretakers were frantically pulling him back out. Once they had him out, he was happily eating half of a hot dog he found in there that someone else had thrown away. Good times.
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Oct 29, 2015 16:22
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Freelance professional, crossposted from the funny picture thread:
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Oct 29, 2015 17:07
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I really want gnocchi with crab now
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Oct 29, 2015 18:02
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If you're in Baltimore, I know a guy. e: you'll have to provide the crab though
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Oct 29, 2015 18:24
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My Lovely Horse posted:If you're in Baltimore, I know a guy. I don't have anyone to have sex with though 
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Oct 29, 2015 18:36
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Text me.
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Oct 29, 2015 18:42
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So a married guy is going to jizz into your dinner while you're loving your SO and he listens. Classy.
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Oct 29, 2015 19:09
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I'm in Baltimore and don't feel like cooking tonight. I was just gonna grab something on the way home, but this changes everything!
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Oct 29, 2015 20:09
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Thin Privilege posted:Oh, giant insect on top of a pile of just-delivered molded lettuce? Yep OK just gonna carry that out to the dumpster, insect and all. Or maybe I'll just brush off the insect. He'll just go scattering into the drain there, whatever. My first job told me if you found a bug in the lettuce head to give it a good, thorough wash and put it with the rest . The argument was that if the bugs liked it at least it was fresh. 
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Oct 30, 2015 05:42
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Lord Lambeth posted:My first job told me if you found a bug in the lettuce head to give it a good, thorough wash and put it with the rest . The argument was that if the bugs liked it at least it was fresh. 
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Oct 30, 2015 05:48
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I started a fire once. So, same bakery as the bakery corpse. We're cleaning the fryer out one day, and it's my first time actually doing it. The other fryer is helping me get everything drained out using the pump-and-dump special to get all the fryer grease into one of the rolling industrial-sized mixing bowls. We empty it out entirely (probably around 350 degrees because we did it at the end of the shift instead of letting it cool and starting the shift by dumping grease) and roll it out back to the grease dumpster, which is roughly a five minute walk each way, there and back because of how potentially dangerous the grease is and how long it takes to lift the bowl up and dump the grease. This being my first time, I cleaned the forearm-sized metal bars fairly well, but there's just a bunch of stuff stuck to it that we could not possibly hope to clean off ourselves. It doesn't affect hygiene or taste any, but there's one important aspect of "stuff left on heating elements" that matters when you realize how, exactly, I hosed up on my first day cleaning fryer: I didn't turn it off. So we're out back, dumping the grease into the grease dumpster. Inside, the caked-on remains of grease and whatever else have been heated up, with only air surrounding it, for about 7 minutes now. As the rest of the bakery is attempting to finish their various bread and roll orders for the day, the fryer makes a nice "FWOOMP" noise and starts a visible fire. It was, according to one of the bakers, "like somebody turned on an electric fireplace at a lovely hotel". He was the same person who noticed the fire, rushed over, slammed closed the hinged fryer lid, turned off the heating elements, and watched it to make sure that the fryer fire was sufficiently suffocated. After the 10-minute trip of dumping grease, the manager stopped me on the way in. "Did you clean the fryer today?" "Yeah, my first time." "What did you forget?" "Uh... I dumped all the oil, got everything rolled back... what did I forget?" The baker who stopped the fire: "TO TURN THE MOTHERFUCKER OFF" They then informed me that I had started the fire. Which, apparently, was tall enough to get halfway up toward the emergency spouts for the Fire Suppression System. That nobody used, instead just slamming the lid shut. I was not fired, nor was I reprimanded. I was basically just told "better luck next time, kiddo" and sent on my merry way. The next time I cleaned the fryer, I stayed for an extra hour and a half with all the cleaning tools we had available. Every previously-blackened heating rod was sparkling silver by the time I was finished. And I never started another fire again.
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Oct 30, 2015 06:07
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When I was bussing tables, I would eat untouched food before I threw it away. Starving artist here.
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Nov 1, 2015 19:44
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Lord Lambeth posted:My first job told me if you found a bug in the lettuce head to give it a good, thorough wash and put it with the rest . The argument was that if the bugs liked it at least it was fresh. That's the same logic my girlfriend's parents use to justify why they're ok with having their house swarming with fruit flies. I don't particularly like eating when I'm visiting and that's partly why.
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Nov 2, 2015 18:18
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Lord Lambeth posted:My first job told me if you found a bug in the lettuce head to give it a good, thorough wash and put it with the rest . The argument was that if the bugs liked it at least it was fresh. Virtually all of your produce has had bugs on it at some point, though? Mostly you don't see them at the store because the produce was already washed and checked. Getting rid of the bugs and cutting off the munched bits/cleaning it thoroughly is a must, obviously, but throwing something out because an ant crawled on it a bit seems very wasteful. quote:That's the same logic my girlfriend's parents use to justify why they're ok with having their house swarming with fruit flies. This is a bit different because letting the flies run rampant isn't the same as not immediately throwing away all the fruit in the house if you see a fruit fly on it. Also fruit flies are extremely irritating. My friend's house was always full of spiders when I visited because her mum was a hippy and wouldn't clear away their webs or get rid of them, but at least spiders don't fly in your face constantly or try to lay eggs in your grapefruit.
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Nov 2, 2015 18:47
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I always leave spiders be because they're cool and eat bugs, but I have no compunctions about murdering fruit flies en masse. I don't understand how people have them running rampant when it's a problem you can easily solve by pitching rotten produce, taking care of your cans/bottles, and laying a vinegar trap.
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Nov 2, 2015 19:04
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EXAKT Science posted:I always leave spiders be because they're cool and eat bugs, but I have no compunctions about murdering fruit flies en masse. I don't understand how people have them running rampant when it's a problem you can easily solve by pitching rotten produce, taking care of your cans/bottles, and laying a vinegar trap. It's called being lazy. My girlfriend's family is lazy to the point where the tiny trash can in the kitchen is often stuffed to the brim, dishes are stacked way the hell up and fruit peels are all over the place because it's easier to leave them on a table or a windowsill than to throw them into the garbage. They just tell themselves that it's alright because the flies are a sign of freshness or something even though it's gross as poo poo. My girlfriend and I at least make vinegar traps in the summers, that helps things a little.
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Nov 2, 2015 19:08
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ChaosArgate posted:It's called being lazy. My girlfriend's family is lazy to the point where the tiny trash can in the kitchen is often stuffed to the brim, dishes are stacked way the hell up and fruit peels are all over the place because it's easier to leave them on a table or a windowsill than to throw them into the garbage. They just tell themselves that it's alright because the flies are a sign of freshness or something even though it's gross as poo poo. My girlfriend and I at least make vinegar traps in the summers, that helps things a little.  That is some next level laziness.
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Nov 2, 2015 19:27
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TIL that bugs only eat fresh food
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Nov 2, 2015 22:51
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ChaosArgate posted:It's called being lazy. My girlfriend's family is lazy to the point where the tiny trash can in the kitchen is often stuffed to the brim, dishes are stacked way the hell up and fruit peels are all over the place because it's easier to leave them on a table or a windowsill than to throw them into the garbage. They just tell themselves that it's alright because the flies are a sign of freshness or something even though it's gross as poo poo. My girlfriend and I at least make vinegar traps in the summers, that helps things a little. hoarders.txt
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Nov 2, 2015 23:43
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ChaosArgate posted:It's called being lazy. My girlfriend's family is lazy to the point where the tiny trash can in the kitchen is often stuffed to the brim, dishes are stacked way the hell up and fruit peels are all over the place because it's easier to leave them on a table or a windowsill than to throw them into the garbage. They just tell themselves that it's alright because the flies are a sign of freshness or something even though it's gross as poo poo. My girlfriend and I at least make vinegar traps in the summers, that helps things a little. Ewwww. I'm not gonna act like I'm never a slovenly whore, but rotting garbage is where I draw the line.
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Nov 3, 2015 04:59
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ChaosArgate posted:It's called being lazy. My girlfriend's family is lazy to the point where the tiny trash can in the kitchen is often stuffed to the brim, dishes are stacked way the hell up and fruit peels are all over the place because it's easier to leave them on a table or a windowsill than to throw them into the garbage. They just tell themselves that it's alright because the flies are a sign of freshness or something even though it's gross as poo poo. My girlfriend and I at least make vinegar traps in the summers, that helps things a little. I hope they don't apply that principle to meat. (See the maggots? Quality beef!)
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Nov 3, 2015 16:39
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That must be how casu marzu started.
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Nov 3, 2015 16:45
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So, I work at Wendy's. For the most part, the specific Wendy's I'm at is pretty decent. We're really clean, especially compared to the other stores in the area, and we're pretty good with proper procedures/food safety stuff. Not to say that sometimes people forget to change hold times, but we usually catch it within a few minutes. We have had a few interesting employees though. First, there was Katie. Katie was quiet. Like, she didn't say a word to anyone. My GM put her on fries, because it's the easiest thing for a newbie to learn and usually after that they either learn sandwiches or grill. Katie never made it past fries. It was like she didn't get the concept that we were busy, or that we were fast food. She'd just stand there, watching as the front got lined up without dropping a single basket of fries. That's not why I'm writing about her. I'm writing about her because one day she was filtering the fryers. Now, I wasn't there that day so I'm not sure what exactly happened, but I guess she must have dropped something in the fryer and reached her hand in to get it. No one realized this happened, because she didn't say anything. She didn't show she was in pain at all. The only reason that anyone realized anything was wrong was when the drive through person happened to see Katie's hand. It had been at least twenty minutes later. Next, there was Harry. Harry was an older man, probably in his late forties. He used to come in a lot before he got hired, and seemed like he was an okay person. Now, he was a big guy. Not muscular, just fat. He would go around, bragging about the home gym he had in his house and offering all the girls to work out at his house. Also, he would go around asking all the girls their age, and would seem almost disappointed whenever they said anything younger than 20, except if you happened to look younger than your age like I do. One day he was working on chopping the chili meat when one of our supervisors and the other grillman caught him eating chili meat. Now, if your not familiar with how we make chili meat, this is the process: any patty that you can't serve you put up in the drawer. After that you cover it in water and boil in the microwave for ten minutes, drain it, chop it up, rinse it with water than put it in a baggie and stick it in the freezer. He was eating the product right before it goes in the freezer. The night he got fired though took the cake. He told the supervisor on duty that he had to go to the bathroom. He was in there for a half an hour. Finally she went to go check on him thinking something might be wrong and he was on the phone the whole time. She writes him up, but lets him keep working. Little while later, he's working the grill when she notices him chewing on something. She watches him for a moment as he pulls out a spicy chicken filet out of his pocket and takes a bite in front of everyone. He didn't last the rest of the night.
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Nov 3, 2015 18:11
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RabbitWizard posted:These flies that only appear when fruits start rotting must mean freshness-something! This brown, mushy apple is getting fresher every day according to the amount of flies! icehewk posted:Been aging this according to Ruhlman. It had some maggots on it near the bone but I cut all of that out as you can see. Is it all right?
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Nov 3, 2015 18:27
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Ain't often I can smell a post. E: oh yeah, that thread. "Pigs don't have knees!" Data Graham has a new favorite as of 19:15 on Nov 3, 2015 |
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Nov 3, 2015 19:11
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ThatGirlOverThere posted:So, I work at Wendy's. For the most part, the specific Wendy's I'm at is pretty decent. We're really clean, especially compared to the other stores in the area, and we're pretty good with proper procedures/food safety stuff. Not to say that sometimes people forget to change hold times, but we usually catch it within a few minutes. Thank you for the genuine chills! I wish I were dead
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Nov 4, 2015 06:46
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cash crab posted:Thank you for the genuine chills! I wish I were dead I'm so sorry and I never do this, but:  I'll see myself out. 
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Nov 4, 2015 12:15
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I've washed dishes/cooked in three different restaurants over 15+ years (most of this was part-time while working a full-time "career" job). And actually, in that entire time, I've only seen somebody spit in a customer's food once. The worst we did to get revenge on lovely customers was to send them out substandard food. Overcooked, undercooked, underportioned, completely halfassed meals were fair game, but no active sabotage. Kitchen #1: Local chain, pretty similar to Denny's. It was staffed by your typical ex-cons, current-cons (on work release), a 60-something ex-stripper, several retarded dishwashers over the years...you know, the usual. Most of the time we had normal garden-variety stories like customers dying in the parking lot, or one of the aforementioned retarded dishwashers getting fired after hiding in the ice machine, but occasionally things got interesting. Dennis (real name, because gently caress the innocent) was a dishwasher there. Dennis' mom was a regular customer there. Dennis' mom was a morbidly obese and unpleasant woman, which is nothing unusual at that establishment, but her bathroom habits left a bit to be desired. Just before she left, she would invariably waddle to the bathroom and unleash an unholy torrent of diarrhea all over the seat, the floor, the walls, the toilet paper...one time she even managed to get some into the toilet! If your shift was ending and you saw her heading to the bathroom, you would run out the door rather than risk being chosen in the shitmopper lottery. We also had the "counter creatures" - any one of a dozen or so regulars who normally sat at the counter, complained about their food, and tipped little, if anything. I could fill an entire page of this thread with their minor petty transgressions, but one example will do. One lovely counter creature named Lois was also a very large woman who walked with a pronounced waddle. I don't remember the exact prices, but we sold slices of pie for maybe 3 dollars, and whole pies (6 slices) for maybe $10. One day Lois got kicked out after buying a whole pie, then waddling around the dining room trying to undercut our prices by selling pie for $2.50 a slice. Our management was no better than our clientele. For a while we had a GM named Carla who was never wrong, about anything. At one point she installed a timer that she insisted we use for all fried foods. Sure, if the fryers are fully up to temp and you're cooking french fries or mozzarella sticks, a timer will give you a more consistent product. But she insisted that frozen chicken tenders always cooked in exactly 4 minutes, instead of floating when they're cooked. Big ones, small ones, flat ones, thick ones, grease a little cold during a rush, 4 minutes. I refused to use the timer for chicken tenders, and I'd always get an earful for it. Finally one day she ordered chicken tenders for herself, so of course I hand-selected the biggest fattest ones I could find, set the timer, and pulled them at precisely 4 minutes. When she came back to complain, I refused to recook them for her, and insisted they were done because the timer said so  . I'm not sure how I didn't get fired for that one, but she finally eased up on the timer thing. Her next pet issue was food going out on cold plates. Her solution? Make sure they're always stacked right up to the heat lamps, so they're as hot as possible. Cooking for years gives you asbestos fingers, but some of these plates were still too hot for any of us to grab barehanded. Eventually a 2 year old kid got burnt on a piping hot plate that she sent out. Her response to the kid's parents was "well you don't want his food to get cold, do you? ".Back to hot fryer oil chat for a minute, we actually had an old jerry can we'd put our old oil in. Once it cooled down, we'd dump it into the drums out back. It worked out nicely, it had a lid, was easy to carry and hard to spill. But sometimes we'd change the oil in 2 fryers at once, or the can would already be full, so we'd have to use a stock pot. There was an alarm on the back door, so managers had to come let us out (probably that whole "every employee is a thief" thing). So one night a cook brought a pot of hot oil back by the back door, and then left to get the manager. In the meantime, somebody was deboxing the freezer and threw a bunch of broken down boxes in the back, obscuring everybody's view of the pot of oil. Then a dishwasher decided to plow through all the boxes to get to the back door, and somehow managed to get both feet into the pot of oil. That earned him a couple weeks off work to recover from his burns. Novum posted:The dinner rolls thing does sound hilarious Ha, we baked our dinner rolls in-house, and we'd sit in the back, eat the insides out of dinner rolls, and put them back on the tray. These rarely, if ever, got served, because servers noticed the weight difference when they picked them up. Then some jackass decided to re-stuff some dinner rolls with paper towels. A few of those went out to tables, and a few customers were very unhappy. Kitchen #2: Upscale casual place, small local chain of about a half dozen restaurants. A step or two above Applebees and similar restaurants, but not quite fine dining (although they tried to be at times). We served alcohol, so of course the cooks were always drunk (myself included) and the bartenders ate whatever they wanted for free. This place had one of the dirtiest and poorly maintained kitchens I've ever personally seen: Whoever laid the tile on the floors evidently never got the memo about sloping towards the floor drains, so every corner in the kitchen would accumulate a few inches of stagnant water by the end of the night. We cleaned the floors by "throwing buckets"; two cooks would take turns dumping 5 gallon buckets of water underneath all the equipment, washing everything down to the far end of the line. A third cook would sweep up all the poo poo they washed out from under everything. Then we'd pour down a no-rinse floor cleaner and leave. One time I threw a bucket underneath the salad station, and chunks of the wall washed out, along with hundreds of tiny worms. We put a few of them in a ramekin of insecticide, and they just happily swam around without a care in the world. To their credit, they did shut down an hour early a few weeks later so a crew could come in, eradicate the invincible worms, and tear down and rebuild that wall. Maintenance was non-existent, and everything was falling apart. We had a reach-in cooler on the line with a half dozen drawers where we kept most of the meats and a few other things. The drawers loved to fall off the tracks. One time I had an entire drawer full of steak fall directly on top of my toe. Luckily I somehow couldn't find my kitchen shoes that day, so I was wearing steel toes. But the drawers were the least of our worries. We also had the "R2 Unit" (pump on wheels for cleaning out the fryers). Only ours had a few deficiencies. First, the power switch was broken, so you had to plug it and unplug it to use it. And the placement of the plugs in relation to the fryers meant you could juuuust hold on to the nozzle with one hand while you stretched has hard as you could to plug it in with the other. I never dropped it, but I came close a few times. Second, the power cord was missing half of its insulation, so sometimes you'd get bit when you plugged it in. Third, the hose connected to the unit with a hydraulic-type coupling with 2 arms that locked it in place. Sometimes. It had a pin to hold the arms in place, but that went missing, so they would slowly open from vibration. One day the hose popped off, and I learned that unlike a hydraulic fitting, those fittings would continue to flow when disconnected. Luckily for me, I was on grill that night. Unluckily for the fryer cook, he was standing directly in the line of fire when it let go. He thought quickly enough to run to the back and immediately rip off his pants, and he somehow managed to escape without any significant burns. But not one of us had the balls to stand downstream of that thing to try to unplug the loving thing, so we just let it spray against the wall until it ran out of oil. I also once got into a heated argument with one of the owners of the chain when he insisted a turkey burger could be cooked medium rare. After a minute chef called me into the back and said "listen, you know you're right, I know you're right, just drop it. Cook it well-done, tell him it's med-rare, and he'll forget all about it." Kitchen #3: Hole in the wall country dive bar in the middle of nowhere, staffed and frequented by a bunch of extremely rowdy drunks. I got nothin'. The worst thing I can say here is when they made a batch of soup (homemade, in-house), it wasn't always cooled to 40 degrees as quickly as it should have. Things weren't spotless there, and the kitchen crew wasn't an ultra-professional well-oiled machine, but I honestly never once saw anything that would give me second thoughts about eating there .
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Nov 13, 2015 21:01
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More stories about stupid customers in kitchen #1 please! I love those stupid things people do.
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Nov 13, 2015 22:03
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Outrail posted:More stories about stupid customers in kitchen #1 please! I love those stupid things people do. I think I've mostly repressed all my memories of that place, but there are two that come to mind: My sister also worked at that restaurant. We were both in high school and didn't have our own cars yet, so sometimes one of our parents would have to drive us home. They had a white Cutlass Ciera. There was a creepy older couple (probably in their late 50s) who used to come in all the time, and they'd both sit on the same side of their booth, feeling each other up under the table and just generally being inappropriate. It just so happens that they also drove a white Cutlass Ciera. One night my sister waited on them, and then they left. She got done a few minutes later, and walked out to the parking lot. She saw a white Cutlass Ciera with one person in the driver's seat, and figured our dad was there to pick her up. When she opened the passenger door, she learned that there were actually two people in the car, but only one of their heads was visible  . From that day on, she was very careful about what car she got into.There was another regular who will get a fake name, since I actually liked the crazy bastard. We had a regular, Lando, who was originally from Georgia. I don't know his actual diagnosis, but if I had to guess, it was schizophrenia or something similar. He lived maybe 2 miles away with some kind of host family who took care of him, and he'd walk to the restaurant almost every day and sit at the counter drinking raspberry iced tea. He always had a notebook with him, which he filled with the stereotypical incomprehensible calculations and other poo poo, John Nash style. Waitresses didn't like him one bit - I don't know if it was because he generally came off as "creepy", or if he actually did/said truly creepy or abusive things to them. But a few of us cooks actually took the time to talk to him, and he was a really nice guy. Crazier'n a shithouse rat, but really nice. He was ridiculously intelligent too, although his lucid thoughts were randomly scattered amongst his insane ramblings so it's not like he was gonna successfully hold down a job at NASA or anything. At the time, Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles were at the peak of their popularity, and one day I was talking to him about them, and he somehow got it into his head that they were actually a manual on how to become an immortal bloodsucker. After this, he did definitely say something creepy to one of the waitresses - one I happened to like (but got shot down by  ). He was sitting in her section, and I guess she was taking too long to refill his iced tea, so he told her he was the Lord of the Undead and he was going to drink her blood if he didn't hurry up and bring her some tea. I did get to walk her to her car that night, which is about as far as I ever got with her, and a couple of us had a talk with him and smoothed things over with management so he wouldn't get kicked out. I don't smoke weed, and therefore don't play disc golf, but a few other cooks used to smoke up and take him disc golfing. Every once in a while I'd see him walking around and I'd pick him up and give him a ride home (or wherever he was going). It used to scare the gently caress out of my other passengers . As far as I knew, a few bored restaurant cooks were the closest thing this guy had to actual friends. I probably haven't seen that guy in over 10 years...I wonder what ever happened to him.
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Nov 15, 2015 19:27
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JoshGuitar posted:it wasn't always cooled to 40 degrees as quickly as it should have hosed up if true.
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Nov 16, 2015 19:16
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I spent about 10 years in hospo as I dicked around trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. The second kitchen I ever worked in was memorable in a few ways. It was run by a rather alcoholic French chef who switched from cognac to scotch a long time before I got there. In a standard day he'd get through roughly a litre of scotch and would normally keep cooking. This didn't always work out though and while I never saw it he kicked all of the customers out more than once. In a normal service Rene would spend his time swearing at customers who he didn't think where dressed properly swearing at the apprentice or myself in a mix of English and French or threatening his wife who ran the front of house almost exclusively in French unless he wanted to swear in which case he'd use English. Once he was done with service he'd retire to the restaurant waiting room to smoke 4 or 5 cones and all that ever did would make him less angry. Other highlights of Rene's kitchen was having to smoke over the kitchen sink cause he wasn't paying me money to have breaks. Kicking his dog's out of the kitchen cause they'd just wander in and frypan flinging. It was important to watch for when he'd start plating up because the dish section faced the other way from the service bench. When he started getting plates out of the warmer you'd have to ready and waiting to grab the frypans as they where slung across the bench towards you. Failure to do this would result in getting the back of your legs covered in whatever sauce or hot oil was in the pan at the time. He'd only ever sharpen his knives when his wife was in the kitchen so that he could threaten to stab her if she pissed him off. Another story that comes from the cannon but not witnessed by myself was that he hit his wife with hot frypans on the regular and she'd decide she'd had enough and would stab him. He's sold the restaurant these days cause I guess a litre of scotch a day for 20 years does poo poo to you. Last time I saw him he looked like he was 80 even though I know he'd only be in his 50's at the most. I have other stories from other kitchens but I'll post them a different time.
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Jan 5, 2016 11:04
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Just read the entire thread, front to back. Love it. Anyway, I used to work at a little dive bar near Lake Ontario. It was literally in the city's marina so we'd get a lot of drunk sailors and bikers hanging around. They were all actually pretty cool people (except for one guy who walked into our break room and took a piss on the floor). Surprisingly, everything was up to code, no exceptions, even when the manager wasn't around. Fryers were cleaned every day till they were spotless. The worst things I ever saw were this group of food preppers who used to hang out in the walk-in freezer and smoke bowl after bowl until they were completely blazed. Surprisingly, they were all real good at their jobs, proper sanitation and everything. No one ever touched a piece of food without clean gloves, and we had a pretty nifty dishwasher that took about one minute to clean so the second we finished using a utensil it was back on the rack within five minutes, totally spotless. We also had a giant bin of bacon bits. This thing must have had about two gallons of bacon bits in it, so of course we dug our hands into it every now and then and just chewed on pre-cooked bacon bits all day. One questionable thing we had to do was wash certain cutting boards down with bleach. I have no idea if that was sanitary, but we had to wipe them down with bleach, let them sit for about 15 minutes, then wash it all off. I was only food prep, not a cook, so I never had to use them myself, but it always seemed really weird that we'd use bleach on something that people basically eat off of.
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Jan 29, 2016 23:58
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UWBW posted:One questionable thing we had to do was wash certain cutting boards down with bleach. I have no idea if that was sanitary, but we had to wipe them down with bleach, let them sit for about 15 minutes, then wash it all off. I was only food prep, not a cook, so I never had to use them myself, but it always seemed really weird that we'd use bleach on something that people basically eat off of. Every single thing in every restaurant in existence has been cleaned with bleach at least once.
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Jan 30, 2016 00:03
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I work in food occasionally prep and we also spray down cutting boards with bleach. But we also soak everything (knifes and spoons included) in a weak bleach solution after cleaning so I assume it evaporates pretty quick. It's just chlorine like at the pool I think so eh.
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Jan 30, 2016 00:08
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Every single thing in every restaurant in existence has been cleaned with bleach at least once. Huh. Didn't know that was standard practice. Oh, and I just remembered: The original owner of the dive bar I worked at was a sixty-something with a mean face and an angry attitude. She was a Class-A Bitch, but I was lucky as hell. I knew her burnout son from grade school and I'd basically known her all my life, so she gave me less poo poo than she gave others. Sometimes. Unless it was definitely my fault. Since it was a bar, she used to go to the back room from time to time and down a couple of shots, for no other reason than it was 7 PM on a Tuesday night. We all loved her, because she ran a tight ship and despite her screaming all the time she actually cared about her employees, in some instances finding temporary housing for some of the less fortunate kids who came from broken homes. She used to chain smoke in the break room, but no one gave a poo poo because it was just basically an empty garage. One day she just didn't come in. Two days later we found out she had a brain tumor and had dropped dead while out shopping. Really took the fun out of working there.
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Jan 30, 2016 00:13
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