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Christ, I don't even know what story to tell. Way too many years working in kitchens. How about: I was full-on alcoholic, and this was fairly heavily encouraged in the the place I worked at; we were told that you could be as hosed up as you liked, as long as your food was still good. The second you dropped the ball, you were in trouble. We could all handle that, so obviously things got gradually worse and worse as I spiralled into full-on pirate behaviour. We had a assistant manager who'd come into the kitchen, no matter how busy we were, and just demand his staff meal. No please, no thank you, just "cook my dinner now". So I decided gently caress that, if you can't be polite, you'll be eating dirty food. From that point on, every time he didn't ask nicely (so every time), we'd tamper with his food. Including but not limited to: Adding 'bodily fluids', kicking his dinner along the floor, placing parts of his dinner 'inside' our underwear for a while, etc. Bearing in mind how massively drunk we always were, and how much of a FoH/BoH rift existed in this place due to our misbehaviour, there was a hateful amount of invention that went on. The guy literally didn't have a meal that wasn't technically illegal for about a year. The real kicker came when he waltzed into the kitchen one day, totally unaware of what had been going on, and said "guys, my mum's on table X, can you make sure her food's special?", he couldn't understand why we were almost collapsing laughing (we didn't do anything to his mum's dinner, she wasn't a dick). After I stopped working there I had a good hard look at things and realised that I'd been a massive cock almost all of the time I'd worked there. And I don't cook for a living any more (through choice, haha).
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Jul 7, 2015 21:11
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 11:55 |
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pentyne posted:It really depends on the place. High volume super busy places like those near college campus and major commercial centers probably won't bother with any of that stuff, because their biggest concern is getting people in and out as fast as possible. It's also probably down to the workforce. A bunch of teenagers working for minimum wage and treated like poo poo just don't give a gently caress, and who can blame them. Totally this. I've worked in places where if you tampered with the food, you'd be fired on the spot, no questions asked, but then on the other hand, I've worked in places where monitoring of staff isn't so high, and inch by inch standards slip until you don't know how you've got here, but you're wiping your penis on a steak. The issue is low pay, high hours. People get stressed and stupid, and it doesn't take much for a really bad culture to take over a kitchen. Add to that, someone treating you like you're less than them, and people will get creative. I've met very few chefs that I'd call 'well-adjusted', the industry tends to attract oddballs, which, again, doesn't bode well. It really does pay to be super polite, because you never know what the situation is in the place you're eating. It shouldn't happen, but it does. For the record, I can't remember ever having hosed with a customer's dinner in such horrible ways; I only ever hosed with staff members who were hassling me. I never gave a gently caress what the customer wanted, even if it was needlessly fussy, they're paying their money, they can have what they like. I have seen other chefs get frustrated when customers (often repeat customers, weirdly) are consistently dicks (rude, abusive, 'allergic' to things that are impossible), and so will get messed with. Why would you be rude to people all the time and then come back over and over? Must like the taste of Winner's Sauce I suppose...
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Jul 8, 2015 09:17
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You get bacterial cross-contamination. High protein foods like meat are great for bacteria to multiply (although the low water activity of deli meats does slow this somewhat, if they're still kinda moist, like precooked chicken, there's a fairly big risk).
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Jul 9, 2015 21:08
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I've hosed with servers loads, if I'm asking for a cold drink when it's really hot in the kitchen, and I know you're not busy due to a lack of tickets, I need that drink, otherwise your dinner will be very late. I had one guy who kept telling me he couldn't possibly get me a soda water with ice because he had too much to do. Fair enough. When it came time for his break, he came in and asked for his staff meal. "No problem! When I'm less busy, I'll get it right on!" He came in half an hour later, "Can I have my food now?", "No problem! When I'm less busy", etc, etc, until his shift finished and he had to go home. gently caress you, I need liquid, it's hot in here.
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Jul 10, 2015 00:23
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Oh man, I forgot an awesome one. I'm at Uni, finishing off my degree, and I get a job at a (new) 'deli' in town, run by a couple of people. They just want someone to work the coffee machine, and be a waiter. I'm doing a degree in Environmental and Public Health, but need the money, and I was a chef for so long, I figure I can upsell the deli produce, as well as the cooked stuff. This was a mistake. My second shift, I came in, and noticed none of the meat in the deli fridge had dates on. This is legally okay, as long as they are recorded somewhere. They aren't. I take some loving stinking meat out of this fridge (home-cooked ham and beef), and put it in the kitchen to be thrown away. The owner cuts the slightly slimy, stinking bits off, and puts it back in the deli fridge. I pretend not to notice as I really need some money, and pray that this is a one-off. Hahahaha. They went away for the weekend, leaving me in charge of the place (and thus liable, legally), and in charge of the 17 year old 'chef'. At this point, alarm bells are going off. We have a normal service, and close up. I notice that all of the meat pasties that have been (A) cooked in the oven then (B) placed in a hot hold all day, then (C) put into the kitchen at end of service have been left on the side, instead of being thrown away. I think "Well, he's young", and the next morning when I open up, I throw them all away. Just a mistake, right? The boss then rings me up. The 'chef' has phoned him; I have thrown away his food. I am then told on the phone that the standard procedure is to cool the hot food down overnight, uncovered, in the kitchen, at room temperature, before placing it back into the hot hold for sale the next day. If you know how bacteria multiply, this is Very Bad poo poo. I decide then and there that this is my last shift. Someone is going to die at some point from this food. Shortly after this, someone comes in, orders some toast, tea, and jam. The 'chef' nervously calls me into the kitchen, and says "de la peche, what should I do with this jam?" The jam, a huge catering tub, has half the surface covered in mould. Only half, see, because they'd scraped the mould off one side and had carried on using it. For gently caress's sake. I told him "do what you loving want, ring your boss", worked my shift out, then went home and phoned up the local Environmental Health Officer, and the next day I walked in, and told the owners I was done, didn't give a reason. A week later, I got a threatening text from the owners; "We're going to ruin you, you've hosed with the wrong people!". The EHO had been in, and given them poo poo about the general state of the place,, and they knew it must have been me. They ended up threatening me with legal action, which is quite funny. I was at university training to be an EHO, why the gently caress hire me when your place is a shithole?!
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Jul 10, 2015 00:50
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Tiberius Thyben posted:I thought you were a server? Hence the identity stealing...
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Jul 13, 2015 20:10
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I once had a dishpig named Horton. Horton had worked with me in a few places, by weird luck-of-the draw. I'd never recommend him anywhere, because whilst he was good at his job, and very thorough (he had crazy OCD which works out well when you're doing that job), he was also a bit mental. More than a bit, really. The way we all figured it was that he was probably 1% on some doctor's test away from being able to claim benefits for being subnormal, but he'd just scraped through, so he was hosed. Had to work, didn't really have the capacity to deal with work. Horton had teeth that were fairly green, gums that bled, and a voice a little bit like Goofy. For some reason, Horton also really liked tattoos, and had somehow found a tattooist with enough of a lack of morals to tattoo a borderline retard everywhere, and for very little money. So Horton, who was an absolute pussy, had almost his entire body covered in tattoos that looked like they'd been done in a russian prison. And we're talking spiderwebs, letters on his knuckles, 187 on his loving hand (we're english, it doesn't even make sense), tattoos on his neck, the works. The only place this guy was ever getting a job was back of house. First place I worked with him was a busy seaside pub kitchen, run by a lesbian couple. poo poo food, but lots of it, all season long. Horton got a disciplinary for asking a seventeen year old waitress "how do you shave your pussy hair", during service. I suspect he genuinely didn't realise that might be a mistake. He later got fired for calling the boss "a loving dyke" to her face because she cut his hours a little. Didn't see him for a year after this, during which time, presumably, he stewed on his own in his tiny flat, which, I later found out, stank of bleach (everything must be hyper clean), and had no bed but three full size fridge-freezers, with no food in. He then got a job in the next place I went to, again, a busy seasonal place. He'd gotten a bit crazier, and used to pull the weirdest poo poo. He'd try to slink into the kitchen an hour before his shift was rota'd on, to bump his hours up. We didn't have a clocking in system, so obviously he just didn't get paid for this, which took him a few months to notice. He confessed to us at this point that he was eating chocolate bars and energy drinks for breakfast, because he liked sweet things. I asked him to clean the ceiling on my break one day, and came back to him mopping the ceiling. After about a year, we got short-staffed, so, because he'd been there for a while, and kinda knew how we worked, we tried to help him out by giving him the pizza station on the odd shift. This was a loving disaster of epic proportions. We had to call the pepperoni "round meat", the ham "square meat", and the Bolognese "wet meat" in order for him to understand what went where. We used to roll the dough out to order, had a nice pizza oven, things would cook quickly. Horton liked to make the pizzas, and put them direct onto the stone, instead of in the metal pan, so that the bottom would cook, the top would look done, but the middle would be absolutely raw. A couple of these managed to get out of the kitchen before we noticed what he was doing, then he was bumped back down to dishpig again, which he took massive offence at. We were out in the pub one night after service, and he confessed to us that had a list of people he was upset at, for various made up reasons ("he keeps staring at me when I walk round town", "he never says hello any more", etc), and he was going to kill them with a hammer. He hasn't, as of yet. At one point, he shoved a waitress up against the wall for some perceived slight (this was quite sternly dealt with), and stopped talking to the head waitress entirely, telling her loudly, in front of a whole restaurant full of people "you're not my loving friend". He eventually got let go from the restaurant because he decided to not turn up for a shift during the summer, but he'd come round every now and then begging for his job back. Basically, by this point, he'd done pretty much the same thing in every place in a small town, and this, coupled with his odd tattoos and mental issues, had meant that he'd never get a job. I still kept in touch with him for a bit, he got really mad at his neighbour once, because he tried to smash a seagull to death outside of his house with a broom (!). He was livid that the neighbour dare intervene. I tried explaining to him that that poo poo's not normal, but he couldn't get his head round it. Last I knew, he had a job on a building site, where a friend of mine told me Horton would get a broom first thing in the morning, then go find an empty building and literally hide in there all day, staring at nothing, for eight hours a day, rather than work. I don't really see him much any more. I should add that through loads of this period of time, I tried to help him, but he just wasn't capable of taking any advice to make his life better, and after a period of years I just got bored of giving advice that wasn't taken, so I stopped. He's just way too much of a liability. Kitchens! Good for crazy people!
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Jul 16, 2015 22:20
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Radio Help posted:They're doing it because they really, really want to make you dinner for a living. they like what they do, they are good at it, and all they really get in return is alcoholism and a ten year handicap on whatever they end up doing in their 30s when they finally realize that their youthful idealism got them absolutely nowhere. Absolutely spot on. I got fairly lucky in that my partner convinced me to go back to school, so I got a degree in Environmental and Public Health, which was accredited by the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health. This, coupled with my ten year's industry experience (and a teaching qualification I got), has allowed me to go and train people in food safety (amongst other things), for money that is on a par with people that have built and stayed with a career. I loved cooking for a living, it was awesome, but when you take a long hard look and realise that you're earning little more than you were five years ago, and you're still doing 60 hour weeks (or 20 hours if it's quiet and you can't afford rent that week), that's gotta be time to call it a day. I was terrified when I quit cooking, because I had no other useful qualifications, no other useful experience. All I knew how to do was kitchen related. The idea of this 'ten year handicap' is so true. Realising that you've spent all your time and energy in a field that still treats staff like it's the 1980's is not a good place to be.
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Aug 22, 2015 16:29
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It might be different for you, but so far I've seen one chef who now owns a restaurant, and has a share in a few more, and is quite wealthy. He doesn't do any actual kitchen work any more, except for emergency cover type stuff. On the other hand, I know loads of chefs who are very skilled (more so than the first example), and who still have to work incredibly hard to earn anything like someone in a position of similar responsibility in another industry, with no end in sight until they're too broken to do it any more. I even had an ex-head chef of mine phoning me up asking "How can I do what you do because this is killing me", the guy's late forties and he doesn't have the capacity to keep working 9am till 10pm most days. I realised (in time) that progression in catering, for the majority, actually means way more hours, way more responsibility (you will be the guy covering when no-one else can), and a very small pay increase. Unless you are A) astoundingly lucky or B) astoundingly talented it's probably not worth the investment in your time. Another example: Man I know used to work for Marco Pierre White in London. The guy is a brilliant chef. Due to circumstance, he now works in a busy small town kitchen, and he maybe makes £25,000 a year. He's mid-thirties, and he's been doing it since he was 14. He works split shifts, and, physically, looks like he could die at any given moment. I know your career isn't all about money, but there should be a fairer level of perks/pay/time off or whatever, and this rarely exists. I always recommend every young chef I teach to get the gently caress out and re-train in a building trade or something, you can be 25 and earn £30,000 a year easily, and still get to go home at 5pm and not work weekends.
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Aug 22, 2015 16:57
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Make sure you use a really high-pressure tap as well to evenly disperse your campylobacter throughout your whole kitchen...
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Aug 31, 2015 14:04
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Don't wash chicken, ever. All you're doing is spraying surface bacteria loving everywhere. In the UK, it's even part of the training courses I teach about Food Hygiene. A ridiculously high number of chickens from the supermarket over here have Campylobacter (78% of those tested from Asda, owned by Wal-Mart). Just cook the bacteria to death. Here's another horrible story: I was working in a seaside town, at a busy pub, right on the edge of the harbour. The harbour liked to flood when the tide got too high, and there was a bit of wind. The pub where I worked was lower than the sloping road from the harbour wall. Can you see where I am going with this? The place starts to flood. Okay, all the customers gently caress off, and we power everything down. Nothing that we can do but to wait it out. It's never flooded more than a few inches, so damage will be minimal. Halfway through the day, water starts coming up through the very middle of the pub floor, it transpires that there is a flood drain there, which, due to every single place on the harbour flooding, is now kicking water back up into the pub. It also seems to have a hook-up to the sewerage somewhere, because all the water that is now rapidly coming out is brown, and stinking. The place floods to above ankle level with shitwater, including the kitchen, which is on the same level as the public area. So the next few hours are spent trying to bucket poo poo water out of the back kitchen door, and then after that, sanitising the gently caress out of the kitchen. So far, so normal. I mean, what else can you do (apart from get some proper cleaners in). The entire staff are all there, mopping and bucketing and stinking. It's about 3pm now, say. The boss comes up to me, in my poo poo-soaked clothes, and says "go upstairs to the public toilet, and have a quick wash, I have some socks you can put on, we're open for service tonight" - I point blank told them to gently caress off, under no circumstance was I touching an item of food until I'd gone home, had a shower for a Very Long Time and set fire to my chef whites. And that confused me. I mean, due to the ripe stench of poo poo and cleaning products, it was fairly unlikely we'd be very busy for service, so why risk poisoning a whole load of holidaymakers for a poor day, takings-wise?
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Sep 1, 2015 12:36
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Fo3 posted:Not only that, but people are going to chop chicken on a cutting board and rinse that board anyway, and handle chicken and rinse their hands, and knives too. But you're adding an extra step for cross-contamination to happen, for no benefit at all. You've got to chop chicken on the board, you've got to handle it, etc. But you don't have to wash it (I honestly can't believe people really wash chicken, I always thought that was a joke). I do this thing when training people, where I spray their hands with a UV spray, get them to go and wash their hands, then hold a light over them, to highlight where most people are missing, it's always the same places. But then I go into the hand-wash area, and show them where the stuff has sprayed off their hands thanks to the water, and gone onto all the surrounding surfaces. It's usually a fair bit further from the sink. And that's not high-pressure either. It doesn't matter what people do at home, you're not cooking for hundreds of people every hour that all might be one case of food poisoning from dying.
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Sep 2, 2015 16:51
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Just wanted to get this down for posterity; the kitchen porter, Horton, that I used to work with, has now found himself so short of friends he now hangs out with heroin addicts, and has "fallen in love" with one of them. He, in his garbled pattern of english, sent me this text: "If a girl jacks up in her groin where's that to?". I replied "This means all of her veins are hosed because she's a smackhead, and the only ones left are downstairs". After some back and forth over a few weeks, where, after advice, bullying, and shaming, he decided that he'd much rather keep doing heroin than actually sort his loving life out, so ends the ballad of Horton, as far as I'm concerned. Amazing Kitchen Porter. Not a great thinker. Hopefully there will be a full pot station in the sky for him to get into, when he finally gets there. Godspeed you ceiling-mopping fuckwit.
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Oct 10, 2015 00:20
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 11:55 |
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ServoMST3K posted:I had (and still do to a degree) serious mental health and self esteem issues after a suicide attempt a few years ago. I went back to working in a food department at a popular retail location I had left about a year prior, and things got bad when I started drinking in my car before every shift, and during my breaks etc. I would routinely drink so much that I had to piss constantly and I ended up just pissing my pants multiple times during my shift. A few times I did it withing arm's reach of my coworkers, and I'm not sure if they just were oblivious or pretended to not notice it. Sometimes I would discreetly urinate in the hand washing sink that was positioned at just the right angle that if I stood right up against it nobody could see what I was up to. It helped that I wore a long apron so often I'd just piss, wash my hands then with my gross pants still unbuckled/down I would cover myself with the apron and wait on customers like everything was just goddamn fine. Sometimes I would get creative and aim for the various drains on the floor or under the soft drink dispenser hook ups. Horton?!
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Feb 3, 2016 00:18
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