You do what has to be done
Today was a hell of a day.Last night there were a couple of huge banquets. The kitchen and the prep kitchen were left as utter messes because some of the banquet staff didn't finish cleaning them. To top it off, the dishwashing machine was broken. So, when I came downstairs after getting my prep list done, first order of business was instead helping the dishwasher get the dishes done.
I had to do them in the two sink in the prep kitchen. I did a good number of dishes by hand, making the sink pretty dirty, but all in all, the dishwasher was having a much better day with my help. So I delivered the dishes for him upstairs as he finished off the last load, then I came back down to empty the sink.
Here's where things get worse.
In professional kitchens, the drains for the sink, for various health code reasons, empty into a drain in the floor. There is a trap in the floor designed to catch food particulates before they clog up the drain. Well guess what. There was so much food in the dishwater that the drain clogged, flooding the prep kitchen. Another mess to clean up.
And here I was, an hour and a half into my shift with a wet floor and no prep to show for it. Time to get a shop vac from maintenance and slop up all of the dishwater. After vac-ing and mopping, finally, I was going to be able to start my prep.
But no. Breakfast cook calls downstairs. He's getting slammed. I go up and help him out as much as I can, until he's back out of the weeds. That done, I go back down, slam out my prep as fast as possible, and start loading up my mise en place on the dumbwaiter. And looking around, I see that I only have two hamburgers. I'm working grill, there are no deliveries until tomorrow morning, and I need burgers (and so does the night cook). I go upstairs and talk it over with the other cook and the manager on duty. No purveyor can deliver the food on time, so someone has to run up to Pike Place Market to grab some ground beef.
That's me.
It's my little marathon to see how fast I can get up there and back in time for service. When I finally get up there, winded from running, I see that the usual meat purveyor is CLOSED. After all it is a Sunday (to which I think, hey, it's Wednesday for me). So I run all over the market trying to find another purveyor. I finally find one, get 10 lbs of ground beef, and then run back to the restaurant, handing the meat to the dishwasher to have him make hamburgesa for service.
I get upstairs, panting at my station, and slam down a Red Bull from the reach-in to jumpstart service.
It's funny because service is supposed to be your busiest time ... in the case of today, it was my chance to relax, work on some other projects in the meantime while waiting for other orders to come in, and to just joke around with the staff that was coming in and out.
Some people would just have looked at today, and given up (I don't wash dishes, just 86 the burgers, I'm not cleaning up after the banquet crew - they need to do their own work, etc). Oddly enough, I was having a very fun day ... laughing my ass off at having to do the dishes, timing myself in getting my ass up to the market and humping it back, and actually relaxing a bit when I would have four tickets in the window ... but it all goes to show that, in a job like this, you do what has to be done and do it with a smile, otherwise you're going to be lamenting the unfairness of it all and are going to be wondering why you hate your life so much.
There is no job below you in the kitchen. Even if that means doing the dishes at 8 in the morning when you're a line cook. The best you can do is look at the normal dishwasher, give a wry grin, say pinche mierda trabajo and share a laugh.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home