What it’s Like to Work in a Professional Kitchen

Starting Out: Black Hat         

When you start out at any job, you have the easiest jobs. From dishing out food to people who tell you exactly what they want, to putting dishes from a conveyor belt onto the dish machine, you are entrusted with simple, but necessary jobs for the operation to run. You learn the truths about any food related business like the murphy’s law of food service: you are either drowning in a rush or dead beyond belief there is no in between. If “Only a Sith deal in absolutes” as Obi Wan Kenobi ironically says, then the food service industry is part of the dark side.

            The other Murphy’s Law in foodservice is that if you were dead all night, 5 minutes before close 30 people will show up. This will push your clean up schedule far back, because everything you had just refilled is now empty and all that prepping you did to hopefully get out 40 minutes after close instead of the typical hour has gone to waste. Now you will be there an hour and a half after close. This is something people who don’t work in food can’t seem to understand. If a restaurant closes at 7, then about half of the staff will be gone by 8 and the other half there until 9. The closer you get to being done for the night the fewer people you actually need to close. For example: it doesn’t matter how many people offer to stay, only one person can vacuum at a time. Even if you got more vacuums, it would be silly to have 20 people vacuuming 2 sq ft each.

Moving Up: Culinary Apprentice

Culinary Apprentices (or CAs) are less bored than the black hats. You don’t stand around, while waiting for more dishes to come down the conveyor belt or for more customers to walk in to give them food. You’re in the back prepping everything. Because of the inevitability of rushes, it’s impossible to make everything fresh. Even the salad station, which has the least prepped food, still has to be prepped. Veggies are cut and sometimes grilled, chicken is cooked ahead of time, and so on and so forth. So no you can’t have the slice of pizza off the one I just cooked and am trying to put in the warmer.

The system that foodservice swears by is first in first out. You get introduced to this as a black hat, but you were trying to remember where everything goes so you probably forgot that’s ok. Here’s a refresher. Everything needs to be prepped. Food goes bad after a certain period of time creating waste. In foodservice both of those facts are unavoidable, but they can be limited.  First in first out says the oldest thing gets used first this way it doesn’t have a chance to go bad. This limits food waste, but it also makes sure everyone gets the freshest thing all the time. If I allowed that person to steal a slice from the pizza I just made instead of the one on the line, which has been there for 10 minutes, but is still fresh and warm, because it’s been sitting on the hot plate. Other people would want to do that. Then when that supposed to be back up ran out, while I rushed to make another pizza, a bunch of people would now have to eat the pizza that was sitting on the line for now over half an hour. You might think you could always be one of the people who grabs from the back up, but eventually you would be one of those people eating the old pizza.

In conclusion, you get annoyed not only with the customers who come in late, but with people who try to circumvent the system that is in place for their benefit. The customers who order the most complicated thing at grill, when there’s a line 20 people long and then hover over you while you’re making it also annoy you. You just get annoyed easier, because now you know how the kitchen works and people who don’t know how the kitchen works and complain about it, when they’ve never worked in one, are unbelievably annoying. You also will be amazed at the people who decide to complain. Like when you momentarily forget that they said ‘for here’ and not ‘to go’they act like they are going to die. The jerks will be jerks. You will try very hard not to glare at them as you pass them going to class. But some customers, when you actually mess up their order really badly, are unbelievably kind and patient. You will love those customers and almost accidentally say hi to them and thank them, as you go to class.

You’ll also clean kettles, grills, and pans. Learn new terms like julienne, bain marie, and hotel pan etc. and make fancy recipes with black beans half pureed half not, quinoa, sriracha, rice flour, etc. etc.

Moving up Again: Leader of CAs

            What else can you learn? Plenty. What is the kitchen culture? What inter-kitchen rivalries does your kitchen have? Snobbish culinary schools are a thing, as well as non-snobbish cooks that went to snobbish culinary schools not being snobbish. Learn that chill cooks can get ticked off, but if they are it’s either the person really deserved it or it’s chefs butting heads. Chefs always butt heads. Each chef– each manager– know what, all people no matter how nice they seem at first will eventually drive you crazy when you work in a kitchen. And it’s not like they all drive you the same way. You will be amazed at the constant creativity of human nature to come up with new ways to annoy you. Conversely, each chef, coworker or know what each person can have their moments when just when you thought they could get no worse, they make your life 10 times easier. Your head emerges from the clouds of oven heat and burnt food smoke and you remember that no one will die because everything didn’t go 100% perfect.

You go from being the one who people had to be patient with, to being someone that people still have to be patient with BUT now also can extend that patience to others. Likewise, you will be amazed at the constant creativity of human nature to replenish each others’ mental reserves during daunting dinner rushes at the grill with unending cheesesteaks. That when you thought you were the most tired, there’s someone running on 3 hours of sleep, and another who hair running away, face glistening in the heat and grill grease starts mopping, the most strenuous closing task, whether that’s because it’s actually heavy at the end of a 5 hour shift in 80 degree heat or that it’s the last task before you can go home and maybe take a shower to get rid of the smell of old oily French fries before collapsing into bed, without being asked.

My Last Semester

This is my last semester working at my home dining commons. I will still be working at the dining commons over the summer, but as my home dining commons is closed over the summer, it will be a different one. I will not by any means miss working there, but if I ever do it won’t be the food, though employee meals definitely made my college life easier and the desserts were amazing, or the money, or the accomplishment of finishing a difficult recipe. It will be the people. I’ve never missed a job, but I always miss the people, even…especially the ones that drove me crazy, but as I mentioned everyone does that.

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Image credit: the whisks in the main image came from “Whisk” by gazzaPax