07.21.08

The Gathering Storm… to an Anniversary

Posted in The Story at 6:33 pm by Chef Matt

This story begins about three weeks ago in my walk-in. One of my pizza chefs asked me if he could have off on Sunday (yesterday). Since he was asking well in advance, and since he had recently been covering for a lot of other people, I told him that was fine. If need be, I would cover for him. (Thunder rumbling in the distance…)

This is gonna be bad…

A few weeks later, as I was reworking the schedule for some of my staff, Chef told me that he was going to be out the upcoming Friday and Saturday for family reasons. Of course he didn’t need my permission, but I knew I would have to work it into the schedule to make sure we covered for him. (First drops of rain beginning to fall…)

I walk in on Saturday morning, and see a note in the chef’s log book that my PM sauté chef would be out on Sunday for family reasons, and one of my sous chefs had agreed to cover for him. (Radio stations interrupting broadcasts with instructions…)

Saturday afternoon comes around, and as we are preparing for the dinner shift, I’m working on my paperwork and order forms in the office. One of the other sous chefs walks in and says “I sending D—- home.” D—- is our evening pantry chef who has been a constant problem child for us. Her work is generally good, but she is always giving us static and attitude in conjunction with her performance. She finally decided that today she would not make a dessert for a customer when we asked her to (seeing as how it’s her job) as she would rather set up her station. This is not an acceptable course of action for her, and while this would mean we would be down two people in the kitchen on a Saturday night, I was ready to handle it. I stopped my paperwork in the middle of my invoices, and worked the pizza station on a Saturday night as we moved the person usually in that position over to pantry. (Locals head for their tornado shelters….)

As a side note to this story: I had never worked pizza on a Saturday before where I was the one making the pizzas and putting them in the oven. I have worked as the guy cooking the pizzas in the over several times, and it is actually fun. But rolling crusts and topping every pie as the orders come flying in - that is a whole new level of tough, and the whole shift is just me barely keeping my head above water. By the time I got out of there, I had put in 14 hours on my feet with no real break. And I had to be back in the next morning at 8AM. (Old man walking by with two giraffes, two hippos, two lions…)

Hmmm… what’s missing from this kitchen?
Oh yeah! All my fricking cooks!

Sunday comes by and as I’m setting up, I take stock of my line for that evening. My pizza cook is out on vacation. My sauté chef is out for family reasons, and my pantry cook is suspended/quit. In a line that usually has 5 people on it for the busy Sunday night rush, I have exactly two people. And I had friends coming in from out of town, and was so tired I was basically dead on my feet.

Let the rain begin to fall!

So how does one get out of this situation? I put one sous chef on sauté, the other on pizza. So now we were down one person. And this is where the magic of the kitchen community shows up. One person leaves one day, the very next day, someone brings in their cousin/niece/friend to fill that position. Our new-commer was ready to work, and proved to be a fast learner as well. We cobbled together her paperwork and threw her on the line as fast as we could, and she did great. Personally, I hung around until about 8 (a mere 12 hour day) to make sure that everything was running smoothly for the dinner rush, and that we were past the first major push. We made it through, and I went home to await the arrival of my friends.

It was an all-encompassing kind of tired I felt as I walked in the door of my house. If I could just be spared a mere 10 minutes to get it back together, I figured I’d be fine. I opened my laptop to maybe see a funny video or something, and a notification popped up before I could do anything else: