Callan Randall

Responsibilities

I was a line chef that mostly worked the salad area but this meant I called out tickets and had to keep track of how much stuff we had to make and at what times tickets were coming out. I was also responsible for early morning prep, which meant cutting a lot of fruits and veggies that we would either need for service or to finalize a component for a different dish. My tasks and responsibilities changed on a daily basis, but overall it was expected of me to know how to cook, how to cut, and how to clean.

Accomplishments

This will likely be a long paragraph detailing what occurred. Most of my shifts tended to start around 8:30 and go to 2:30. I was expecting to work with one other person that day so I arrived a bit early and waited for them. By 8:45 something was off since my manager had scolded me before about being 5 minutes late and it was unlikely for her to not contact me about changing the clock in times. So I contact my first manager, Rebecca, to see what was going on about second in command, Rae. While correspondence was going on I managed to get into the restaurant and began prepping what I knew how to do, still expecting someone to show up later for service. By 9:30 I came to understand what was going on. Rebecca was officially going into labor, so her showing up would not happen, Rae was sick with a migraine that forced her asleep and unmoving while awake, not a condition you can possibly pull through in a kitchen role, and the last general cook we had, Kenzie, was still in quarantine with a positive case of covid so she could not come in for health reasons. So me, a 3 week trained cook, was the only one available to take care of things. Having one person in to take of service is maybe possible for a sunday shift or a tuesday shift, but for a saturday shift you need at least two people to take care of things, and while I was mentally preparing myself to possibly undertake that task, my manager came up with a better idea to keep us open for the day. I was to make 24+ to go containers of salads and 24+ to go containers of sandwiches. No hot items to be sold, just premade meals that we would sell for $10 dollars, and that would be that. So with this information understood by 10am, I got to work and made all of the salads (pork and fruit salad) and a lot of cubanos with some pb and js thrown in to save on all the cuban materials I was using and to give some variety. All the salads were done by the time we opened, and I finished the desired sandwich amounts by 11:20 (cubans take a bit of time to prep with mustard spreading and a couple other of steps). We lost a quarter of people who came into the restaurant, simply because they didn’t want to pay $10 for boxed lunch and would have prepared sit down (understandable) however we were fully staffed for front of house and we were serving deserts and drinks at the bar, so this was a selling point that allowed some customers to stay. I made a few more sandwiches throughout service, though mostly ended up finishing some light prep with grapes and what not, then cleaned up early since I didn’t have much else to do. A funny thing I can remember from service is that a customer requested a gluten free sandwich (which wasn’t pre made) so I went about finding some bread in the back which took a minute, but after thawing it in the microwave (we freeze bread for freshness) I began to make the sandwich. It was ready about 8 minutes after the customer had ordered however by the time it was ready to serve I’d been informed they had left. A shame, so I served the sandwich to front of house as lunch. In the end we made $600 in sales, when on a normal saturday sales would be something like $1000-$1300, not the worst service and not the worst sales for our predicament. It helped that we had made a sign in the front of house, detailing the reason for limited service was because the head chef was in labor, so many customers were understanding. All in all a good service for the predicament at hand.

Learning experience

A little bit of bleach is all you need to clean everything wear supportive shoes or your back will hate you cut veggie with the tip down don't get scammed with bad knives, hilt and blade should be balanced when sitting on finger don't be late ask questions on how to cook in the kitchen don't spill the grease trap, it's a mess to clean up clean up glass if you break it using an immersion blender is the best way to make dressings, just add the oil slowly communication is key in the kitchen a cook's schedule in one of the weirdest of any industry, be prepared for this have a good memory, you will need it or service will collapse drink water, it's hot

What advice would you give?

This is one of the few jobs in the world where you can just walk up to front of house, ask for a job anywhere in the kitchen or front, and likely get in if you at least have some cooking knowledge. Anyone can be a cook, and it's not something you have to go to school for, but if you are looking to be a chef, work in a restaurant to be absolutely sure since the scheduling is horrendous. That said even if you won't work in a restaurant in the long term, still get a job here since you will learn all your culinary skills through trial by fire, as well as fantastic time management and memory skills. These skills will be imperative in any food based industry you decide to go into, so learn from the best and find a chef.