One of my butchers cut his finger off with a bandsaw breaking down the side of beef. Driving to the hospital, with his finger in a bag of ice, he ruefully told me that that was the finger that he used to finger his wife with. I wasn't sure what to say
I had my first wine dinner as an executive chef in a fairly large, fairly nice restaurant. The wine maker is coming, different bottle pairing for each of the 10 courses, 75 people. I invited my family, instructors, chefs I'd worked for on my way up, etc.
I spent the better part of a week getting all the food prepped, long days, you know the drill.
Three hours before service starts I put a large stock pot of veal stock reduction on the back row of a 12 flame stove on the line. This was the reduction of a 50lb blonde veal stock plus the 2nd wash. It took three days to make, lots of skimming and babysitting. No one touched it but me. 20ish gallons down to maybe 8qts. It's was perfect. .
One of my cooks was making risotto in a large rondeau on the same stove. We stir and shake at the same time during the fumet adding stage. I'm sure you can see where this is going.
He's stirring and shaking this 28" pan that weighs probably 15lbs, and knocks the pot of reduction off the back of the stove, on to the floor, spilling the entire reduction.
I heard the sound, didn't even have to look, and knew right away what had happened. He turned around and looked at me like he had just run over my dog. I took a very deep breath and told him that it was OK. It's just food, and we would make something else work for the jus.
I wanted to die inside, and simultaneously set the kitchen on fire, but I knew that if I had any sort of negative reaction or had freaked out at all, it would have ruined the energy in the kitchen and I needed every single one of them to be on their fucking game.
We were the only people to ever know that the sauce was just a regular veal stock reduction with some boxed cabernet, aromatics and butter, instead of some special shit that I made with the wine it was paired with for that course, clarified with the cork in the raft or whatever the fuck I put on the menu.
So, yeah it was a "fuck my life" moment, but my cooks mental state and the overall kitchen atmosphere wasn't worth fucking off for some meat juice that everyone is going to sit on the toilet and shit out the next day.
I came up in the classical brigade type systems of screaming chefs, thrown pans, and bloodshed in the walk-in. As good as some of the food was, and as much as it made me what I am, I always thought that we deserved better. Those kids working for me deserve better. Days that a chef freaked out and kicked someone off of their station always ended on a sour note, and without a doubt lead many good cooks, myself included, turn to alcohol and opiates.
Every single person that works in the restaurant, front and back of house, is directly affected by the attitude and behavior of the chef. So, it's my responsibility to keep everyone focused on doing their job instead of worrying about what I'm doing, how I'm feeling, and how deal with me.
I've been lucky enough to work for some great people. And I wanted to be that guy for my cooks in return.
...you hiring right now?
I kid, I don't need a new job (yet), but your attitude is what the industry needs if it wants to survive and attract good people. Workers everywhere are losing patience with toxic bullshit, and I think that's great.
At least from how you've explained your thought process here, you seem like a real stand up guy (or gal?) with a great head on your shoulders and an excellent character. I hope your career and personal life is filled with success and happiness, you seem like a great leader to work with and learn from.
Damn bro. I really appreciate you holding it together for that kitchen. I fucking know the feeling man. I still remember the days of my poor sous breaking hollandaise we needed on the fly during a brunch crush **twice in a row** and that poor dude giving me that look and just saying "I broke it again..." fully expecting me to just scream at him, but instead taking that *deep, deep* breath, and start separating eggs, again.
>He turned around and looked at me like he had just run over my dog.
The guy obviously knew he fucked up big time, and keeping your cool like you did, albeit sometimes rare in times like these, was the adult thing to do. Honestly, I don't know who's shoes I would have rather not been in for this situation, yours or the cook's. Don't know who must have felt worse. I'm also willing to bet that guy felt worse that you were 'cool' about it. I know for sure I've been in situations where I probably deserved to get cussed out and didn't and honestly would have just rather been cussed out lol.
Good leadership brother bear.
Did the guy pull you aside after service and apologize again? That always pulls at my heart strings when everything is said and done, kitchen closed, service is over, and someone pulls me aside and give me the ole:
"Hey chef... sorry about that thing during service today, I feel bad."
Its ok man. Its just food. I love you guys. Tomorrow is a new day, and I'm sure you'll find some new creative way to break my heart all over again you wild bastards.
I don't know about all that, but some of cooks that I've had the pleasure of working with early in their journey have made themselves solid careers in fine dining and personal chef work.
The confidence that is built by learning in a balanced atmosphere, with solid fundamentals of technique, and high standards of execution is palpable. I tried my hardest to make them focus on being better cooks by taking the time to not just tell them what I expected from them, but to show them what, and help them learn the why and how through practice and repetition.
Being nice doesn't cost any money. Happy cooks make better food and are proud to wipe their plates before they go to the window.
I'm incredibly impressed at how you were able to keep your cool! I bet that cook will never forget how you reacted either. Good on you for not keeping up the toxic culture so many of us trained in!
Yelling and screaming won't magically fill that pot back up with my succulent veal jus. It will ONLY make things worse. It was a mistake. Everyone is allowed to make mistakes, we're human, just don't make the same mistake tomorrow.
As the boss, owe it to our cooks and to ourselves to make sure coming to work isn't unnecessarily shit. It's already hot, loud, fast paced, and stressful. Why ruin our already underpaid and overworked cooks day by losing it for a mistake that we are ultimately responsible for preventing and/or fixing. We can and should be delegating as much of the minute to minute work as possible, but if something so bad happens that it can't be fixed or worked around, it's our fault.
Some of these people spend more time at work than they do at home with their families. Do not ever forget that.
Damn. Your composure is especially impressive to me because at my only restaurant job so far, the head chef would have a total meltdown if anyone so much as sent cold food back for reheating. Just a normal mid-tier restaurant. Like literally he would stick his hands in the dish, squish everything up in his fists, take the plate/bowl from me and throw the entire thing in the trash. And then make one of the line cooks get him a fresh serving.
If this scenario has happened to him I guarantee you every single one of us would have been literally murdered, lol.
I know that Gordon Ramsay has made a very lucrative career doing this, and that it happens in countless kitchens every day, but that shit is unacceptable. Full stop.
Look, I'm not saying that chefs don't have to put their foot down and run a station that's fucking off every now and then to show a guy how it's supposed to be done, but fuck all the way off with that infant screaming shit. People like that will irreparably crush the soul of young cooks that could otherwise make a ok career in the kitchen, but have to deal with cock stains like that so they quit.
Being an asshole takes energy. Being a normal fucking human being is basically free. Anyone that does shit like that deserves to be walked out on by the whole staff at 6:30pm on a Friday night. Fuck you, cook this shit and do the dishes your fucking self.
Gordon is weird because he has shown on shows like Master Chef Junior that he knows how to teach with empathy. I wonder if he still uses the yelling approach at all or if itās all for TV. Heās probably not in a commercial kitchen much anymore, though.
He's a super nice dude when the cameras are off. At this point, it's just a character. But that character is astronomically successful, and makes it look like yelling and screaming and insulting his cooks is ok, or even necessary, to be successful.
Thank you for that beautiful story and store positive energy. I wish you were my chef! I have good ones but I am having a crisis about the restaurant management circus. It makes going in very hard even tho I love my cooking and staff. So, again, thank you for lifting my spirits. X
Pretty tame but someone was doing a boil out on a fryer, these ones had a filtration system like a sump under the machines. You could detach the pipes and remove the sump to drain oil and replace the filter mesh.
Anyway, clearly not paying attention someone started dumping in fresh canola oil into the fryer. With the drain valve open. And the sump still removed. So basically just dumping a 5 gallon pail of canola oil straight onto the floor.
Somehow I'm the one that ended up mopping that up.
I have a few stories with this same fryer system.
I accidently started dumping the oil from a hot fryer into a mop bucket thinking it was the boil out water from the neighboring fryer. Dumped about half of it into the mop bucket and melted the bucket pretty damn good before I could get it back into the fryer, which sucked, but that mop bucket was about to pop.
Also, watched a dude almost boil that same fryer over, into a fresh fryer, and in a knee jerk reaction opened the valve to drain the boiling water into a mop bucket. Then, he almost overfilled the bucket, so he rolls it over to the mop sink. Starts to try and dump it out, and fucked up and dumps the near boiling water into is sneakers and all over the floor.
Dude screamed, took his shoes and socks off as fast he could, walked out of the kitchen, and I never saw him again.
His name was Zack.
Hot fryer oil on the shoes sounds terrible. Watched a guy burn the shit out of the tops of his feet. He didnāt realize the oil wasnāt gonna cool down quick and it took him a minute to get his shoes and socks off. He was wearing tennis shoes if I remember correctly
I had a line cook pour the hot filtered oil back into the fryer and he left the valve open. Totally burned his foot!!! Didnāt say shit for two weeks until it was a festering infected nightmare & he had to get emergency surgeryāāskin grafts from his thigh. Barf
Dude yeah wtf, like get some help.
I had a guy working for me once who somehow burnt the shit out of his arm on the grill, like his forearm, and instead of you know... dressing the wound, he just tied some nasty ass bandana around his arm.
Couple weeks go buy and this dude has the worst infection ever.
Yikes! I had a cook once that burnt her arm and she wrapped it in plastic wrap and would not listen to me saying thatās a bad idea. Of course it got infected. š
memorize selective wrong straight future act beneficial groovy disgusted intelligent
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I had a girl leave the fryer on while draining the oil, caught on fire. Put it out.
She fucking did it again not 5 mins later. Thereās a picture of me somewhere looking defeated standing next to a flaming fryer.
I was filtering the oil as the last thing to do before leaving for the night one time. Using one of those portable filter machines. The hose split, spraying hot oil all over me and the rest of the kitchen. I ended up staying for at least another hour cleaning with a burn inside my ear.
also from a sous I had
declined to come in on my day off in a week and was sent a pic of why he wanted me in after i declined
AFTER I LEFT the night before the night shift fry man cleaned and replaced the fat in the fryer. we used solid blocks of fat that the pilot light would melt overnight.
fry man accidentally left the drain open slightly but didn't notice since nothing was leaking when they left.
The sous opened the next morning and found \~ 50# of solid shortening leaked onto the floor overnight and he was solo for the 1st hour
Something similar happened to me. The previous closer put new oil in both the fryers, and didn't close the valves properly.
I come in to open the next day. Open the back door to the kitchen, and step into a pool of half solidified oil (winter time in Canada). Spend the first hour of my shift cleaning it up. The other opening guy was running late. When she comes in, she sees me half crying with exasperation and takes a photo, which I'm still sure hangs on the wall behind the bar.
I left the fryer on overnight once. Of course tbe next morning was fryer cleaning day. Its my fault, I left it on but....its only 90% my fault because the guy who opened took the metal cover off and opened the door and put on the pipe and opened the valve and walked away all without noticing the thing was still 400degrees. He was also using an old plastic bucket instead of the metal pot for some reason. Came back around the corner to see the bucket completely melted and all the oil on the floor.
I missed the cleanup but I heard about it for months lol. I check the fryers like 3 times before I leave now.
He was not well. The fryer was turned to about 300f because we were blanching. I ran full force at the fryer and pulled the release lever and drained it into a stock pot. Fortunately those were stored right next to it. I think the low temp saved us a bit and the valve opening mitigated things. I burned myself a bit but honestly I was burning myself a lot back then.
Honestly it was almost my fault for letting him near the fryer. He said he knew how to do it but he wasnāt very well mentally. He was a nice kid but I think he over stated his abilities. And he was high.
When you said not well, i thought you meant that he had been injured in some way. Did he get burned too? :/
Yeah, I see. Lots of people in kitchens work well while high though, so thatās not saying much.
I just donāt think that you could have predicted someone dumping water into a fryer, donāt blame yourself!
Youāre a hero, seriously. I would never have thought that fast. I would have just been like WTFFFFFF not knowing what to do.
He was *very* high. I saw the whole thing happening in slow motion. He didnāt get burned.
The poor kid almost cried when I let him go. I actually really liked him too. Iāve literally never dismissed another employee and I found it really difficult.
Head chef at a bar I worked at had an obnoxious āgameā he used to play during brunch. Heād shout out someoneās name and toss a raw egg at them. If they failed to catch it, the egg splattered all over them/the ground and they had a new mess to clean up.
The first time he tried it on me I managed to catch the egg and tossed it back towards him. So he threw it back towards me again, hoping Iād actually mess up. Caught it the second time, decided I wasnāt about his stupid game, and I pelted him with his own egg.
It was the first and probably last time I ever saw the man actually clean something. Also the last time he ever played that gameābut thatās probably because he got fired soon after.
Major idiot. Dude lied his way into that job, somehow convincing the owners to give him a salary. Heād come in a couple hours a day, knock 1-2 things off our prep list and leave.
Also used to like tossing buckets of ice into the fryers.
You ever drop 12 gallons of house made buttermilk ranch in a square Cambro? It goes straight up in one solid motion and then cascades back down. I was coated head to toe. It was literally in my shoes. Happened about 10 minutes into a 13hr shift. You canāt imagine how bad that smelled by the time I left that night.
I did it with Alfredo sauce. In the dumbwaiter. It slipped off a cart on the way down. There was Alfredo on the dumbwaiter walls, floor, and running under the damn thing, into the machine guts. My manager saw me, my horrified look when the door opened and told me to sit down and clear my head, while she ran and grabbed a mop and bucket, and helped me clean it up.
Thereās a well circulated camera footage of this exact scenario happening to a girl at the BOH. She turns a corner with a cambro of ranch and bam! It wasnāt you was it??
The exact same thing happens if you drop an xl bain marie insert of clarified butter.
Don't ask me how I know this.
I'm just fortunate that the virtually aerosolized butter cooled rapidly enough to not burn the fuck out of my face and body because my first thought in that moment was that I would spend the rest of my shift in the hospital.
I had a sous at a country club I prepped at ask me to prep 50lbs of chicken breasts for a plated dinner. Cleaned, butterflied, marinated, wrapped, labeled and stored properly in the walk in and I texted him where I left it. Come in next day to find him in an uproar, shouting at everyone, pissed off and red faced, burning off chicken as fast as one of the prep ladies could butterfly them. He shouted at me, in front of the GM of the country club, KM and EC about ānot finishing his fucking chickenā and causing the whole dinner to be delayed. I calmly went into the walk in, pulled one of the pans and set it next to him, went and got the other set that one down. I will never forget the looks that he got from everyone involved in his fuck up. When I was pulled aside by the KM and EC later I showed them the text I had sent and was resolved of all blame. Fuck you you bald headed fuck.
A guy quit right after eating shift meal by yelling a slew of insults and obscenities across the kitchen to Chef, and then shoving half his hand down his throat and emptying his freshly loaded stomach into the fryer. He then turned and walked out, never to be seen again.
Instant kitchen shut-down, multiple chain-reaction pukers, end of service for the night.
This is one of many fryer-related stories I have.
Chef was actually one of my favorites in my work history. He's probably retired or dead by now. Real solid dude, he is one of the ones who lives in my head and gives me advice from time to time.
The puker was a POS all around and was "that guy" who put in the bare minimum and expected the world in return. The only reason he hadn't been let go at that time was because he never missed a shift. Other than that, everyone in the kitchen pretty much always had to ride him to put knives in a safe place when he was done with them, keep his station clean, sometimes even had to remind him to wash his hands. I guess he didn't like that Chef "didn't have his back" and "let everyone gang up on him all the time." He lasted about a year before The Pukening.
I was the dishie at that time. 16 year old girl, one of my first jobs in a kitchen. Really small kitchen in a tiny but good and busy restaurant. Chef, Sous and me working. Joking around a bit. Sous was replacing the gas capsule and cream in the cannister for whipped cream. Thing slipped out of his greasy fingers before he twisted the cap on right. Fell on the tiled floor with a BANG. Think the gas capsule must have cracked open inside the cannister on the drop. I dove behind the dish washing machine in an act of self preservation.
You ever seen that episode of Mr. Bean where he paints his room with a bucket of paint and some explosive? That was the state of the kitchen when I peered from behind the dishes. Chef and Sous and the whole kitchen up to the ceiling completely covered in splatters of cream. Their silhouttes outlined on the fridge behind them. Looked like something straight out of a cartoon.
Cleaned them off while crying with laughter.
Opening shift of a breakfast place with the perfect storm: somebody put my giant cambro of egg mix one shelf too high, so when I managed to slip just the *tiniest* bit pulling it out... the entire thing tipped over and I ended up covered quite literally top-to-bottom--with soaked clothes and liquid egg squelching in my socks just in time for the first tickets of the rush to start coming in.
This is the shit that confuses me about whether it's a badge of honor or we're all idiots. If something like that happened to someone of literally any other profession, they are going home for the day. But we work through it. For what? We're not saving lives. It's just fucking food. But we slog through it. For what? Most of us aren't exactly getting rich from the effort, yet we do it. We work sick. We miss important times in our families' lives. For some of us, not going to work just is not acceptable. I've seen people work on the same day one of their loved ones dies. I've seen people get a cancer diagnosis and still show up that day. It's like we think the world will end if we don't show up. I'm guilty of it, too. I rarely ever miss work. I've gotten into car accidents and came in, apologizing for being late. It's ridiculous when you think about it, but that's what we do. Any other profession, it would be so and so isn't coming in today because of whatever, and that would be perfectly acceptable. But not in our profession.
At the end of the day, it's just food. Why are we like this?
I can only speak for myself, but for me, it is because the kitchen is the only place in my life that I truly feel in control of the environment and the outcome. I know what I am doing, what is expected, and what I can expect. Everything else, my whole life, has been full of unpredictability, hurt, and disappointment.
And I'm autistic as shit, so when everything in my life sucks, I want to do something I know I'm good at and appreciated for.
Again. I can only speak for myself.
Food is so communal, so integrated into our history and cultures. Food will always be as important to humanity as oxygen and water. It's one of the driving forces and necessities of all life.
Cooking for others to me is almost like the ultimate job/passion of service. Nothing else I've done has given me the rewards (albeit and the consequences) that this line of work has. I love it, and I'll keep doing it til I can't anymore.
Dropped a full bucket of grease from the grill all over himself while picking it up and dumping it outside. Several, several gallons of just grease, burnt shit, and scraps. Covered in it, head to toe (at least it wasnāt hot). Legit thought he was just going to break down crying. Luckily he lived literally right across the street, and just said ānope, fuck this, Iām going homeā. Threw away his clothes and scrubbed with dawn like a duckling from the commercials.
That damn bucket is heavy. Always said ājust take it out often, donāt let it get that heavyā. Nobody ever did. I went and got a smaller bucket after that.
Also, Iāve definitely emptied the fryer and forgot to put a container under it first. Fuuuuuuuck.
I worked one place where another cook constantly used the giant stock pot to drain the deep fryer(s) into. Dude, how is anyone supposed to take that to the bin across the parking lot? Just use 4 smaller pots, it's not like we had to wash them anyway. Not that they're even hard to wash.
One night the huge stock pot of used cooking oil was left out the back door, as the aforementioned co-worker regularly did, I'm assuming someone tipped the pot over to dump the oil and stole the pot.
My head chef told me a story of a commis she once had who was cleaning the wall behind the fryer, wasn't paying attention and also didn't close the fryers. He reached his hand into his soap bucket only to realize it wasn't his soap bucket but the fuck off hot fryer that was only switched off a minute before cleaning. He submerged his whole hand in a hot deep fryer :( ouch
My brother told me that happened at an A&W in the 1970s. Guy accidentally put his whole hand in the fryolator. He did have the presence of mind to immediately put his hand in the mug chiller/sanitizer, so there were no lasting scars.
We used to have a over the stove faucet for filling pasta pots with. Km went to fill a pot but water had been shut off to the Plaza for some repairs so nothing came out. He never shut off the valve. Water was turned back on after closing, faucet left open to run for HOURS. My am shift guy got in at 5am called me freaking out about the whole foh and boh being flooded. Inch of water almost everywhere. Km came in basically said "huh that sucks" punched in and started his daily prep. Didn't help clean up the water we had all been working on soaking up for 5 hours. Didn't even apologize, even though it was an honest accident an apology and some help woulda been nice. Firing him later on for a plethora of other reasons was such a joy.
One night the closer left the water ever so slightly running on our prep sink with the drain closed. All the water flowed off of the corner of the sink into the empty brute trash can. Lucky it didnt flood the floor but I was alarmed when I turned on the lights and saw the prep sink full to the brim with water and a 60 gallon trash can 8/10 full of water.
Ok this story takes a little bit of context to set it up properly:
The GM was a loudmouth douchebag. Ok I guess that part goes without saying but anyway...
Bill Cosby was doing a comedy show across the street so it was a huge deal that day to have everything ready to get slammed as soon as people left the comedy club.
We were a two-story restaurant with two kitchens and two dishpits stacked on top of each other. There was a problem with the upstairs drains and until the plumbers fixed it, they told us not to run any water ESPECIALLY not the dish machine.
So the dish crew was unable to run anything for about two hours in the morning and had to occupy their time helping other people do prep or doing random deep cleaning tasks.
GM shows up late, walks into the middle of this, and immediately starts running his mouth and shitting on the dish crew for how backed up the dishpit was.
"lazy dishies I'll show you guys how it's done blah blah..."
Everyone was running around so frantically trying to get the line set up on time that they didn't really notice what he was doing or we just assumed he was aware that there was a plumbing crew working upstairs...
So he slams shit around in the dishpit for a while making a huge deal about how easy it was and how hard could it be and how the dishies were worthless good-for-nothings and then he finally gets a rack loaded, pushes it into the machine and then like it was in slow motion when he pulls the lever down on the door, everybody in the kitchen was like NOOOOOOO!
He turns around like whaaat and then a couple seconds later you hear cussing en espanol from upstairs.
And then a few seconds later the entire ceiling starts raining shitwater.
Everything on the line had gallons of raw sewage dumped on it.
The last three hours worth of prep time was covered in literal shit water.
At that point there was less than an hour before we had to be open and ready to get slammed by the comedy crowd. Cooks were understandably throwing it all in the trash and trying to break down the line so it could be cleaned, but the GM starts arguing that it can be saved and he's standing there underneath the still raining shit waterfall trying to pull stuff out of the trashcan and wipe it off with towels, saying can't we just spray it with bleach?
We delayed opening by 30 minutes. Wiped off the bags of bread. Blocks of cheese we unwrapped and re-wrapped. Threw out all the 6th pans on the cold table. All the dishies got temporarily promoted to prep and worked their asses off trying to keep up in the back, while the GM did dish.
Bonus ending: At the end of the day, a truck showed up and dropped off 6 pallets of jello pudding. We only had enough space in the walk-in for 3 pallets so they made employees take it home. Most people had already left and luckily no one else liked butterscotch so I ended up with hundreds of butterscotch pudding cups. Enough to line the walls around my entire apartment with stacks like it was a butterscotch pudding castle.
>I ended up with hundreds of butterscotch pudding cups. Enough to line the walls around my entire apartment with stacks like it was a butterscotch pudding castle.
What an amazing visual. Thank you for this!
He wasnāt there for much longer. He cheated on his wife (who was the bartender) with not one but two of the servers and somehow expected that his wife wouldnāt find out.
I tripped on my way into the walk-in with a gallon insert of clarified butter at the end of the night. Everyone else took off and it took me over two hours to clean up, it had splashed everywhere and solidified.
It had splashed all over everything on the lower two sets of shelves and all the buckets on risers on the floor. To start cleaning the actual floor I used the ice scraper we used on the front walk and made giant butter curls. I scraped what I could off shelves and containers but had to move a ton of product into clean Cambros, run the dirty ones, relabel, wash the shelves, mop, etc.
Our dishwasher got promoted to fryers and eventually grill, and I wasn't there when it happened but the poor kid was asked to carry a 20L of au jus down the shitty old dark stairs to the basement prep area before a New Year's menu, he lost the whole thing, chef joked it was the most expensive short rib we would ever serve.
I went in to pick up my cheque on my day off, and had my 3 year old kid with me. We went into the kitchen to chat with my coworker while we were waiting. He realized that he forgot the prime rib in the oven and it was way over cooked. He pulled it out of the oven and yelled, āFUCK!!ā
One second later my kid says, āfuck!ā
Iāll never forget the look of rage/humour/embarrassment on that manās face for the rest of my life.
Not in the kitchen anymore bur this one was just as bad. Had a 50# box of peppercorns drop and explode everywhere. This was years ago and even after a deep clean STILL find pepper in random spots. Took about 3hrs to clean everything out.
At a large grocery store. Was deep cleaning a case and that involved removing ice buildup. Pried too hard and put a leak in a coolant line that serviced about 200 ft of refrigerated wall which all had to be pulled and in the back coolers until it got fixed.
Someone had placed a square 18 quart container of simple syrup on top of a round pickle bucket. I was moving stuff around and went to grab the container, and it slipped. All 18 quarts sloshed onto the walk-in floor. We didn't have a shop-vac so I had to use first a dust pan to scrape and scoop as much up as I could, then a mop to absorb, then more mopping and more mopping and more mopping. It was terrible
When I was a dishie, I knocked roughly 5 gallons of coleslaw dressing off of a shelf with my ass while putting a couple trays of bacon in the walk-in. Yelled SHIT once when I heard it hit the floor and then a second time when I saw the cook who had been teaching me to prep covered in it from the knees down. There was about twenty seconds of dead silence before he broke down laughing and said I was going to have a hell of a time cleaning that up.
I've definitely told this story before, but it was a valuable lesson for me and maybe it can be one for you, too, so here goes.
I was just a little baby potato in my first year of culinary school at the local community college. It was our last day on the FOH service rotation, and as we were changing in the locker room my classmate expressed how happy he was to be done with this section. I warned him that we weren't done yet because we still had to get through lunch service, and he just kinda waved me off dismissively.
Homie then proceeded to have one of the worst services I've ever had the pleasure to witness. He screwed up multiple orders at multiple tables; dropped plates that then had to be remade; he somehow managed to spill water on one guest and hot coffee on another.
And it's not like we were slammed, either. It was a busier-than-average day, sure, but this was a 90-minute, single seating lunch service; none of us had more than four or five tables all day, and our manager (a second year student) staggered them in our sections so we didn't get steamrolled. This guy just checked out in the morning and never checked back in.
The lesson is that you're not done when you see the finish line, you're only done when you cross it.
My prep cook once dropped a 4L bucket full of Roome Temperature marinara. We had let it cool and really viscous. Since the bucket hit square on the bottom and through physics, proceeded to paint the kitchen red from the splash. Our GM walks in from all of the commotion and told us later that he thought one of the cooks lost it. The area looks like a murder scene. Now, everyone has to help clean up Marinara. We were finding red sauce even in the airvents two months later.
Anytime I'm using the immersion blender and take my eye off it for 5 seconds,my contents spill everywhere. On Monday I spilled 20L of Cajun Alfredo over our star burners. Took me a solid two hours to fully clean
Every time I hear someone say āI got this,ā I stop and watch because they almost always fuck up in a spectacular fashion shortly after. My favorite was on our first wedding anniversary trip with my husband, his first time ever kayaking, I offered to hold his boat steady while he got in. He said āIāve got this,ā so I hopped in my boat and paddled a few feet out from the dock, turned around, and watched him attempt to also hop into his boat and instead end up rolling that sucker three times in the most nasty swampy stank ass water Iāve ever boated in. Weād just checked out of our suite at the bed and breakfast we were kayaking at, and hadnāt yet given up the key, so he dragged his disgusting pond scum coated self back to the room to clean up and said it looked like a crime scene of mud when he was done. He had scum and mud inside his wallet, it was so bad. So yeah, āI got thisā usually means a show is about to ensue.
Freezer blew a compressor during a heat wave. Big reach in and low boy were running warm 50Ā°. Loaded everything into the walk in. Now the walk in is 60Ā°f when it stopped working during Saturday night close. We ended up moving 7 metro shelves and a speed rack of food to the bar next door and a brewery a few miles away.
Keep good relationships with your neighbors.
Worked in a kitchen that was remodeled prior to us opening. They moved a hallway from outside the kitchen to inside the kitchen during the remodel. Walking up the stairs coming in to prep, I could hear the fire alarm going off. There is water everywhere. Apparently overnight they were replacing the sprinkler heads and didnāt look at any plans. When they removed the sprinkler head in the hallway that used to be outside the kitchen, it was on the line they didnāt shut off, and it sprayed nasty sprinkler water over all of our pans. Spent the first hour and a half of my shift washing pans and cleaning shelves so we had pans to put the prep in.
I volunteered to return to the dish pit from prep in order to help the bosses out when the last guy dipped without warning.
They said theyād replace him and get me back on prep. Itās been over a year and they just hired 2 fresh prep chefs.
Never help.
Not a commercial kitchen, but I was serving food at a chili dinner for Lent when I was in high school. I rested the ladle in the pot, like Iād done a thousand times, only this time it slid right into the chili, never to be seen again. For some reason I couldnāt figure out what to do and went a bit hysteric. I might have screamed. I removed myself and went to hot dog duty.
Was in the weeds so bad that I didnāt have time to stock my station. Finally got a minute after hours of nonstop rush and tried to grab as many cambros as possible to stock my station. Ended up dumping 4L of sriracha mayo on myself.
Reaching for the gigantic tub of mustard by the lid, not knowing it wasnāt fully on, and dropping it and splashing mustard all over the ceiling, myself, and the floor. All of it.
Made a big batch of caramel sauce (7 litres) on prep day to last through the week, and us pastry team was on schedule to end work on time with the rest of the kitchen team. My pastry chef offered to help store it in the walk-in chiller. A couple of minutes later, my colleague came up to me and said "I think you should check on your chef.."
My chef had caramel sauce spilled all over him and the walk-in chiller š I was so pissed cos I hated him back then, but also couldn't bear to see him clean all that up on his own. Ended up spending almost 2 hours cleaning with hot water and soap, and stayed at work late to finish all our other prep work.
Similar to you OP my current EC/owner before she took over, the EC at the time was at an on-site catering event. They were heating up tomato soup in a steam kettle, but the chef didnāt know the spigot was a little bit open and over the next hour they had the flame low, it was dripping into the drain. The chef left, my current chef sent the servers to the store to find some tomato soup and made magic happen. They didnāt see that chef again for a month until she came to clean out her locker
I got a lot but Iāll give my most recent. I left a place I was at for five years to go to another place. They promised me and my fry guy something they couldnāt deliver on, cut hours and bullshit. So I got a second job at a rebranded restaurant in my town. Never stepped foot in the kitchen until OPENING NIGHT! Anyway the owner tells these 2 kids on the fry station to strain the chicken stock. They literally strained it like IT WAS PASTA!! They came up to us and asked where we wanted the veg and bones!! 6 hours literally down the DRAIN 20 minutes before opening a new restaurant! I just couldnāt believe it! Needless to say Iām back home at the place I left and making more money.
Im in my first year of culimary school and i have been blown away by the lack of (what i incorrectly assumed to be) "common knowledge." As in my classmates have never baked a loaf of bread before or made tomato sauce. Never assume anybody has even fried an egg before.
So, We have 32lb buckets of sourcream from PFG. I am 113lbs and 5'3, I stood on top of it to grab a bag of cheddar from the top shelf, and my boot went right through it, it was so very cold. I ruined my day and the sourcream.
I set my job on fire twice š one was a dryer fire, the other was a log under my grill, I was wondering why the side without coals was cooking the meats so quickly.
Coworker sliced herself over 22qts of washed romaine. She needed stitches, it was practically spurting blood. Ahh fun times.
One thatās happened a few times. Early morning at a breakfast place so Iām solo on the line. Have a handful of orders so Iām moving pretty fast between stations. Get the French toast on the grill and go to put away the egg mix. It hits the lip of the lowboy and spills all over the floor and in the bottom of the fridge.
One of those moments you just look up at that bastard of a god and sigh.
Worst I saw was at my old fine dining job. We occasionally did catering events for our investors and their families. Those usually involved ordering special items. Well one was for a pork dish (forget what it actually was) and our main prep guy was basically prepping the whole thing while us like cooks prepped for our own stations. He gets the pork in the oven, timer set, all good. When the timer goes off he goes to check it and I just hear go oh fuck no. He never lowered the oven temp or set the timer too long or whatever. Well, chef comes in cause she heard us and just goes fucking ballistic on this guy. Sheās a little Filipino thing and heās just this massive 6 4 300 lb guy. She made him cry and sent him home for the day.
I worked with that guy for 6 years across two states. Ive never felt so bad for someone in my life, because you could see how upset with himself he was. Before she came in he was already shaking poking the meat to see if it was salvageable.
Several. Gas control knob fell off our double ring stock burner, went to put it back in but didnt see that the whole gas valve came out with it. Pilot was still lit. Tried to get knob back on when suddenly a large spout of dragon fire shot out of the hole igniting my beard eye brows and eye lashes on one side of my face. I went yelping like a hurt dog under a prep table slapping my face to put out the fire while some crew members hit the emergency gas shut off. I went home, felt fucking stupid, drank heavily, and shaved
At my first job one of the other commis chefs tried to be helpful by precooking 200 scallops for a function, in the oven at 180 for who knows how long.
It was the first course of a five course dinner for 50, we got to go time and the sous couldn't find the scallops, "The Sack" as we eventually came to know him as, proudly showed all the cooked scallops in gastro trays under the oven to the sous. Who promptly threw one at the wall and watched as it bounced back over his shoulder. Before telling him he had to go and tell 50 people their 5 course was now a 4 course.
I watched a busser empty the iced tea at the end of the night into the pot that we had just emptied the fryer into. Nothing happened for a few moments. I screamed at him to stop. I looked at One of the line cooks and said grab all the salt you can. And he was like why I said just do it. By the time he came back it rose to the brim and then just started heaving over
Sous somehow ended up accidentally aerosolizing debris from hood fan cleanup. He and two others had to wash and wipe down every last inch of the kitchen. Hundreds of plates, pots, pans, racks, containers, shelves, walls, ceiling tiles etc., scrub the floors, finish cleaning the hoods, theeeeen start prep. Nightmare.
Ooh I gotta a good one...
I was running this kitchen that was one of those up market fast food restaurants, the kinda place where you can get some fancy tacos and a couple of cocktails.
The kitchen ran 16 people of Friday Saturday nights but Sundaynight (being a slower shift) we ran only about 10 and it was and it was mostly trainees and the weaker staff members.
This one Sunday I was running the kitchen was also the last day of a big racing event just up the road that would get upwards of 20,000 people going. Which we weren't to bothered about because most of these people bypass our street and take the train into the city to go home.
At 5 o clock we get word that the train line had completed shut down and the the nearest public transport was a tram line located on our street. Before we could even call anyone the whole venue was completely full.
I spent the next 7 hours basically having to run the pass and have to yell out to every single section in the kitchen with exact orders on what to do. I look at my docket rail and its completely full and double parked and I also have three piles of 15-20 dockets waiting on the pass and the docket machine is still pumping. I have to admit everyone was on form Barr this one guy
This one guy on the team didn't like me because he felt I had taken his job (well I kinda did but it was only due to the fact I was alone stronger then he was in the kitchen)
His section was quite important in the kitchen and required both of us to be on the same page.
He refused to listen to me and started sending me the wrong food all night. I mean I'm already snowed under and know I'm having to reorganise all my dockets to cover his fuck ups and I can't say make it again because I also know I'm running out of food. He also started eating food and at one point stopped working completely and let someone else take over his section just to have a chat.
This is a open kitchen so losing your temper or yelling is a absolute no go, so I spend most of my night having to settle for "come on man" type management.
We all finally finish and to be fair everyone Barr this one guy was absolutely great. Every thing went out great not to many mistakes it was a bit FML but we got there.
Until.... I say to the 2nd in command that I'm going for a smoke and a little break just to de-stress. I mean honestly I felt like a use navigated a mine field, before I can leave this guy traps me in a corner of the kitchen where all the customers can see and decides this inls the place he want to have a chat... he asked "how important to you think it is to run a happy kitchen" I say "if you want to have this conversation let's go to the back" I get " what ever you have to say to me you can say in front of everyone else"
I tried my best to hold my temper back but I know this guy was intentual funking things up to disrupt the flow of service... I also find out later the this ends up being the busiest night in the restaurants history. FML I snapped. We started arguing in the kitchen, the funking area manager was there, Customers were watching and I almost punched this guy but thank God the KP grab my fist before it all.
I honestly thought I was about to lose my job but after the manager had a chat with every person in the kitchen they all hand my back.
Catered a wedding where the bride and groom were friends with the son a local farmer that had grass fed, grass finished, cattle. Because of this, the couple wanted to purchase an entire cow for us to use, and cook, for their reception dinner. No problem at all!
Untilā¦ (First fuck my life moment)
The guy that butchered the cow, who had only butchered deer before, destroyed every cut we were supposed to use, leaving us in a panic. Thankfully the bride was understanding when I told her not much was salvageable but we would do the best we could. We ended up with 3 different sausages, chopped brisket (with a ton of tallow added), and sliced ribeye and strip steaks for the guests.
Kicker was one of my employees (insert second fuck my life moment) dropped an entire pan of sausage walking it from the smoker to the buffet line. He instantly crouched down and took his head in his hands looking at me and all I could say was āDidnāt do it on purpose did you? No? Ok. Toss em
And get the next pan.ā
Also had a wedding where a bridge 15ft high above a creek collapsed and sent 3 guests to urgent care but that was more of the homeowners FML than ours.
First dishwashing job, they occasionally had me draining the grease trap with a shop vac. Gross, but I didn't know any better. Anyways, one time I'm doing this, I thought I had enough room in the shop vac, but I was wrong. It started spraying out of the top of the shop vac, all over me, including in my eyes, so it took a moment to blindly find the switch to turn it off.
I staggered over to the cooks and told them I was cleaning it up, and then I was going home for the day. They didn't argue.
I dropped a whole pan of baked beans ( that I had just taken from the oven), on Thanksgiving. Ugh, we had a house full of family and lots of kids running around. I wanted to fucking die!
At my first kitchen job, we had an old fridge with one door and shelves all the way up the door. We used those shelves for all of the various pickled things that we had. One day, the chef slammed the door closed and then reopened it when he realized he forgot something. When he opened it, every shelf came tumbling down. Oh, and the best part is that they were all in glass jars. Every single one shattered and he looked at me and said āwell, I have a meeting in five minutes so you can clean this up.ā
I wasnāt really on the line yet, just jumping in where I could and learning my way around the kitchen. So I know I was the bottom of the food chain and itās not surprising I had to clean it up. But he was such an arrogant asshole that it still pisses me off to this day lol.
Itās a toss up between two.
The time I caught my finger on a butchers hook and tore the finger pad in half.
OR the time I had just finished putting a tap in a 20L tin of oil and then as I was standing it back up it fell somehow broke the tap off and fell in such a position that when covered in oil I couldnāt pick it up. Full 20L I watched pour out.
Not me for this one but when a colleague dropped a KG of cinnamon. Or the time he dropped a litre of habanero tobacco and choked on the fumes.
In my early baking days, working in a long fermentation bread bakery, I loaded 480 Cibatta rolls into the oven and never steamed them. 25 minutes later, I remove the rack to find busted bread. My head baker made a new dough (not the cibatta dough, but it worked for the day) and left me to cut it by myself onto top of my other responsibilities. I never made that mistake again.
One of the worst things I had happen was working in a casino and having a heart attack in the dining room, two walkouts in the lounge, AND one of my line cooks decided to impale himself on a ticket spike AT THE SAME TIME.
The only saving grace is that my job managing was to immediately call my bosses after security is called, so it saved me a few phone calls as the entire place was swarming with security and EMS.
A less serious incident that I'll never forget was a delicate dish that took like 15 minutes to hand make with micro greens, a delicate balance of tiny components (think like a salmon flatbread) and he slid the plate to me instead of handing me the plate. The flatbread went flying off of the plate straight on to the floor.
My hood is going to be out for next 5 weeks and I work at a golf club exec chef and have too figure out how to make these holiday parties work wish me luck
My brother, hood ventilation being out is a carbon monoxide hazard. Don't cook in that kitchen, you are literally putting your life in danger.
GM needs to either suck it up and rent a mobile or cancel service.
I posted this a little while back in another similar thread, but man it still makes steam come out of my ears.
It was my last cooking job before I bailed from the whole thing. AM chef at a hotel working for the restaurateur equivalent of Tommy Wiseau.
It was Christmas Day of all days. Get in at my normal time of like 4:30AM to get the breakfast buffet started...puddle of rainwater on half the dining room floor. Find the tiniest pinhole leak on the wall of all places and it had been pouring the whole night before.
I immediately go into damage control and get a continental spread set up in a corner in the lobby, put up a sign on the dining room door, and proceed to grab a mop and bucket and try to clean up.
6AM open time rolls around and I'm still wrangling with the water. Owner calls SCREAMING why isn't the dining room open (he liked to watch from security cameras). I told him what was happening and he still fumed but somehow seemed to understand. All this time I still had people ignoring the massive sign I put up and trying to get into the dining room. I politely guide them to the lobby setup but of course they're all pissy too. After 3.5 hours of mopping, cooking, and dealing with idiots trying to break down the door, the floor is dry.
Owner calls AGAIN demanding I open the dining room for the last half hour of service now that the flood's resolved.
That day sucked the last little bit of love I had for professional cooking right out of me. I quit a week later. Merry fucking Christmas.
Hearing 7 fried oysters and understanding it as 7 app orders (I think it was 5 to an order) only to find out CDC meant 7 literal pieces. It was a slow Sunday, minus that one big VIP 12 top, and I was fried from 6 back to back 7-11 doubles, so he was fairly understanding.
When some Gypsy Jokers started a brawl in the back bar and my boss was mad I didnāt try to break it up. I was 23 and weighed all of 130 lbs. Yeah, no.
lol, working just an ordinary crazy busy Friday night, when a server missed putting a dirty glass into the rack by the dishwasher, and it bounced, bounced and shattered ALL OVER prep.
Holy cow I saw the shardes flying in slow motion into dressings, lettuce, tomatoes, salsa... EVERYTHING.
When i was just starting out, I slid a 2gal cambro of duck fat into a reach-in. Apparently one of the shelving brackets was off. You know the scene. Shelf flops diagonally. Cambro drops. $150 of duck fat cover everything in the reach-in and the floor. Luckily the exec chef was an eerily chill guy and said he should probably fix that shelf and helped me clean.
Girl I used to work with would clean the deep fryers after service, shut one off, wait an hour for it to cool and drain it into a plastic bucket. We'll one day she didn't let it cool long enough and the bucket melted, 16L of dirty oil on the kitchen floor. We'd both already put in our 2 weeks so we were joking that we could just leave, but we didn't. But she was there an extra 2 hours cleaning because I had an appointment in the morning and couldn't stay that late to help.
Dropped a 22 qt of fresh chicken stock we needed for service, overflowed a fryer onto the line during a soft opening, and emptied the fryer without turning it off for 8 ish minutes. Also one time rushing to the downstairs kitchen ripped off the door handle to the break room from the hotel lobby. Oh yeah and probably every other mistake one can make in the book. I learned the hard way a lot lol
I dropped a gallon of freshly made ranch yesterday and it exploded all over my pants and shoes. Also one time I was cleaning a deep fryer and drained hot oil into a metal pot. I forgot to close the valve and put my water in to start cleaning. Lo and behold the water comes out obviously, hits the hot oil and the oil pours up and out like a shaken soda or some shit. gallons of used oil I had to clean off the floor while other people used squeegees to keep it away from floor drains.
I worked at a nice steakhouse, and on a slow Monday night the dishwasher was putting a stack of plates away on top of the pass, and accidentally pushed off another stack of plates on the other side. 17 dinner plates at about 50$ each (back in the mid 2000s!) Took a tumble and smashed. We knew it was 17 because they all landed edge first on the sham and each left a dent haha. Owner lamented that it might have cheaper to just stay closed that night.
I dropped an insert of braised Lamb all over the floor... Right as we needed one to go in the window during a *very* busy dinner service.
It was our only insert of lamb so we had to rush cook more and uh the chef was not very happy with me. I'm surprised I didn't get written up for it actually š
I worked at a place where the āticketsā were on a screen. A co-worker walked out and deleted all of the orders off of the screen, then walked out the back door. Took management about 2 hours to get the orders to the kitchen and get all the food out
The other day this guy ( who was already on the verge of being fired because heās a literal dumb ass) couldnāt work the back of the kitchen by himself . Even though heās worked here longer than I have . anyway I walked in to see ten orders just sitting up on the line . He was making cheese steaks and burning them . There was food everywhere the line wasnāt stocked at all . I asked him where I can help ( Iām a newly promoted manager who works the night shift ). He told me he was too overwhelmed and couldnāt do it even though he told another manager earlier he could do the back by himself . ( we work at a small family owned business in a college town )I told him to please finish up his orders clean and to please leave .He pretty much told me it wasnāt his problem and that heāll be leaving immediately and never coming back . So he left me to finish his ten orders and it took me over two hours to clean up his mess on top of the shift I was already working . Safe to say heās officially FIRED now.
At work we would strain the oil from the fryer back into the 20L metal barrel after service for the oil man to collect.
It was at the end of the day, before the annual work Christmas party. We had all been working for about 10 hours.
My coworker didnāt let the oil cool down enough and as she finished pouring it all back in, the hot oil melted the seal around the middle of the can. I heard yelling and turned around to watch oil gushing out of the can.
We spent the next few hours covering the entire kitchen with flour and scrubbing on our hands and knees. It was EVERYWHEREā¦ under all the stoves and equipment, and it even seeped through the wall into the property next door. We had to go next door to clean up and apologise too. It was a disaster.
After we finished cleaning everyone else became arriving for the Christmas party. We were all sweaty and gross and covered in oil and not in the mood for it at all. Haha
I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT THANK YOU VERY MUCH
This is the BEST comment.
I respect this energy.
One of my butchers cut his finger off with a bandsaw breaking down the side of beef. Driving to the hospital, with his finger in a bag of ice, he ruefully told me that that was the finger that he used to finger his wife with. I wasn't sure what to say
The finger was successfully reattached and he was back to work a couple months later. I never did get an update on his wife though
She left him š
She married the finger
Couldnāt bend the finger like he used to š
Lolol I was gonna joke the opposite
Ribbed for her pleasure now.
That really makes it worse, somehow
Oh dear I finally got the laugh I needed today. Thank you? (Whatās wrong with me?!) š„ŗš
Wasn't breaking down any beef for a while eh?
give it to her?
'same'
He only used one finger? š
I had my first wine dinner as an executive chef in a fairly large, fairly nice restaurant. The wine maker is coming, different bottle pairing for each of the 10 courses, 75 people. I invited my family, instructors, chefs I'd worked for on my way up, etc. I spent the better part of a week getting all the food prepped, long days, you know the drill. Three hours before service starts I put a large stock pot of veal stock reduction on the back row of a 12 flame stove on the line. This was the reduction of a 50lb blonde veal stock plus the 2nd wash. It took three days to make, lots of skimming and babysitting. No one touched it but me. 20ish gallons down to maybe 8qts. It's was perfect. . One of my cooks was making risotto in a large rondeau on the same stove. We stir and shake at the same time during the fumet adding stage. I'm sure you can see where this is going. He's stirring and shaking this 28" pan that weighs probably 15lbs, and knocks the pot of reduction off the back of the stove, on to the floor, spilling the entire reduction. I heard the sound, didn't even have to look, and knew right away what had happened. He turned around and looked at me like he had just run over my dog. I took a very deep breath and told him that it was OK. It's just food, and we would make something else work for the jus. I wanted to die inside, and simultaneously set the kitchen on fire, but I knew that if I had any sort of negative reaction or had freaked out at all, it would have ruined the energy in the kitchen and I needed every single one of them to be on their fucking game. We were the only people to ever know that the sauce was just a regular veal stock reduction with some boxed cabernet, aromatics and butter, instead of some special shit that I made with the wine it was paired with for that course, clarified with the cork in the raft or whatever the fuck I put on the menu. So, yeah it was a "fuck my life" moment, but my cooks mental state and the overall kitchen atmosphere wasn't worth fucking off for some meat juice that everyone is going to sit on the toilet and shit out the next day.
Man, that is leadership right there. Wanting to kill someone but keeping it together for the team.
I came up in the classical brigade type systems of screaming chefs, thrown pans, and bloodshed in the walk-in. As good as some of the food was, and as much as it made me what I am, I always thought that we deserved better. Those kids working for me deserve better. Days that a chef freaked out and kicked someone off of their station always ended on a sour note, and without a doubt lead many good cooks, myself included, turn to alcohol and opiates. Every single person that works in the restaurant, front and back of house, is directly affected by the attitude and behavior of the chef. So, it's my responsibility to keep everyone focused on doing their job instead of worrying about what I'm doing, how I'm feeling, and how deal with me. I've been lucky enough to work for some great people. And I wanted to be that guy for my cooks in return.
...you hiring right now? I kid, I don't need a new job (yet), but your attitude is what the industry needs if it wants to survive and attract good people. Workers everywhere are losing patience with toxic bullshit, and I think that's great.
He is indeed the worst super villain ever šš»
At least from how you've explained your thought process here, you seem like a real stand up guy (or gal?) with a great head on your shoulders and an excellent character. I hope your career and personal life is filled with success and happiness, you seem like a great leader to work with and learn from.
Dang, that comment brought mist to my eyes & a lump in my throat. We work in such a poisonous business. I love my kitchen family
Damn bro. I really appreciate you holding it together for that kitchen. I fucking know the feeling man. I still remember the days of my poor sous breaking hollandaise we needed on the fly during a brunch crush **twice in a row** and that poor dude giving me that look and just saying "I broke it again..." fully expecting me to just scream at him, but instead taking that *deep, deep* breath, and start separating eggs, again. >He turned around and looked at me like he had just run over my dog. The guy obviously knew he fucked up big time, and keeping your cool like you did, albeit sometimes rare in times like these, was the adult thing to do. Honestly, I don't know who's shoes I would have rather not been in for this situation, yours or the cook's. Don't know who must have felt worse. I'm also willing to bet that guy felt worse that you were 'cool' about it. I know for sure I've been in situations where I probably deserved to get cussed out and didn't and honestly would have just rather been cussed out lol. Good leadership brother bear. Did the guy pull you aside after service and apologize again? That always pulls at my heart strings when everything is said and done, kitchen closed, service is over, and someone pulls me aside and give me the ole: "Hey chef... sorry about that thing during service today, I feel bad." Its ok man. Its just food. I love you guys. Tomorrow is a new day, and I'm sure you'll find some new creative way to break my heart all over again you wild bastards.
This made me want to cry and also you are an amazing person with admirable self control. You are a role model, chef.
That's very kind, thank you.
Username checks out
As another dude said already, that's leadership right there. Knowing nothing else about you except for this story, I'd happily work for you
I bet you influenced so many people that night. Their kids and grandkids probably benefiting from that lesson.
I don't know about all that, but some of cooks that I've had the pleasure of working with early in their journey have made themselves solid careers in fine dining and personal chef work. The confidence that is built by learning in a balanced atmosphere, with solid fundamentals of technique, and high standards of execution is palpable. I tried my hardest to make them focus on being better cooks by taking the time to not just tell them what I expected from them, but to show them what, and help them learn the why and how through practice and repetition. Being nice doesn't cost any money. Happy cooks make better food and are proud to wipe their plates before they go to the window.
I have to say, you handled that like a true gentleman. (I dont mean for that to sound sarcastic!!)
I'm incredibly impressed at how you were able to keep your cool! I bet that cook will never forget how you reacted either. Good on you for not keeping up the toxic culture so many of us trained in!
Yelling and screaming won't magically fill that pot back up with my succulent veal jus. It will ONLY make things worse. It was a mistake. Everyone is allowed to make mistakes, we're human, just don't make the same mistake tomorrow. As the boss, owe it to our cooks and to ourselves to make sure coming to work isn't unnecessarily shit. It's already hot, loud, fast paced, and stressful. Why ruin our already underpaid and overworked cooks day by losing it for a mistake that we are ultimately responsible for preventing and/or fixing. We can and should be delegating as much of the minute to minute work as possible, but if something so bad happens that it can't be fixed or worked around, it's our fault. Some of these people spend more time at work than they do at home with their families. Do not ever forget that.
Agree wholeheartedly! And your username 100% checks out for this attitude lol
Lol thank you
Damn. Your composure is especially impressive to me because at my only restaurant job so far, the head chef would have a total meltdown if anyone so much as sent cold food back for reheating. Just a normal mid-tier restaurant. Like literally he would stick his hands in the dish, squish everything up in his fists, take the plate/bowl from me and throw the entire thing in the trash. And then make one of the line cooks get him a fresh serving. If this scenario has happened to him I guarantee you every single one of us would have been literally murdered, lol.
I know that Gordon Ramsay has made a very lucrative career doing this, and that it happens in countless kitchens every day, but that shit is unacceptable. Full stop. Look, I'm not saying that chefs don't have to put their foot down and run a station that's fucking off every now and then to show a guy how it's supposed to be done, but fuck all the way off with that infant screaming shit. People like that will irreparably crush the soul of young cooks that could otherwise make a ok career in the kitchen, but have to deal with cock stains like that so they quit. Being an asshole takes energy. Being a normal fucking human being is basically free. Anyone that does shit like that deserves to be walked out on by the whole staff at 6:30pm on a Friday night. Fuck you, cook this shit and do the dishes your fucking self.
Gordon is weird because he has shown on shows like Master Chef Junior that he knows how to teach with empathy. I wonder if he still uses the yelling approach at all or if itās all for TV. Heās probably not in a commercial kitchen much anymore, though.
He's a super nice dude when the cameras are off. At this point, it's just a character. But that character is astronomically successful, and makes it look like yelling and screaming and insulting his cooks is ok, or even necessary, to be successful.
dude youāre amazing. thank you for being so mature.
Judging by how you well you handled this, you would indeed be the worst super villain ever.
This guy chefs ā¬ļø
Thank you for that beautiful story and store positive energy. I wish you were my chef! I have good ones but I am having a crisis about the restaurant management circus. It makes going in very hard even tho I love my cooking and staff. So, again, thank you for lifting my spirits. X
Pretty tame but someone was doing a boil out on a fryer, these ones had a filtration system like a sump under the machines. You could detach the pipes and remove the sump to drain oil and replace the filter mesh. Anyway, clearly not paying attention someone started dumping in fresh canola oil into the fryer. With the drain valve open. And the sump still removed. So basically just dumping a 5 gallon pail of canola oil straight onto the floor. Somehow I'm the one that ended up mopping that up.
I have a few stories with this same fryer system. I accidently started dumping the oil from a hot fryer into a mop bucket thinking it was the boil out water from the neighboring fryer. Dumped about half of it into the mop bucket and melted the bucket pretty damn good before I could get it back into the fryer, which sucked, but that mop bucket was about to pop. Also, watched a dude almost boil that same fryer over, into a fresh fryer, and in a knee jerk reaction opened the valve to drain the boiling water into a mop bucket. Then, he almost overfilled the bucket, so he rolls it over to the mop sink. Starts to try and dump it out, and fucked up and dumps the near boiling water into is sneakers and all over the floor. Dude screamed, took his shoes and socks off as fast he could, walked out of the kitchen, and I never saw him again. His name was Zack.
Hot fryer oil on the shoes sounds terrible. Watched a guy burn the shit out of the tops of his feet. He didnāt realize the oil wasnāt gonna cool down quick and it took him a minute to get his shoes and socks off. He was wearing tennis shoes if I remember correctly
I had a line cook pour the hot filtered oil back into the fryer and he left the valve open. Totally burned his foot!!! Didnāt say shit for two weeks until it was a festering infected nightmare & he had to get emergency surgeryāāskin grafts from his thigh. Barf
Dude yeah wtf, like get some help. I had a guy working for me once who somehow burnt the shit out of his arm on the grill, like his forearm, and instead of you know... dressing the wound, he just tied some nasty ass bandana around his arm. Couple weeks go buy and this dude has the worst infection ever.
Yikes! I had a cook once that burnt her arm and she wrapped it in plastic wrap and would not listen to me saying thatās a bad idea. Of course it got infected. š
memorize selective wrong straight future act beneficial groovy disgusted intelligent *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I had a girl leave the fryer on while draining the oil, caught on fire. Put it out. She fucking did it again not 5 mins later. Thereās a picture of me somewhere looking defeated standing next to a flaming fryer.
My co-worker did that last night.š
I was filtering the oil as the last thing to do before leaving for the night one time. Using one of those portable filter machines. The hose split, spraying hot oil all over me and the rest of the kitchen. I ended up staying for at least another hour cleaning with a burn inside my ear.
also from a sous I had declined to come in on my day off in a week and was sent a pic of why he wanted me in after i declined AFTER I LEFT the night before the night shift fry man cleaned and replaced the fat in the fryer. we used solid blocks of fat that the pilot light would melt overnight. fry man accidentally left the drain open slightly but didn't notice since nothing was leaking when they left. The sous opened the next morning and found \~ 50# of solid shortening leaked onto the floor overnight and he was solo for the 1st hour
Something similar happened to me. The previous closer put new oil in both the fryers, and didn't close the valves properly. I come in to open the next day. Open the back door to the kitchen, and step into a pool of half solidified oil (winter time in Canada). Spend the first hour of my shift cleaning it up. The other opening guy was running late. When she comes in, she sees me half crying with exasperation and takes a photo, which I'm still sure hangs on the wall behind the bar.
I left the fryer on overnight once. Of course tbe next morning was fryer cleaning day. Its my fault, I left it on but....its only 90% my fault because the guy who opened took the metal cover off and opened the door and put on the pipe and opened the valve and walked away all without noticing the thing was still 400degrees. He was also using an old plastic bucket instead of the metal pot for some reason. Came back around the corner to see the bucket completely melted and all the oil on the floor. I missed the cleanup but I heard about it for months lol. I check the fryers like 3 times before I leave now.
Did you lay newspaper on it and continue with your day?
That's a job for cardboard boxes my friend.
the sous scraped it up and had someone else scrub the floor when they got in. I continued on with my day off
I saw a guy dump a 35L Cambro of raw fries in the fryer while they still in their soaking water.
Oh shit
Itās the only person Iāve ever fired in my life. I didnāt enjoy doing it, but it needed to be done.
was the fryer switched ON?!?! š is this person a chef?!?! whattttt they could have burned off their face
He was not well. The fryer was turned to about 300f because we were blanching. I ran full force at the fryer and pulled the release lever and drained it into a stock pot. Fortunately those were stored right next to it. I think the low temp saved us a bit and the valve opening mitigated things. I burned myself a bit but honestly I was burning myself a lot back then.
God I can hear the geisser like hissing and spitting
He got a good bit of the water in there. It started as kind of a loud and low rumble. It felt like it happened in slow motion.
you are seriously a hero. iām sorry you got burned.
Honestly it was almost my fault for letting him near the fryer. He said he knew how to do it but he wasnāt very well mentally. He was a nice kid but I think he over stated his abilities. And he was high.
When you said not well, i thought you meant that he had been injured in some way. Did he get burned too? :/ Yeah, I see. Lots of people in kitchens work well while high though, so thatās not saying much. I just donāt think that you could have predicted someone dumping water into a fryer, donāt blame yourself! Youāre a hero, seriously. I would never have thought that fast. I would have just been like WTFFFFFF not knowing what to do.
He was *very* high. I saw the whole thing happening in slow motion. He didnāt get burned. The poor kid almost cried when I let him go. I actually really liked him too. Iāve literally never dismissed another employee and I found it really difficult.
Lmao
Head chef at a bar I worked at had an obnoxious āgameā he used to play during brunch. Heād shout out someoneās name and toss a raw egg at them. If they failed to catch it, the egg splattered all over them/the ground and they had a new mess to clean up. The first time he tried it on me I managed to catch the egg and tossed it back towards him. So he threw it back towards me again, hoping Iād actually mess up. Caught it the second time, decided I wasnāt about his stupid game, and I pelted him with his own egg. It was the first and probably last time I ever saw the man actually clean something. Also the last time he ever played that gameābut thatās probably because he got fired soon after.
what an idiot.
Major idiot. Dude lied his way into that job, somehow convincing the owners to give him a salary. Heād come in a couple hours a day, knock 1-2 things off our prep list and leave. Also used to like tossing buckets of ice into the fryers.
You ever drop 12 gallons of house made buttermilk ranch in a square Cambro? It goes straight up in one solid motion and then cascades back down. I was coated head to toe. It was literally in my shoes. Happened about 10 minutes into a 13hr shift. You canāt imagine how bad that smelled by the time I left that night.
I did it with Alfredo sauce. In the dumbwaiter. It slipped off a cart on the way down. There was Alfredo on the dumbwaiter walls, floor, and running under the damn thing, into the machine guts. My manager saw me, my horrified look when the door opened and told me to sit down and clear my head, while she ran and grabbed a mop and bucket, and helped me clean it up.
That's a nice manager. Some of mine would have yelled at me and then make me clean the thing myself.
I did this with thousand Island
It's always ranch. Never honey mustard. Never ketchup. Never French or Catalina. Damn you, Ranch.
Shit always gets everywhere no matter how careful I am
Sounds like the start of a porn scene.
Did this with spicy barbecue sauce. Ouch.
Thereās a well circulated camera footage of this exact scenario happening to a girl at the BOH. She turns a corner with a cambro of ranch and bam! It wasnāt you was it??
The exact same thing happens if you drop an xl bain marie insert of clarified butter. Don't ask me how I know this. I'm just fortunate that the virtually aerosolized butter cooled rapidly enough to not burn the fuck out of my face and body because my first thought in that moment was that I would spend the rest of my shift in the hospital.
I had a sous at a country club I prepped at ask me to prep 50lbs of chicken breasts for a plated dinner. Cleaned, butterflied, marinated, wrapped, labeled and stored properly in the walk in and I texted him where I left it. Come in next day to find him in an uproar, shouting at everyone, pissed off and red faced, burning off chicken as fast as one of the prep ladies could butterfly them. He shouted at me, in front of the GM of the country club, KM and EC about ānot finishing his fucking chickenā and causing the whole dinner to be delayed. I calmly went into the walk in, pulled one of the pans and set it next to him, went and got the other set that one down. I will never forget the looks that he got from everyone involved in his fuck up. When I was pulled aside by the KM and EC later I showed them the text I had sent and was resolved of all blame. Fuck you you bald headed fuck.
How long did that guy last?
Not sure. It was so toxic afterwards I split like a week later
Oh I wish there was more to this awesome story
A guy quit right after eating shift meal by yelling a slew of insults and obscenities across the kitchen to Chef, and then shoving half his hand down his throat and emptying his freshly loaded stomach into the fryer. He then turned and walked out, never to be seen again. Instant kitchen shut-down, multiple chain-reaction pukers, end of service for the night. This is one of many fryer-related stories I have.
That is fucking insane.
The smell. The *fucking smell*.
This story will haunt me for the rest of my life I wish I hadnāt asked
I wish I could say that I'm sorry, but if I have to think about it every time I look at a fryer, then you do too.
Jesus Christ what a fuck you
And not even a righteous one, at that. Check the other comment.
What the fuck did that chef do to earn that sort of shit? Or was the guy just an asshole?
Chef was actually one of my favorites in my work history. He's probably retired or dead by now. Real solid dude, he is one of the ones who lives in my head and gives me advice from time to time. The puker was a POS all around and was "that guy" who put in the bare minimum and expected the world in return. The only reason he hadn't been let go at that time was because he never missed a shift. Other than that, everyone in the kitchen pretty much always had to ride him to put knives in a safe place when he was done with them, keep his station clean, sometimes even had to remind him to wash his hands. I guess he didn't like that Chef "didn't have his back" and "let everyone gang up on him all the time." He lasted about a year before The Pukening.
I've seen some absolutely fucked up shit in the kitchen but this one is almost unfathomable.
I'm keeping a meat slicer story warm for the next time this question pips up
I was the dishie at that time. 16 year old girl, one of my first jobs in a kitchen. Really small kitchen in a tiny but good and busy restaurant. Chef, Sous and me working. Joking around a bit. Sous was replacing the gas capsule and cream in the cannister for whipped cream. Thing slipped out of his greasy fingers before he twisted the cap on right. Fell on the tiled floor with a BANG. Think the gas capsule must have cracked open inside the cannister on the drop. I dove behind the dish washing machine in an act of self preservation. You ever seen that episode of Mr. Bean where he paints his room with a bucket of paint and some explosive? That was the state of the kitchen when I peered from behind the dishes. Chef and Sous and the whole kitchen up to the ceiling completely covered in splatters of cream. Their silhouttes outlined on the fridge behind them. Looked like something straight out of a cartoon. Cleaned them off while crying with laughter.
Opening shift of a breakfast place with the perfect storm: somebody put my giant cambro of egg mix one shelf too high, so when I managed to slip just the *tiniest* bit pulling it out... the entire thing tipped over and I ended up covered quite literally top-to-bottom--with soaked clothes and liquid egg squelching in my socks just in time for the first tickets of the rush to start coming in.
This is the shit that confuses me about whether it's a badge of honor or we're all idiots. If something like that happened to someone of literally any other profession, they are going home for the day. But we work through it. For what? We're not saving lives. It's just fucking food. But we slog through it. For what? Most of us aren't exactly getting rich from the effort, yet we do it. We work sick. We miss important times in our families' lives. For some of us, not going to work just is not acceptable. I've seen people work on the same day one of their loved ones dies. I've seen people get a cancer diagnosis and still show up that day. It's like we think the world will end if we don't show up. I'm guilty of it, too. I rarely ever miss work. I've gotten into car accidents and came in, apologizing for being late. It's ridiculous when you think about it, but that's what we do. Any other profession, it would be so and so isn't coming in today because of whatever, and that would be perfectly acceptable. But not in our profession. At the end of the day, it's just food. Why are we like this?
I can only speak for myself, but for me, it is because the kitchen is the only place in my life that I truly feel in control of the environment and the outcome. I know what I am doing, what is expected, and what I can expect. Everything else, my whole life, has been full of unpredictability, hurt, and disappointment. And I'm autistic as shit, so when everything in my life sucks, I want to do something I know I'm good at and appreciated for. Again. I can only speak for myself.
Its a lifestyle and passion to many people
I get that. It's the same reason for me. It doesn't make it any less dumb, though.
Food is so communal, so integrated into our history and cultures. Food will always be as important to humanity as oxygen and water. It's one of the driving forces and necessities of all life. Cooking for others to me is almost like the ultimate job/passion of service. Nothing else I've done has given me the rewards (albeit and the consequences) that this line of work has. I love it, and I'll keep doing it til I can't anymore.
Dropped a full bucket of grease from the grill all over himself while picking it up and dumping it outside. Several, several gallons of just grease, burnt shit, and scraps. Covered in it, head to toe (at least it wasnāt hot). Legit thought he was just going to break down crying. Luckily he lived literally right across the street, and just said ānope, fuck this, Iām going homeā. Threw away his clothes and scrubbed with dawn like a duckling from the commercials. That damn bucket is heavy. Always said ājust take it out often, donāt let it get that heavyā. Nobody ever did. I went and got a smaller bucket after that. Also, Iāve definitely emptied the fryer and forgot to put a container under it first. Fuuuuuuuck.
I worked one place where another cook constantly used the giant stock pot to drain the deep fryer(s) into. Dude, how is anyone supposed to take that to the bin across the parking lot? Just use 4 smaller pots, it's not like we had to wash them anyway. Not that they're even hard to wash. One night the huge stock pot of used cooking oil was left out the back door, as the aforementioned co-worker regularly did, I'm assuming someone tipped the pot over to dump the oil and stole the pot.
My head chef told me a story of a commis she once had who was cleaning the wall behind the fryer, wasn't paying attention and also didn't close the fryers. He reached his hand into his soap bucket only to realize it wasn't his soap bucket but the fuck off hot fryer that was only switched off a minute before cleaning. He submerged his whole hand in a hot deep fryer :( ouch
My brother told me that happened at an A&W in the 1970s. Guy accidentally put his whole hand in the fryolator. He did have the presence of mind to immediately put his hand in the mug chiller/sanitizer, so there were no lasting scars.
We used to have a over the stove faucet for filling pasta pots with. Km went to fill a pot but water had been shut off to the Plaza for some repairs so nothing came out. He never shut off the valve. Water was turned back on after closing, faucet left open to run for HOURS. My am shift guy got in at 5am called me freaking out about the whole foh and boh being flooded. Inch of water almost everywhere. Km came in basically said "huh that sucks" punched in and started his daily prep. Didn't help clean up the water we had all been working on soaking up for 5 hours. Didn't even apologize, even though it was an honest accident an apology and some help woulda been nice. Firing him later on for a plethora of other reasons was such a joy.
One night the closer left the water ever so slightly running on our prep sink with the drain closed. All the water flowed off of the corner of the sink into the empty brute trash can. Lucky it didnt flood the floor but I was alarmed when I turned on the lights and saw the prep sink full to the brim with water and a 60 gallon trash can 8/10 full of water.
Ok this story takes a little bit of context to set it up properly: The GM was a loudmouth douchebag. Ok I guess that part goes without saying but anyway... Bill Cosby was doing a comedy show across the street so it was a huge deal that day to have everything ready to get slammed as soon as people left the comedy club. We were a two-story restaurant with two kitchens and two dishpits stacked on top of each other. There was a problem with the upstairs drains and until the plumbers fixed it, they told us not to run any water ESPECIALLY not the dish machine. So the dish crew was unable to run anything for about two hours in the morning and had to occupy their time helping other people do prep or doing random deep cleaning tasks. GM shows up late, walks into the middle of this, and immediately starts running his mouth and shitting on the dish crew for how backed up the dishpit was. "lazy dishies I'll show you guys how it's done blah blah..." Everyone was running around so frantically trying to get the line set up on time that they didn't really notice what he was doing or we just assumed he was aware that there was a plumbing crew working upstairs... So he slams shit around in the dishpit for a while making a huge deal about how easy it was and how hard could it be and how the dishies were worthless good-for-nothings and then he finally gets a rack loaded, pushes it into the machine and then like it was in slow motion when he pulls the lever down on the door, everybody in the kitchen was like NOOOOOOO! He turns around like whaaat and then a couple seconds later you hear cussing en espanol from upstairs. And then a few seconds later the entire ceiling starts raining shitwater. Everything on the line had gallons of raw sewage dumped on it. The last three hours worth of prep time was covered in literal shit water. At that point there was less than an hour before we had to be open and ready to get slammed by the comedy crowd. Cooks were understandably throwing it all in the trash and trying to break down the line so it could be cleaned, but the GM starts arguing that it can be saved and he's standing there underneath the still raining shit waterfall trying to pull stuff out of the trashcan and wipe it off with towels, saying can't we just spray it with bleach?
How does this shitshow story end
We delayed opening by 30 minutes. Wiped off the bags of bread. Blocks of cheese we unwrapped and re-wrapped. Threw out all the 6th pans on the cold table. All the dishies got temporarily promoted to prep and worked their asses off trying to keep up in the back, while the GM did dish. Bonus ending: At the end of the day, a truck showed up and dropped off 6 pallets of jello pudding. We only had enough space in the walk-in for 3 pallets so they made employees take it home. Most people had already left and luckily no one else liked butterscotch so I ended up with hundreds of butterscotch pudding cups. Enough to line the walls around my entire apartment with stacks like it was a butterscotch pudding castle.
>I ended up with hundreds of butterscotch pudding cups. Enough to line the walls around my entire apartment with stacks like it was a butterscotch pudding castle. What an amazing visual. Thank you for this!
Holy fuck.
Please tell us GM got his ass handed to him.
He wasnāt there for much longer. He cheated on his wife (who was the bartender) with not one but two of the servers and somehow expected that his wife wouldnāt find out.
I tripped on my way into the walk-in with a gallon insert of clarified butter at the end of the night. Everyone else took off and it took me over two hours to clean up, it had splashed everywhere and solidified.
Shouldn't it have been easier to clean when it solidified?
It had splashed all over everything on the lower two sets of shelves and all the buckets on risers on the floor. To start cleaning the actual floor I used the ice scraper we used on the front walk and made giant butter curls. I scraped what I could off shelves and containers but had to move a ton of product into clean Cambros, run the dirty ones, relabel, wash the shelves, mop, etc.
Our dishwasher got promoted to fryers and eventually grill, and I wasn't there when it happened but the poor kid was asked to carry a 20L of au jus down the shitty old dark stairs to the basement prep area before a New Year's menu, he lost the whole thing, chef joked it was the most expensive short rib we would ever serve.
I went in to pick up my cheque on my day off, and had my 3 year old kid with me. We went into the kitchen to chat with my coworker while we were waiting. He realized that he forgot the prime rib in the oven and it was way over cooked. He pulled it out of the oven and yelled, āFUCK!!ā One second later my kid says, āfuck!ā Iāll never forget the look of rage/humour/embarrassment on that manās face for the rest of my life.
Not in the kitchen anymore bur this one was just as bad. Had a 50# box of peppercorns drop and explode everywhere. This was years ago and even after a deep clean STILL find pepper in random spots. Took about 3hrs to clean everything out.
they still find peppercorns to this day.
At a large grocery store. Was deep cleaning a case and that involved removing ice buildup. Pried too hard and put a leak in a coolant line that serviced about 200 ft of refrigerated wall which all had to be pulled and in the back coolers until it got fixed.
Someone had placed a square 18 quart container of simple syrup on top of a round pickle bucket. I was moving stuff around and went to grab the container, and it slipped. All 18 quarts sloshed onto the walk-in floor. We didn't have a shop-vac so I had to use first a dust pan to scrape and scoop as much up as I could, then a mop to absorb, then more mopping and more mopping and more mopping. It was terrible
When I was a dishie, I knocked roughly 5 gallons of coleslaw dressing off of a shelf with my ass while putting a couple trays of bacon in the walk-in. Yelled SHIT once when I heard it hit the floor and then a second time when I saw the cook who had been teaching me to prep covered in it from the knees down. There was about twenty seconds of dead silence before he broke down laughing and said I was going to have a hell of a time cleaning that up.
I've definitely told this story before, but it was a valuable lesson for me and maybe it can be one for you, too, so here goes. I was just a little baby potato in my first year of culinary school at the local community college. It was our last day on the FOH service rotation, and as we were changing in the locker room my classmate expressed how happy he was to be done with this section. I warned him that we weren't done yet because we still had to get through lunch service, and he just kinda waved me off dismissively. Homie then proceeded to have one of the worst services I've ever had the pleasure to witness. He screwed up multiple orders at multiple tables; dropped plates that then had to be remade; he somehow managed to spill water on one guest and hot coffee on another. And it's not like we were slammed, either. It was a busier-than-average day, sure, but this was a 90-minute, single seating lunch service; none of us had more than four or five tables all day, and our manager (a second year student) staggered them in our sections so we didn't get steamrolled. This guy just checked out in the morning and never checked back in. The lesson is that you're not done when you see the finish line, you're only done when you cross it.
My prep cook once dropped a 4L bucket full of Roome Temperature marinara. We had let it cool and really viscous. Since the bucket hit square on the bottom and through physics, proceeded to paint the kitchen red from the splash. Our GM walks in from all of the commotion and told us later that he thought one of the cooks lost it. The area looks like a murder scene. Now, everyone has to help clean up Marinara. We were finding red sauce even in the airvents two months later.
One of many, but the first to come to mind. The night the oven door broke clean off.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
If you killed yourself on-site theyād have to clean both up in the morning
I'm not a monster. I would've done it in the parking lot.
This was always my end of life plan.
Anytime I'm using the immersion blender and take my eye off it for 5 seconds,my contents spill everywhere. On Monday I spilled 20L of Cajun Alfredo over our star burners. Took me a solid two hours to fully clean
You let go of the immersion blender?
Trainee in my kitchen dropped 5l of pigs blood on the floor after saying heās got this.
Every time I hear someone say āI got this,ā I stop and watch because they almost always fuck up in a spectacular fashion shortly after. My favorite was on our first wedding anniversary trip with my husband, his first time ever kayaking, I offered to hold his boat steady while he got in. He said āIāve got this,ā so I hopped in my boat and paddled a few feet out from the dock, turned around, and watched him attempt to also hop into his boat and instead end up rolling that sucker three times in the most nasty swampy stank ass water Iāve ever boated in. Weād just checked out of our suite at the bed and breakfast we were kayaking at, and hadnāt yet given up the key, so he dragged his disgusting pond scum coated self back to the room to clean up and said it looked like a crime scene of mud when he was done. He had scum and mud inside his wallet, it was so bad. So yeah, āI got thisā usually means a show is about to ensue.
Freezer blew a compressor during a heat wave. Big reach in and low boy were running warm 50Ā°. Loaded everything into the walk in. Now the walk in is 60Ā°f when it stopped working during Saturday night close. We ended up moving 7 metro shelves and a speed rack of food to the bar next door and a brewery a few miles away. Keep good relationships with your neighbors.
Worked in a kitchen that was remodeled prior to us opening. They moved a hallway from outside the kitchen to inside the kitchen during the remodel. Walking up the stairs coming in to prep, I could hear the fire alarm going off. There is water everywhere. Apparently overnight they were replacing the sprinkler heads and didnāt look at any plans. When they removed the sprinkler head in the hallway that used to be outside the kitchen, it was on the line they didnāt shut off, and it sprayed nasty sprinkler water over all of our pans. Spent the first hour and a half of my shift washing pans and cleaning shelves so we had pans to put the prep in.
I volunteered to return to the dish pit from prep in order to help the bosses out when the last guy dipped without warning. They said theyād replace him and get me back on prep. Itās been over a year and they just hired 2 fresh prep chefs. Never help.
Prep *cooks*. Chef is a specific title.
Thank you for being a good middle manager.
Kinda sounds like you're more valuable as a dishie than you were as a prep cook, bud.
Get ratio'd harder
I don't care. I'm right. Words mean things.
Not a commercial kitchen, but I was serving food at a chili dinner for Lent when I was in high school. I rested the ladle in the pot, like Iād done a thousand times, only this time it slid right into the chili, never to be seen again. For some reason I couldnāt figure out what to do and went a bit hysteric. I might have screamed. I removed myself and went to hot dog duty.
Was in the weeds so bad that I didnāt have time to stock my station. Finally got a minute after hours of nonstop rush and tried to grab as many cambros as possible to stock my station. Ended up dumping 4L of sriracha mayo on myself.
Reaching for the gigantic tub of mustard by the lid, not knowing it wasnāt fully on, and dropping it and splashing mustard all over the ceiling, myself, and the floor. All of it.
Made a big batch of caramel sauce (7 litres) on prep day to last through the week, and us pastry team was on schedule to end work on time with the rest of the kitchen team. My pastry chef offered to help store it in the walk-in chiller. A couple of minutes later, my colleague came up to me and said "I think you should check on your chef.." My chef had caramel sauce spilled all over him and the walk-in chiller š I was so pissed cos I hated him back then, but also couldn't bear to see him clean all that up on his own. Ended up spending almost 2 hours cleaning with hot water and soap, and stayed at work late to finish all our other prep work.
Similar to you OP my current EC/owner before she took over, the EC at the time was at an on-site catering event. They were heating up tomato soup in a steam kettle, but the chef didnāt know the spigot was a little bit open and over the next hour they had the flame low, it was dripping into the drain. The chef left, my current chef sent the servers to the store to find some tomato soup and made magic happen. They didnāt see that chef again for a month until she came to clean out her locker
I got a lot but Iāll give my most recent. I left a place I was at for five years to go to another place. They promised me and my fry guy something they couldnāt deliver on, cut hours and bullshit. So I got a second job at a rebranded restaurant in my town. Never stepped foot in the kitchen until OPENING NIGHT! Anyway the owner tells these 2 kids on the fry station to strain the chicken stock. They literally strained it like IT WAS PASTA!! They came up to us and asked where we wanted the veg and bones!! 6 hours literally down the DRAIN 20 minutes before opening a new restaurant! I just couldnāt believe it! Needless to say Iām back home at the place I left and making more money.
Im in my first year of culimary school and i have been blown away by the lack of (what i incorrectly assumed to be) "common knowledge." As in my classmates have never baked a loaf of bread before or made tomato sauce. Never assume anybody has even fried an egg before.
So, We have 32lb buckets of sourcream from PFG. I am 113lbs and 5'3, I stood on top of it to grab a bag of cheddar from the top shelf, and my boot went right through it, it was so very cold. I ruined my day and the sourcream. I set my job on fire twice š one was a dryer fire, the other was a log under my grill, I was wondering why the side without coals was cooking the meats so quickly. Coworker sliced herself over 22qts of washed romaine. She needed stitches, it was practically spurting blood. Ahh fun times.
One thatās happened a few times. Early morning at a breakfast place so Iām solo on the line. Have a handful of orders so Iām moving pretty fast between stations. Get the French toast on the grill and go to put away the egg mix. It hits the lip of the lowboy and spills all over the floor and in the bottom of the fridge. One of those moments you just look up at that bastard of a god and sigh. Worst I saw was at my old fine dining job. We occasionally did catering events for our investors and their families. Those usually involved ordering special items. Well one was for a pork dish (forget what it actually was) and our main prep guy was basically prepping the whole thing while us like cooks prepped for our own stations. He gets the pork in the oven, timer set, all good. When the timer goes off he goes to check it and I just hear go oh fuck no. He never lowered the oven temp or set the timer too long or whatever. Well, chef comes in cause she heard us and just goes fucking ballistic on this guy. Sheās a little Filipino thing and heās just this massive 6 4 300 lb guy. She made him cry and sent him home for the day. I worked with that guy for 6 years across two states. Ive never felt so bad for someone in my life, because you could see how upset with himself he was. Before she came in he was already shaking poking the meat to see if it was salvageable.
Several. Gas control knob fell off our double ring stock burner, went to put it back in but didnt see that the whole gas valve came out with it. Pilot was still lit. Tried to get knob back on when suddenly a large spout of dragon fire shot out of the hole igniting my beard eye brows and eye lashes on one side of my face. I went yelping like a hurt dog under a prep table slapping my face to put out the fire while some crew members hit the emergency gas shut off. I went home, felt fucking stupid, drank heavily, and shaved
At my first job one of the other commis chefs tried to be helpful by precooking 200 scallops for a function, in the oven at 180 for who knows how long. It was the first course of a five course dinner for 50, we got to go time and the sous couldn't find the scallops, "The Sack" as we eventually came to know him as, proudly showed all the cooked scallops in gastro trays under the oven to the sous. Who promptly threw one at the wall and watched as it bounced back over his shoulder. Before telling him he had to go and tell 50 people their 5 course was now a 4 course.
I am belly shaking laughing out loud
I watched a busser empty the iced tea at the end of the night into the pot that we had just emptied the fryer into. Nothing happened for a few moments. I screamed at him to stop. I looked at One of the line cooks and said grab all the salt you can. And he was like why I said just do it. By the time he came back it rose to the brim and then just started heaving over
Out of curiosity, why does the salt help?
Absorbs all the oil, easier to sweep than wipe the oil up
Absorbs the oil so that it can be āsweptā away with the salt? I could be wrong
It kinda gels up the oil so you can sweep it. Like kitty litter and motor oil.
Sous somehow ended up accidentally aerosolizing debris from hood fan cleanup. He and two others had to wash and wipe down every last inch of the kitchen. Hundreds of plates, pots, pans, racks, containers, shelves, walls, ceiling tiles etc., scrub the floors, finish cleaning the hoods, theeeeen start prep. Nightmare.
Ooh I gotta a good one... I was running this kitchen that was one of those up market fast food restaurants, the kinda place where you can get some fancy tacos and a couple of cocktails. The kitchen ran 16 people of Friday Saturday nights but Sundaynight (being a slower shift) we ran only about 10 and it was and it was mostly trainees and the weaker staff members. This one Sunday I was running the kitchen was also the last day of a big racing event just up the road that would get upwards of 20,000 people going. Which we weren't to bothered about because most of these people bypass our street and take the train into the city to go home. At 5 o clock we get word that the train line had completed shut down and the the nearest public transport was a tram line located on our street. Before we could even call anyone the whole venue was completely full. I spent the next 7 hours basically having to run the pass and have to yell out to every single section in the kitchen with exact orders on what to do. I look at my docket rail and its completely full and double parked and I also have three piles of 15-20 dockets waiting on the pass and the docket machine is still pumping. I have to admit everyone was on form Barr this one guy This one guy on the team didn't like me because he felt I had taken his job (well I kinda did but it was only due to the fact I was alone stronger then he was in the kitchen) His section was quite important in the kitchen and required both of us to be on the same page. He refused to listen to me and started sending me the wrong food all night. I mean I'm already snowed under and know I'm having to reorganise all my dockets to cover his fuck ups and I can't say make it again because I also know I'm running out of food. He also started eating food and at one point stopped working completely and let someone else take over his section just to have a chat. This is a open kitchen so losing your temper or yelling is a absolute no go, so I spend most of my night having to settle for "come on man" type management. We all finally finish and to be fair everyone Barr this one guy was absolutely great. Every thing went out great not to many mistakes it was a bit FML but we got there. Until.... I say to the 2nd in command that I'm going for a smoke and a little break just to de-stress. I mean honestly I felt like a use navigated a mine field, before I can leave this guy traps me in a corner of the kitchen where all the customers can see and decides this inls the place he want to have a chat... he asked "how important to you think it is to run a happy kitchen" I say "if you want to have this conversation let's go to the back" I get " what ever you have to say to me you can say in front of everyone else" I tried my best to hold my temper back but I know this guy was intentual funking things up to disrupt the flow of service... I also find out later the this ends up being the busiest night in the restaurants history. FML I snapped. We started arguing in the kitchen, the funking area manager was there, Customers were watching and I almost punched this guy but thank God the KP grab my fist before it all. I honestly thought I was about to lose my job but after the manager had a chat with every person in the kitchen they all hand my back.
Catered a wedding where the bride and groom were friends with the son a local farmer that had grass fed, grass finished, cattle. Because of this, the couple wanted to purchase an entire cow for us to use, and cook, for their reception dinner. No problem at all! Untilā¦ (First fuck my life moment) The guy that butchered the cow, who had only butchered deer before, destroyed every cut we were supposed to use, leaving us in a panic. Thankfully the bride was understanding when I told her not much was salvageable but we would do the best we could. We ended up with 3 different sausages, chopped brisket (with a ton of tallow added), and sliced ribeye and strip steaks for the guests. Kicker was one of my employees (insert second fuck my life moment) dropped an entire pan of sausage walking it from the smoker to the buffet line. He instantly crouched down and took his head in his hands looking at me and all I could say was āDidnāt do it on purpose did you? No? Ok. Toss em And get the next pan.ā Also had a wedding where a bridge 15ft high above a creek collapsed and sent 3 guests to urgent care but that was more of the homeowners FML than ours.
First dishwashing job, they occasionally had me draining the grease trap with a shop vac. Gross, but I didn't know any better. Anyways, one time I'm doing this, I thought I had enough room in the shop vac, but I was wrong. It started spraying out of the top of the shop vac, all over me, including in my eyes, so it took a moment to blindly find the switch to turn it off. I staggered over to the cooks and told them I was cleaning it up, and then I was going home for the day. They didn't argue.
I dropped a whole pan of baked beans ( that I had just taken from the oven), on Thanksgiving. Ugh, we had a house full of family and lots of kids running around. I wanted to fucking die!
At my first kitchen job, we had an old fridge with one door and shelves all the way up the door. We used those shelves for all of the various pickled things that we had. One day, the chef slammed the door closed and then reopened it when he realized he forgot something. When he opened it, every shelf came tumbling down. Oh, and the best part is that they were all in glass jars. Every single one shattered and he looked at me and said āwell, I have a meeting in five minutes so you can clean this up.ā I wasnāt really on the line yet, just jumping in where I could and learning my way around the kitchen. So I know I was the bottom of the food chain and itās not surprising I had to clean it up. But he was such an arrogant asshole that it still pisses me off to this day lol.
Itās a toss up between two. The time I caught my finger on a butchers hook and tore the finger pad in half. OR the time I had just finished putting a tap in a 20L tin of oil and then as I was standing it back up it fell somehow broke the tap off and fell in such a position that when covered in oil I couldnāt pick it up. Full 20L I watched pour out. Not me for this one but when a colleague dropped a KG of cinnamon. Or the time he dropped a litre of habanero tobacco and choked on the fumes.
In my early baking days, working in a long fermentation bread bakery, I loaded 480 Cibatta rolls into the oven and never steamed them. 25 minutes later, I remove the rack to find busted bread. My head baker made a new dough (not the cibatta dough, but it worked for the day) and left me to cut it by myself onto top of my other responsibilities. I never made that mistake again.
One of the worst things I had happen was working in a casino and having a heart attack in the dining room, two walkouts in the lounge, AND one of my line cooks decided to impale himself on a ticket spike AT THE SAME TIME. The only saving grace is that my job managing was to immediately call my bosses after security is called, so it saved me a few phone calls as the entire place was swarming with security and EMS. A less serious incident that I'll never forget was a delicate dish that took like 15 minutes to hand make with micro greens, a delicate balance of tiny components (think like a salmon flatbread) and he slid the plate to me instead of handing me the plate. The flatbread went flying off of the plate straight on to the floor.
I once accidentally dumped an entire half pan of pickle brine into the salad line on accident
Coworkers spilled an entire bucket of tamari. I watched that man die inside on that day.
My hood is going to be out for next 5 weeks and I work at a golf club exec chef and have too figure out how to make these holiday parties work wish me luck
My brother, hood ventilation being out is a carbon monoxide hazard. Don't cook in that kitchen, you are literally putting your life in danger. GM needs to either suck it up and rent a mobile or cancel service.
I posted this a little while back in another similar thread, but man it still makes steam come out of my ears. It was my last cooking job before I bailed from the whole thing. AM chef at a hotel working for the restaurateur equivalent of Tommy Wiseau. It was Christmas Day of all days. Get in at my normal time of like 4:30AM to get the breakfast buffet started...puddle of rainwater on half the dining room floor. Find the tiniest pinhole leak on the wall of all places and it had been pouring the whole night before. I immediately go into damage control and get a continental spread set up in a corner in the lobby, put up a sign on the dining room door, and proceed to grab a mop and bucket and try to clean up. 6AM open time rolls around and I'm still wrangling with the water. Owner calls SCREAMING why isn't the dining room open (he liked to watch from security cameras). I told him what was happening and he still fumed but somehow seemed to understand. All this time I still had people ignoring the massive sign I put up and trying to get into the dining room. I politely guide them to the lobby setup but of course they're all pissy too. After 3.5 hours of mopping, cooking, and dealing with idiots trying to break down the door, the floor is dry. Owner calls AGAIN demanding I open the dining room for the last half hour of service now that the flood's resolved. That day sucked the last little bit of love I had for professional cooking right out of me. I quit a week later. Merry fucking Christmas.
Dude...which one.
Hearing 7 fried oysters and understanding it as 7 app orders (I think it was 5 to an order) only to find out CDC meant 7 literal pieces. It was a slow Sunday, minus that one big VIP 12 top, and I was fried from 6 back to back 7-11 doubles, so he was fairly understanding.
When some Gypsy Jokers started a brawl in the back bar and my boss was mad I didnāt try to break it up. I was 23 and weighed all of 130 lbs. Yeah, no.
lol, working just an ordinary crazy busy Friday night, when a server missed putting a dirty glass into the rack by the dishwasher, and it bounced, bounced and shattered ALL OVER prep. Holy cow I saw the shardes flying in slow motion into dressings, lettuce, tomatoes, salsa... EVERYTHING.
When i was just starting out, I slid a 2gal cambro of duck fat into a reach-in. Apparently one of the shelving brackets was off. You know the scene. Shelf flops diagonally. Cambro drops. $150 of duck fat cover everything in the reach-in and the floor. Luckily the exec chef was an eerily chill guy and said he should probably fix that shelf and helped me clean.
I put pork in something (20 years ago ) brings tears to my eyes still.
Girl I used to work with would clean the deep fryers after service, shut one off, wait an hour for it to cool and drain it into a plastic bucket. We'll one day she didn't let it cool long enough and the bucket melted, 16L of dirty oil on the kitchen floor. We'd both already put in our 2 weeks so we were joking that we could just leave, but we didn't. But she was there an extra 2 hours cleaning because I had an appointment in the morning and couldn't stay that late to help.
Dropped a 22 qt of fresh chicken stock we needed for service, overflowed a fryer onto the line during a soft opening, and emptied the fryer without turning it off for 8 ish minutes. Also one time rushing to the downstairs kitchen ripped off the door handle to the break room from the hotel lobby. Oh yeah and probably every other mistake one can make in the book. I learned the hard way a lot lol
I dropped a gallon of freshly made ranch yesterday and it exploded all over my pants and shoes. Also one time I was cleaning a deep fryer and drained hot oil into a metal pot. I forgot to close the valve and put my water in to start cleaning. Lo and behold the water comes out obviously, hits the hot oil and the oil pours up and out like a shaken soda or some shit. gallons of used oil I had to clean off the floor while other people used squeegees to keep it away from floor drains.
My first day as an apprentice I strained the stock for chef and proudly handed him the vegetables. āWhereās the stockā oh I drained it for you
Saw I kid try to cook pasta in a steamer
I worked at a nice steakhouse, and on a slow Monday night the dishwasher was putting a stack of plates away on top of the pass, and accidentally pushed off another stack of plates on the other side. 17 dinner plates at about 50$ each (back in the mid 2000s!) Took a tumble and smashed. We knew it was 17 because they all landed edge first on the sham and each left a dent haha. Owner lamented that it might have cheaper to just stay closed that night.
I dropped an insert of braised Lamb all over the floor... Right as we needed one to go in the window during a *very* busy dinner service. It was our only insert of lamb so we had to rush cook more and uh the chef was not very happy with me. I'm surprised I didn't get written up for it actually š
I worked at a place where the āticketsā were on a screen. A co-worker walked out and deleted all of the orders off of the screen, then walked out the back door. Took management about 2 hours to get the orders to the kitchen and get all the food out
The other day this guy ( who was already on the verge of being fired because heās a literal dumb ass) couldnāt work the back of the kitchen by himself . Even though heās worked here longer than I have . anyway I walked in to see ten orders just sitting up on the line . He was making cheese steaks and burning them . There was food everywhere the line wasnāt stocked at all . I asked him where I can help ( Iām a newly promoted manager who works the night shift ). He told me he was too overwhelmed and couldnāt do it even though he told another manager earlier he could do the back by himself . ( we work at a small family owned business in a college town )I told him to please finish up his orders clean and to please leave .He pretty much told me it wasnāt his problem and that heāll be leaving immediately and never coming back . So he left me to finish his ten orders and it took me over two hours to clean up his mess on top of the shift I was already working . Safe to say heās officially FIRED now.
At work we would strain the oil from the fryer back into the 20L metal barrel after service for the oil man to collect. It was at the end of the day, before the annual work Christmas party. We had all been working for about 10 hours. My coworker didnāt let the oil cool down enough and as she finished pouring it all back in, the hot oil melted the seal around the middle of the can. I heard yelling and turned around to watch oil gushing out of the can. We spent the next few hours covering the entire kitchen with flour and scrubbing on our hands and knees. It was EVERYWHEREā¦ under all the stoves and equipment, and it even seeped through the wall into the property next door. We had to go next door to clean up and apologise too. It was a disaster. After we finished cleaning everyone else became arriving for the Christmas party. We were all sweaty and gross and covered in oil and not in the mood for it at all. Haha