Restaurant industry thread. - Like r/KitchenConfidential except we can say the N word.

[Kiwi Lime Pie]

First question, what is the dumbest mistake you've ever made at work?

For a couple of summers during college, I was employed by a large corporation to work in their cafeterias. One year, I was asked to make taco shells and I burned myself when I lifted the tongs out of the hot oil, unware there was some on the inside of the tongs ready to run down and make contact with my hand/fingers.

Depending on the location of the dish pit, the dishwasher can know all and hear all.

At the same cafeteria mentioned above, we had some people from one of the other cafeterias join us for a week when their cafeteria was closed during the company's rotating shutdown period. One of those workers decided to use the dishroom to share the details about her private life when she told us how she pulled down the shower curtain rod at home one morning during sex before she came to work.

Would servers prefer to be paid a minimum wage of $15/hr with no tips or received a tipped minimum wage of $5?

This is a debate in my part of Kiwi Land where the politicians want to make minimum wage the same for tipped and nontipped workers. Many of the tipped workers have expressed concern that they will make less money should that law be enacted because they can make well above minimum wages after adding in their tips - the concern being that people will no longer want to tip workers who are making the full minimum wage.

Grossest thing you've ever seen in a kitchen?

A lazy dishwasher knowingly placing dishes with food residue back on the cart to go out for reuse instead of running them through another cleaning cycle.

Unrelated to the kitchen per se but equally gross from my first summer of cafeteria work was the ice cream machine only being cleaned once during the entire summer I was there. When I saw how disgusting it was on the inside when it was finally cleaned, it explained why I had issues any time I ate ice cream during our meal breaks and I never used it again the rest of that summer.

The following year, when I worked in a different cafeteria for the same company, the ice cream machine was cleaned regularly and I was taught how to clean it myself. It was the one task I took most seriously after my experience the previous summer.

 

[That Guy From The Thing]

Refusing to tip is as morale and nearly as necessary as piracy these days. Megacorps own the world, so money is the only power. Give as little as you can to pieces of shit.

I tip at one place, a dinky little chinese diner that has amazing eggrolls. 3 for 4$ constitute a meal. I add in an extra buck because they always give you enough sweet and sour. I want this mom and pop business to succeed. Tip because you feel a desire to, not because you are shamed into it.

 

[oramge cat]

I couldn't get on for a while so this is my first post on KF in May but I finally experienced a restaurant milestone. Grill cook walked off the line on Saturday night during the middle of the rush. He had like ten steaks on the grill I needed and we were low on steak.

Not gonna miss the guy, he sucked at cooking and being a decent person and he was disrespectful to our kitchen and our food.

Edit: How was everyone's Mother's Day?

 

[Tom Nook's Gloryhole]

Honestly the biggest mistake I can think of is just in general when my mind goes blank and I suddenly struggle to process any of the tickets. Like I read the same ticket over and over again but cannot process it because my mind has been turned to mush from a 3+ hour rush and I can't remember what day it is and I've just been told the guy to replace me at the end has called in sick and my feet hurt and if the server takes another wrong dish out again I will stab her to death forty times with the raw meat knife.

Some days I genuinely don't understand how I got through a shift, when I'm on form it genuinely feels magical to just power through a shitload of tickets in one go but the bad days are my personal Vietnam.

EDIT: and actually I fucking hate how every restaurant will drag their feet in hiring new staff only to finally get a guy 3 weeks too late that's a complete and utter fucking retard who will do three shifts and never be seen again. You just hired a guy that's going through a messy divorce settlement and doesn't know what days he actually has the kids and you're pencilling him in for important opens or closes? Go fuck yourselves to hell you fucking shitcunt.

 

[Asian tech support]

New question: Grossest thing you've ever seen in a kitchen?

Back when I worked at a pizza place, a customer found a half melted glove under the cheese on their pie. I dunno if they cut into it or took a bite from it.

 

[oramge cat]

Honestly the biggest mistake I can think of is just in general when my mind goes blank and I suddenly struggle to process any of the tickets. Like I read the same ticket over and over again but cannot process it because my mind has been turned to mush from a 3+ hour rush and I can't remember what day it is and I've just been told the guy to replace me at the end has called in sick and my feet hurt and if the server takes another wrong dish out again I will stab her to death forty times with the raw meat knife.

Some days I genuinely don't understand how I got through a shift, when I'm on form it genuinely feels magical to just power through a shitload of tickets in one go but the bad days are my personal Vietnam.

EDIT: and actually I fucking hate how every restaurant will drag their feet in hiring new staff only to finally get a guy 3 weeks too late that's a complete and utter fucking retard who will do three shifts and never be seen again. You just hired a guy that's going through a messy divorce settlement and doesn't know what days he actually has the kids and you're pencilling him in for important opens or closes? Go fuck yourselves to hell you fucking shitcunt.

I do the same on FOH end, sometimes I'm just staring at my notebook reading the same shit over and over before it registers.

On your edit, I usually won't even learn a new line cook's name until he's made it through a week because the amount that have left after a day or two had convinced me that it's not even worth bothering.

 

[Tom Nook's Gloryhole]

New question: Grossest thing you've ever seen in a kitchen?

Either vomit in the dishpit and having to scoop it out with your own hands because the dishie is a fucking baby (while also trying to work out if it's from a customer's dish that wasn't scraped or if we need to send someone home) or a fish related spillage in the walk-in that nobody bothered to clean up and now everything in the fucking fridge stinks of sewage.

Oh we also had a used nappy put on a plate (on the way back of course, even the retards in the kitchen aren't that stupid) and I had to fucking yell at a server until they cried because of how much of a fucking nono that was to put a biohazard like that in a commercial kitchen. I just put the entire stack of plates it was on straight into the trash and sprayed the entire general area down with disinfectant. Naturally the manager came in to try and discipline me and I told her to either drop it or her next staff meal is going on that nappy plate. I never saw that server again.

I'm generally amazed at how dishies are such drugged up retards that I'll regularly have to drop off the line to fix their shit. You scrape a plate (if the servers are lazy), spray it, and put it in a dishwasher. That's literally it you fucking downy. Although of course I can't complain too much because it's actually kinda refreshing to pick up a dishie shift once in a while on chef pay and just zone out while the entire kitchen collapses around me.

 

[MS Paint Gigachad]

I'm generally amazed at how dishies are such drugged up retards that I'll regularly have to drop off the line to fix their shit. You scrape a plate (if the servers are lazy), spray it, and put it in a dishwasher. That's literally it you fucking downy. Although of course I can't complain too much because it's actually kinda refreshing to pick up a dishie shift once in a while on chef pay and just zone out while the entire kitchen collapses around me.

In my last job there were 1 guy who'd always be assigned to the role of dishie, he was a literal retard and he'd sometimes have to wash the same damn thing twice because it still had gunk or grease on it after the first round. And mind ya, i was working in fast food, all he had to deal with was kitchen/line stuff, not customers' plates, since customers would dine off disposable stuff.

And yes, I get you when you say "it's actually kinda refreshing to pick up a dishie shift once in a while". Pretty mindless work, unlike the hectic rush as line/server

 

[Tom Nook's Gloryhole]

he was a literal retard and he'd sometimes have to wash the same damn thing twice because it still had gunk or grease on it after the first round.

Tbh I prefer the OCD dishies to those who have zero issue with going "that's good enough" and putting a dirty plate in a stack so when you're knee deep in the middle of a rush you pick out dirty plate after dirty plate and realise you've got nothing to plate the steak onto so it's going to fucking die on the line.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Ever wanna know what Hell is? Working at a fried food cart mid-summer at a county fair. I'd sooner do asphalt jobs again than that, wouldn't wish it on my worst goddamn enemy.

One of the all-time most horrifying restaurant stories I've read (and this happened within the last ten years) was a sinkhole opening up underneath a Church's Chicken restaurant, trapping employees inside, then the fryer also gave way and spilled all the burning oil on one.

In the horrifying moments that followed, a small fire ignited, two of the workers were pulled to safety while a third was left trapped between appliances with witnesses saying her body was 'literally cooking' in the grease, according to KTRK.

(link).

 

[MS Paint Gigachad]

Tbh I prefer the OCD dishies to those who have zero issue with going "that's good enough" and putting a dirty plate in a stack so when you're knee deep in the middle of a rush you pick out dirty plate after dirty plate and realise you've got nothing to plate the steak onto so it's going to fucking die on the line.

Can't relate to the second part, but it was frustrating trying to set up the line for the next day and finding gunk in the containers I was supposed to use... and sending them back and waiting for a new one. And I definitely can relate to the first. I was probably closer to the OCD dishie, but I'd gotten bitched at for wasting soap or being slow by one of my co workers. Wasn't the manager or anything like that though.

 

[oramge cat]

One of the all-time most horrifying restaurant stories I've read (and this happened within the last ten years) was a sinkhole opening up underneath a Church's Chicken restaurant, trapping employees inside, then the fryer also gave way and spilled all the burning oil on one.


(link).

This is the kind of story that gives me that panicky feeling that I would describe as similar to drowning but without the actual drowning, just the feeling you get when you are drowning.

I just looked it up and it's even worse, it was three teenage girls and one suffered third degree burns to 75% of her body. I actually got a little sick reading the story about this one. Cool, now I can spend the rest of my life vaguely aware that I could be standing by the line and a pit could open up out of nowhere, drowning me in fryer oil.

 

[AbyssStarer]

Worked at a Subway before and the overnighter spent all night high playing Switch instead of doing things like cleaning the ice out of the line or changing the line tubs or washing dishes.

 

[Starscream's Loyalty]

I was a hostess at a local spot for a little over a year and one of the new girls was assigned to me so I could teach her how things ran/where everything was. The bitch didn't talk at all. She wasn't mute, she talked to another coworker of mine who was her friend. She just didn't communicate at all. She only lasted a week.

If you're not going to greet/talk to strangers, then why the fuck did you sign up to be a hostess? I hate coworkers who don't pull their own weight.

 

[Tom Nook's Gloryhole]

Tbh I've talked enough shit about how bad the restaurant industry is but honestly I've never seen an industry with so many crackheaded type people who don't smoke crack. I love chatting to new staff members about famous characters that have done the most insane shit because it doesn't even seem real at times. Probably the only industry where you can see a manager and a coworker scream at one another to the point of raising fists only to be chilling together over a drink an hour later.

If the pay wasn't so shit it'd probably be the KF certified job industry, with servers having to avoid staying in the kitchen too long in order to avoid catching autism.

 

[Super Guido]

When I used to work at a fast casual restaurant, the employees working the evening shift would regularly hide the dirty pans behind clean ones. That was always a nice surprise when working the dish pit. Guess that's what happen when you hire college and high school age kids who don't give a shit.

I know we didn't have an actual dishwasher and it's a real drag having to do all of it by hand, but it's super unsanitary...

 

[din365]

First question, what is the dumbest mistake you've ever made at work? Mine was the time I hooked up the wrong chemical to the dishwasher (degreaser instead of that nasty commercial dish detergent that will burn your skin off) and flooded the server alley with foam.

i was filling the mop bucket at the mop bucket station, got called over by the cooik because they needed help with something, saw water runing from out from under the grills. the way the kitchen was set up was it basiceally had 3 aisles with the prep and chemical station in the back alleyway,with the kitchen line being in the center, and the server window up front, with the dishwasher area being off to the side of all 3. Well i remembered i left the mop water filling station running, and it overflowed. I was going to mop the floor anyways and nothing was on the floor to get damaged, so it was no harm.
Another was that we had these water bottles full of water to squirt on the grill to steam something(mostly to melt cheese), but i mindlessly left on right on the grill for 10 seconds until a co-worker grabbed it. melted the bottom a bit, but didn't melt through or leak.

 

[sodaboard]

First ever job was getting paid in cash under the table to wash dishes at a local italian place that was reopening. Learned how to make God-tier garlic knots. Main pizza chef went apeshit one day because one of the customers said the cheese smelled a bit funny, spent the next hour yelling "THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THE CHEESE, THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THE FUCKING CHEESE" while the other chef just nonchalantly told him to let it go. Emptying the grease trap ranks #1 as the worst thing I have ever smelled in my life and I find it hard to believe anything will top it.

Second job was at a fast food place. Their whole register/ordering system hadn't been updated since 1980 something so I had to deal with all the bullshit technical limitations on the registers straight out of fucking Ridley Scott's Alien (you can only void the last item you put in, menus and submenus are nonexistent, etc.). One day I changed the name on the register to be mine instead of the other girl's who had clocked out. Manager noticed 20 minutes later, went apeshit and sent me home. Probably some gayass technical limitation and probably fucked up their accounting for the day but if that much can be changed just by changing the fucking name of the person using the register your system is dogshit to begin with. Funny enough the one manager that everyone hated was the only one I got along with and never had any problems with.

Third job was at another fast food place that was much worse than the previous one. Always fucking busy that marketed to the bottom of the barrel nog and white trash "drunk and/or high at 2AM" crowd. Main job was to clean the lobby, but you can only clean the same floors and wipe down the same dozen or so tables for eight fucking straight hours and not go insane. I'm 99% sure some spic girl there was into me but I was too oblivious/autistic to notice at the time, nor did I care since all I wanted was to get the fuck out and not talk to anyone. She'd get really bitchy when I backed out of her small talk. She was also fucking insane. Some vietnamese twink faggot grabbed my ass once and had the manager not been in direct line of sight I would've done some shit to him that his grandpappy hadn't experienced since the Tet Offensive.

Food service. Never again.

 

[oramge cat]

Next question: Stupidest order? I had a customer ask for ketchup for his french fries, which is normally not a weird thing to do but they were served with a saffron aioli to dip them in. Idiot paid $18 for Ore-Ida fries and Heinz. The dip was the appetizer, the fries were a conveniemt way to put it in your mouth.

I was a hostess at a local spot for a little over a year and one of the new girls was assigned to me so I could teach her how things ran/where everything was. The bitch didn't talk at all. She wasn't mute, she talked to another coworker of mine who was her friend. She just didn't communicate at all. She only lasted a week.

If you're not going to greet/talk to strangers, then why the fuck did you sign up to be a hostess? I hate coworkers who don't pull their own weight.

This reminded me of something.

An ex-gf who was a waitress at a different restaurant came to my place after work and said that their new girl was my old work friend and they talked about me all day. My previous job my best friend at work was a woman so I was pretty excited because I hadn't seen her since I left and when I was like (fake names) "Oh cool you met Barbara?" she looks confused and said her name was Christine. I told her that I tried to talk to her like once but she came off as rude and uninterested so I pretty much left her alone unless I had to talk to her about something work related. She knew like, a disturbing amount of detail about my life and told her that we would hang out outside of work and all this shit that was just totally made up. We usually worked different shifts because I was the morning prep guy and she was in college so she worked nights so I'd see her maybe once a week. Apparently she stopped showing up to work after that. Was she stalking me? Creepy!

i was filling the mop bucket at the mop bucket station, got called over by the cooik because they needed help with something, saw water runing from out from under the grills. the way the kitchen was set up was it basiceally had 3 aisles with the prep and chemical station in the back alleyway,with the kitchen line being in the center, and the server window up front, with the dishwasher area being off to the side of all 3. Well i remembered i left the mop water filling station running, and it overflowed. I was going to mop the floor anyways and nothing was on the floor to get damaged, so it was no harm.
Another was that we had these water bottles full of water to squirt on the grill to steam something(mostly to melt cheese), but i mindlessly left on right on the grill for 10 seconds until a co-worker grabbed it. melted the bottom a bit, but didn't melt through or leak.

Yours aren't even that bad! I envy you, I've destroyed hundreds of dollars of product so many times it's just a blur of ruined food and broken glass when I try to recall a specific instance.

 

[ZipDisk]

Supermarket Deli rather than restaurant, one fun thing that I actually was EXPLICITLY allowed to do via my trainer, was the meat donut.

In training, he explained that for some customers, the meat can never be thin enough. We were allowed to deny requests for "shaved" meat based on safety, but there are always customers who will say "No, thinner"
For those people, we were allowed to make the meat donut. This is a cut thinner than 0.5. It doesn't actually work, so you end up with the rind of the sandwich meat, and a big hole in the middle. I was then instructed to ask "Is this thin enough"?

One manager lost her shit when she saw me do that, and I gave her the trainers phone number. (He worked only at the training store, and wasn't really a retail guy.)
He called me and said to keep on doing it.
The manager kept her mouth shut. I'm guessing she found out she was lower on the totem pole than the training manager.