Block 1: Day 10 Stocks, soups, sauces and a hard lesson
Making soups and stocks was pretty easy albeit a bit touchy at times. This week it was all liquids and we made a variety of stocks and soups which no doubt will be for later consumption. It's interesting the pace that you go at with the class although at the same time I begin to feel that we might not be as efficient as we could possibly be. Using far more stock than what we produced earlier in the week, I feel a bit guilty borrowing stock already made by other classes which seems to be more thievery than learning. You never steal from anyone else's Mise-En-Place (every ingredient that you need for your dishes) and this feels like the ultimate form of it.
So we are down to 19 people now and out of all people it was one person who I didn't think would have quit...let's call her Kyle. A hardass or just extremely serious, she had 5 years in the industry before she decided to take the program. She would have been a great person to rely in the program considering her small amount of leadership skills after having the head of the department talk to us about wanting to come together as a group in order to succeed. She had an infection which made her miss 3 days of the course and therefore had to withdraw and attend at a different date. A shame but what can you do?
However drama abounds occurs when hard lessons are learned. The cooking industry is a lot about personal responsibility and a almost slave like dedication to your job where you follow every order and just do it until the end. You're at the mercy of human nature and you just have to weather it. When you'll break from the severity of the industry is up to your own character however true character isn't shown by what you do at work, but what you do outside of it.
And I truly mean outside of it. There's always an expectation to finish work at a specific time, namely within the 8 hours before you hit overtime and drive labour costs through the roof. However it isn't about the overtime. We love overtime. Even though we have a peculiar relationship where we feel guilty for taking overtime or are lightly lectured on the cons of overtime, I love it. I would never go out of my way to get it, but nothing is satisfying like getting overtime for the job that you have to do instead making up for failing to do.
The in the end you finish the job when you finish the job. The schedule is only there to show at BEST when you start and when you should finish; however that's bullshit. You're there 15 minutes early and you leave when you are done your close which is entirely determined by how busy you are and to a certain degree of preparedness in starting your close. We all love to get off at the appropriate time, but due to the OCD nature of the job we instinctualy finish cleaning everything that can be seen when.
However when that overtime hits sometimes and you know that perhaps that you are behind and wasn't responsible enough to plan ahead or just perhaps you feel that it's hour 8 going on 9...you deserve to get the fuck out as soon as possible; you feel that sort of rush of wanting to get out of work. You are in off hours and even though you are getting paid in some respect you are outside of work right now. How you act in finishing your job properly outside of the 8 hour regiment is a true test of character.
Today was a hard lesson for many and a reminder to others. The food industry is a peculiar one because really, a LOT of the industry is made up of youths. Students and high schools looking for their first job, first as a dishwasher and then slowly moving up the line. Far more easier at pub like places like Fogg and Sudds or EARLs (which I seem to find more and more is like the Juniour Hockey League of the cooking industry in the Lower Mainland) where production is done to a point that a monkey could do it. In fact they'd probably let a monkey do it if it wasn't for the absolute foodsafe nightmare that could accompany it. While I maintain that you meet the most peculiarly responsible people in the food industry, a school setting really starts to degrade that mentality. Standing around doing nothing really contributes to being pretty damn lazy, especially for the movement junkies that we become to be. 12:30pm rolled around and there were people who wanted to leave when there was still stuff to be done.
What resulted was a small lecture addressed to the class about when you are finished and it's not always at 12:30pm or the scheduled time. Often a class as a keener, someone who asks the questions that are obvious. They are useful in the sense that they might touch upon something that you didn't think of asking but in the end they are pretty annoying. I don't know it's because they don't know when to shut their mouths or if they just want to show off how eager they are to learn but sometimes the best example of character is to know when to NOT speak and just listen. Our resident keener keener jellybeaner Korey decided to bring up "contradictions" in our chef instructors patterns. "But we left the past few days without you saying anything" she pointed out. While Chef was pointing out that we leave when he officially tells us to leave, Korey was deciding that we should be able to leave on the basis of some unofficial parting of the ways in the past.
So we are down to 19 people now and out of all people it was one person who I didn't think would have quit...let's call her Kyle. A hardass or just extremely serious, she had 5 years in the industry before she decided to take the program. She would have been a great person to rely in the program considering her small amount of leadership skills after having the head of the department talk to us about wanting to come together as a group in order to succeed. She had an infection which made her miss 3 days of the course and therefore had to withdraw and attend at a different date. A shame but what can you do?
However drama abounds occurs when hard lessons are learned. The cooking industry is a lot about personal responsibility and a almost slave like dedication to your job where you follow every order and just do it until the end. You're at the mercy of human nature and you just have to weather it. When you'll break from the severity of the industry is up to your own character however true character isn't shown by what you do at work, but what you do outside of it.
And I truly mean outside of it. There's always an expectation to finish work at a specific time, namely within the 8 hours before you hit overtime and drive labour costs through the roof. However it isn't about the overtime. We love overtime. Even though we have a peculiar relationship where we feel guilty for taking overtime or are lightly lectured on the cons of overtime, I love it. I would never go out of my way to get it, but nothing is satisfying like getting overtime for the job that you have to do instead making up for failing to do.
The in the end you finish the job when you finish the job. The schedule is only there to show at BEST when you start and when you should finish; however that's bullshit. You're there 15 minutes early and you leave when you are done your close which is entirely determined by how busy you are and to a certain degree of preparedness in starting your close. We all love to get off at the appropriate time, but due to the OCD nature of the job we instinctualy finish cleaning everything that can be seen when.
However when that overtime hits sometimes and you know that perhaps that you are behind and wasn't responsible enough to plan ahead or just perhaps you feel that it's hour 8 going on 9...you deserve to get the fuck out as soon as possible; you feel that sort of rush of wanting to get out of work. You are in off hours and even though you are getting paid in some respect you are outside of work right now. How you act in finishing your job properly outside of the 8 hour regiment is a true test of character.
Today was a hard lesson for many and a reminder to others. The food industry is a peculiar one because really, a LOT of the industry is made up of youths. Students and high schools looking for their first job, first as a dishwasher and then slowly moving up the line. Far more easier at pub like places like Fogg and Sudds or EARLs (which I seem to find more and more is like the Juniour Hockey League of the cooking industry in the Lower Mainland) where production is done to a point that a monkey could do it. In fact they'd probably let a monkey do it if it wasn't for the absolute foodsafe nightmare that could accompany it. While I maintain that you meet the most peculiarly responsible people in the food industry, a school setting really starts to degrade that mentality. Standing around doing nothing really contributes to being pretty damn lazy, especially for the movement junkies that we become to be. 12:30pm rolled around and there were people who wanted to leave when there was still stuff to be done.
What resulted was a small lecture addressed to the class about when you are finished and it's not always at 12:30pm or the scheduled time. Often a class as a keener, someone who asks the questions that are obvious. They are useful in the sense that they might touch upon something that you didn't think of asking but in the end they are pretty annoying. I don't know it's because they don't know when to shut their mouths or if they just want to show off how eager they are to learn but sometimes the best example of character is to know when to NOT speak and just listen. Our resident keener keener jellybeaner Korey decided to bring up "contradictions" in our chef instructors patterns. "But we left the past few days without you saying anything" she pointed out. While Chef was pointing out that we leave when he officially tells us to leave, Korey was deciding that we should be able to leave on the basis of some unofficial parting of the ways in the past.
Big mistake
Aside from never arguing with the chef in charge, don't assume just because something happened in the past means that it will continue. I knew this shit was going to happen with her. These are one of these people who will hold something against another person due to the idea that what occurred in the past must mean it should occur (or be held accountable) in the future. She's one of those people who can't adapt or more importantly understand that two different concepts could exist for the same procedure. Eventually there will be harder lessons learned and more people dropping out. Let's hope it's sooner for others rather than later.
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