Everyone wants to throttle the kitchen sometimes. They spend a lot of their time getting high in a lot of restaurants, no matter what we try to do to prevent it. They like coke, and they like sneaking alcohol into the kitchen. So what happens when the cooks incite a rebellion? Here’s what happens: All Hell breaks loose!
Cooks get pissed off at servers all the time. The thing is, sometimes they don’t realize that the cooks and servers work in a delicate balance. Without cooks, the servers cannot serve the food. Without servers, the cooks don’t make food therefore they don’t make a paycheck. That makes cook rebellions rare, but they do happen and they usually happen for bullshit reasons. I’ve seen them happen over everything from petty arguments with the waitstaff to attempts for a raise.
Cook rebellions can be anything from fucking up orders on purpose to stopping cooking. Cook times can go from normal to taking hours, and they know what they’re doing. They get servers and managers all in the kitchen, and everyone gets to yelling at each other while the guests suffer with no food, and our money suffers because of no tips. Nobody wins. Rebellions are nothing more than crackhead cooks being selfish. Fuck them all.
The last one I was involved with had to do with my telling a cook “Can you not tell the fucking difference between medium fucking rare and well done?” Apparently that’s the wrong thing to say to a fat cook that thinks he’s the gods gift to restaurants. This cook, DoneWell we’ll call him, just like my managers and the other servers and cocktails call him, looks at me like I’m crazy. “Is you da cook? No? I don’ fuckin thank so. Get yo ass outta my kitchen befo I knock you down.” Fucking ghetto cooks. That’s the problem, hiring cooks that don’t know what they’re fucking doing and putting them into a high volume situation is a disaster waiting to happen. I wasn’t going to take that lying down, having experience as a high volume grill cook myself.
“Would you like me to come back there and show you how it’s done?” I asked.
“You couldn’t handle dis job boy.” DoneWell replied, “I been doin dis fa yeahs.”
“What the fuck ever dude, any body could do your job better than you can, at least we can tell when a steak is getting too fucking done before we send it out! Remake the fucking steak, and do your job the right fucking way.” I start storming off, still raving, “How fucking hard is it to find a cook that knows what the fuck he’s doing, fucking morons just out of fucking jail. How hard is it to throw a steak on without using a fucking weight, not everything has to be well done. Fucking with my money, this stupid bastard needs to find another fucking job.” I kept raving until I got back to the game room, where I put a smile back on my face and let the guest know that his steak would be back out to the table, made properly in just a few minutes. Ten minutes go by, and there’s still no medium rare steak. I go back to the kitchen.
“Got an E.T.A. on my steak?” I call as I’m walking into the kitchen area from our hallway.
“Nope.” I hear as I turn the corner. I look onto the cooks line and I see them all just standing there. The manager is back there, and he looks at me with daggers in his eyes, then pulls me to the side.
“What did you say to them?”
“I just asked how hard it was to make sure a steak didn’t get to be well done when it was ordered medium rare, something that DoneWell over there can’t seem to grasp, at any point in time, much less this particular time!”
“We’ll they’re refusing to cook any more of your food unless you apologize.”
“I’m not apologizing for being right! They use a grill weight on every fucking steak that’s cooked, and when that makes my guests mid rare steak end up well done, I get pissed off! Do I need to go back there and make the food myself? I guarandamntee you that I can do a better job on the grill than he can!”
In the end, the manager had to threaten the cooks with firing to get them to do their jobs, and I learned once again that losing my temper is not always the best course of action. It doesn’t change the fact that the cook I went off on still doesn’t know how to do his job, to this day, I won’t suggest a steak if he’s working on the grill.
Sometimes cooks just refuse to work because they’re too high. They spend lots of time running to the bathroom to snort another line of cocaine, or running outside to smoke another joint. A lot of them are too busy stealing food to cook for the servers who sneak them alcohol. One of them that recently got fired from my job was selling coke to half the servers, while stealing from their lockers. When we called him out on it, the whole kitchen rallied against us again.
When it gets busy in some restaurants, the cooks just decide that they’re going to take their sweet time cooking our food, instead of rushing it out correctly. After all, they’re making a paycheck and we have to work off of tips. If they run long cook times, the food still comes out looking and tasting like shit, they’re just doing it slower than normal. I’ve been a cook, it’s not that hard, even in the most stressful of times. Dealing with servers as a cook isn’t as hard as they make it sound either, all you have to do is smile and nod, and do your fucking job.
I have a problem with cooks, can ya tell?
Ribeye
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December 14th, 2007 at 2:36 am
Whoa, way to generalize. I get having a problem with a cook who messes up a steak temp but not every cook is coked up.
I cooked for a very long time and I treat my kitchen with so much respect because I know how hard they work.
I think you get back what you put in and you really should start treating your kitchen much better.
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December 14th, 2007 at 2:58 am
You’re right, Masie, not every cook is coked up. I never said they were, I said Most of them were. I cooked for 2 years, and I loved it. I love serving more, so I went back to it. The day shift cooks at my job are awesome, they aren’t incompetent like their night shift counterparts. I treat my kitchen the way they treat the entire waitstaff, myself included. I thank them when they do a good job, I heckle them when they heckle us, and when the kitchen, namely DoneWell, the cook that inspired the post to begin with, can’t get a steak right to save their lives, I let them know about it!
I’ve worked with awesome cooks, and I’ve worked with the dregs. I’ve worked for more than one restaurant that had the dregs. It’s not like I’m the only server who notices it.
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December 14th, 2007 at 10:46 am
Every server has their breaking point, this was yours. My experience, on the whole, has been much like yours. (throw in the harrassment bc I’m female). Not EVERY cook was like that but a good bit more than 3/4 were.
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December 15th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
[...] This is dedicated to Ribeye @ RagingServer.com [...]
December 15th, 2007 at 9:46 pm
It sounds like your kitchen is on part with most of your FoH companions. I do know however that if one of the servers melted down on a cook like that (as long as said cook wasn’t acknowledged as a fuckoff) the server would be ahead of the game if we only weren’t cooking his food.
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