Don’t get me wrong, these kids have probably watched a LOT of Vice documentaries and maybe some Bourdain shows, and they might even be accomplished home cooks with a sprawling collection of cookbooks arranged just-so around their flat (you know, for the aesthetics). The problem is that no television show I have ever watched, nor that Bradley Cooper movie, comes close to capturing what a commercial kitchen is like, nor do they teach you the first thing about MATH (or maths, if you’re British), which is such an important part of being a chef that the entire introductory chapter to the main textbook used by the Culinary Institute of America is devoted to explaining that if you are unprepared to do a lot of math you will fail as a chef.
But hey, it’s either their parents’ money or the bank’s, so what do they care?
Another reason to try to prevent these … things … is that they further confuse the general public by normalising unsustainable standards. When someone has twelve members of staff working in a place that only seats 24 people, and they’re serving something that costs £9.75 to make per portion for £10 (or the inverse, where it technically costs 95p to make and they’re charging £9.50 because they have to subsidise the eight employees that shouldn’t be working), the average customer is none the wiser and thinks that every place should have that many people working and that anything imaginable costs £10 without realising that 99% of these places are burning through money and will default on their loans and close within the next 18 months, thanking everyone for “helping them on their journey” as they “pursue other ventures” etc.
And despite my absolute disdain for the current generation of “entrepreneurs” who think having a great idea for a logo means they are ready to enter an industry that has been know for its almost unbelievable failure rate (something like 90% of restaurants fail in under five years, most of those in under two) and my curmudgeonly exterior, the main reason I discourage the youth is because I have to deal with terribly disappointing staff every day of my life (except Jack, but even Jack sometimes), and I would spare everyone this misery if I could.
A few years ago I was running the kitchen at a certain venue famous for its constant pleas for local charity, which I am legally prevented from badmouthing, having been forced to sign an NDA (or “gag order” as we used to call them) in order to get paid for my time there.* In that kitchen we had some real doozies, employee-wise (and a few absolute gems; it wasn’t all bad). We’ll call them Dannys, because Danny (not his real name, unless it is) was our favourite. And that’s collectively. I am not using the royal We. Danny brought us all months of entertainment and confusion in equal measure, because he continued to text every day for about six weeks after he got fired. So let me, using Danny as an example, let you know the kinds of things you can expect as a burgeoning restaurateur in the modern marketplace.
First of all, in Glasgow at least, you can assume that anyone who applies for a chef position in your restaurant is on cocaine, both at the time of application and every second they are on shift. Much like the habitual drunk, cokeheads have convinced themselves that the duration and constancy of their habit has allowed them to function smoothly and seamlessly thanks to their adaptation to- and tolerance for- their chosen drug. This is false. Literally everyone can tell when you’re fucked up. It’s you that can’t. (I really don’t mean to burst your bubble here, habitual substance abusers, but it’s true). In some kitchens this can be a benefit, as a lot of kitchens are absolute dumpster fires, tended and stoked by a collection of pure cowboys who are changing every single part of a dish, on the fly, to suit the various failings and fuckups of the team at hand. In a well-organised kitchen, designed by someone (probably a super handsome someone with an exotic foreign name like … Dustin, or Rustin, or maybe Justin) who understands and prioritises workflow and consistency, this approach is a lot like hiring five silent, cautious, gentle-fingered sales clerks and one enraged bull to stock shelves in a china shop.
So from day one, Danny was loud, bug-eyed, constantly sniffing, belligerent, dismissive, and completely unable to perform even basic tasks without incident. He would cut himself every day, in the rare instances he was not in the toilet, either doing coke or moaning and panting with the effects of coming down from doing coke. He was one of those men who, for whatever reason, believe that bluster and bravado will cow all dissension, and that any authority must be challenged so you don’t appear weak (to whom remains a mystery, since everyone else in the kitchen had no problem following instructions and taking orders, but somewhere in every macho guy’s skull is an audience of apes, and when someone tells them to do something this simian crowd goes wild demanding a reaction). He was also one of these “chefs” I keep meeting here who love to run their knife on their steel every five minutes in distressingly random directions and at angles that boggle the mind, creating the sort of “shinging” noise one equates with knife honing without any of the practical benefits of actually honing a knife. This is to let lesser chefs know he means business (the business of cutting pieces of his thumb off every shift, apparently).
Danny was also what we would call a “floater”, meaning that even though he had an assigned station and the concurrent duties that go with it, staying there and doing those jobs would mean that he had submitted to authority, and so he would float around, overseeing his coworkers like an unchristened sous chef or supervisor, offering (bad) advice about cutting techniques or plating to people who clearly outperformed him in both categories. A lot of very mediocre employees are floaters. Partially it’s to avoid work. If you look busy maybe your boss won’t notice that you aren’t actually doing anything. So, like a shark in a dirty apron you just … keep moving. Always nipping to the walk-in or transferring something from point A to point B despite being told not to leave point A every day you’ve ever worked. Partially it is because the vast majority of straight-up bad employees believe that they are, in fact, above-average if not exceptional employees. This is not exclusive to workers. My friend’s mother-in-law is only an IQ point or two from being special needs and will unironically and with total confidence say things like, “I am very intelligent” and “I’m smarter than most people,” while everyone in the room just blinks in mute incredulity. Like her, many of these employees exhibit not one single quantifiable trait that would make them better than their average peer. Danny was not the fastest vegetable chopper, nor were his cuts the most accurate. He had no butchery skills, no sense of timing (and yet a staunch disdain for electronic timers, something that absolutely makes up for any lack of inherent timing), no organisational skills, no time management skills, and no focus. He was, in short, a chaos agent loose in the kitchen, spreading discord everywhere he went, which was everywhere except his assigned station.
In any kitchen you hope for a well-rounded team of skilled workers, interchangeable at need, and capable of swift adaptation to new problems. Obviously, depending on the size, you will have some who are less-skilled doing the more menial tasks, working their way up the ladder, and some who are minor superstars, shepherding the rest in the proper direction while juggling twelve of their own tasks. Anyone with the proper focus and motivation can excel, except of course for Dannys, the one thing you don’t want at all.
An untrained or inferior employee is usually eager to learn and will stretch and adapt to their environment, like a tomato plant with an apron. They can sometimes, also like a tomato plant, shock you with sudden spurts of growth. Skilled and inherently talented employees will immediately stand out, and rise quickly to a position of elevated responsibility, as every head chef/kitchen manager is looking for someone to manage the day-to-day tasks and guide the tomatoes toward the light so they can focus on the more important operations that a functioning business requires. But a Danny is neither of these things. A Danny has the lack of skills you associate with the untrained combined with the arrogance and bravado you try to discourage in the very talented.
It is infuriating, because you give them the most menial tasks, knowing full well they will likely fuck them up, so that they don’t touch anything that is actually important and/or expensive, but because they feel they should be in a position of authority (in fact they should be THE authority, despite having taken an entry-level, minimum wage job just like their completely untrained coworkers), they rush through or half-ass these tasks they consider beneath them, which of course means that you won’t give them anything more complicated/important since they can’t even be trusted with picking mint, but instead of realising that they see it as The Man refusing to acknowledge their superior (though inexplicably absent) skills which just triggers the resentment of authority, on and on, in a recursive loop that always ends in being fired, but never, miraculously, in self-reflection or personal growth.
I could write an entire treatise on this particular bit of cognitive dissonance, but I can probably just provide an example and save us both some time.
We had waffles. You know, for kids.
I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the process, but it is remarkably simple: First you make waffle batter (which we did not let Danny do because he refused to accurately measure the ingredients). Then you put a pre-determined amount of the batter into the waffle maker and close the lid. Then you set a timer and walk away for the duration of the cooking time, returning at the alarm to two perfectly formed, golden-brown waffles which you gently shoogle out with a fork onto a plate, where they are then dressed in whatever toppings you’ve chosen.
The waffle station was in a corner by itself, next to a prep table. It is where we put the newest of the new hires. Out of the way of the burners, the oven, the expensive meats and cheeses, and harm, with a little station all their own to pick coriander and mint, slice spring onions, mix sauces, and any other very simple, very mundane jobs that the average nine year old could do unsupervised. And hey, they’re cooking too! They’re the waffle man! Good job, buddy! You did it! Etc.**
So we put Danny on waffles, to keep his coke-fuelled chaos relatively contained to one corner of the kitchen, and to ensure the rest of the machine could run efficiently and effectively without a human spanner in its works. There was a gallon of batter prepared and waiting on the counter, eight inches from the waffle maker, a four ounce ladle in the batter, and a little cup with a fork in it for the shoogle. Everything you need for successful waffling. You couldn’t possibly fuck it up.
Unless.
Unless maybe you’re a Danny, or in this case, if you are Danny.
You see, the waffle maker requires SIX ounces of batter to make a correctly sized, full waffle. And since it has two waffle … compartments? Griddles? Trays? Two waffle sections … you would need one and a half four ounce ladles per section. Three ladle-fuls in total. Obviously, a six ounce ladle would be ideal, but we did not have one at the time, and if you refer to the second paragraph of this very essay you will note that basic math(s) skills are an inherent and very important part of this job, so being able to figure out the relationship between four, six, and twelve should not be an impediment to a talented chef. In case you, as a layman, cannot solve the complicated equation presented, the solution is to do one of the following:
1. Put one full, level ladle full of batter into the first section, then dip another half ladle and add it to the first, then repeat for section two, giving you two six ounce portions of batter
2. Put one full, level ladle full of batter into the first section, then fill another full, level ladle and pour half of it onto the first section, then pour the rest into section two, followed by another full, level ladle, making for two even portons of six ounces apiece (which is slightly faster than the first option as it requires only three dips in the batter instead of four), or
3. Put one full, level ladle full of batter into the first section, put one full, level ladle full of batter into the second section, then split one full, level ladle between the two, which is just #2 in a slightly different order, but with the exact same result.
Then you just close the god damned lids and hit the timer, then walk away or move slightly to your right and continue picking mint. A child can do this. In fact, if anyone’s niece or little sister or actual child did come into the kitchen for some reason, that is what we would have them do, because it’s fun to cook! Look, you made a waffle! Yayyyyyyyy! Etc.
So despite the fact that everyone else in the kitchen can make waffles while they are running their own section during busy service, Danny, all alone over there, fuming that he was not allowed to cook the meat/eggs/etc like the superior chef he was, would (every fucking time) somehow fail to correctly make waffles.
Firstly, despite no rush whatsoever, he could not slow down enough to avoid spilling batter all over the entire section. All you have to do is literally hold the ladle still for four or five seconds after you pull it out of the batter so the excess can drip back into the gallon, but NO. The Danny way is just to dip and fling, putting three ounces of batter on the counter, the outside of the waffle iron itself, and the wall behind it, for every (hopefully) four ounces that made it to their destination. This is wasteful, and costs money.
And then comes the hard part (it is not hard; I am being sarcastic), which is eyeballing half a ladle of batter to get to that magic six ounces. It would only be hard if you refused to hold the ladle still for even one single second so you can see it, which was of course the Danny method. That, and a staunch refusal to put a full ladle into the machine to begin with, meaning he was always trying to eyeball two three ounce portions out of a four ounce ladle, while flinging that much all over the god damned wall with each dip. So basically just putting an arbitrary amount of batter into the iron each time, then repeating that for the second section, then just praying.
There are three outcomes to this method, waffle-wise. The first is that you end up with two undersized, anemic looking waffles because you only managed to get four or five ounces into the tray. This means that we have to make NEW waffles for the customer because they are paying for two whole, good waffles. Which of course means that we have to bin the two shitty, un-circular waffles you’ve Dannied into existence for no discernible reason. This is also wasteful, and costs money.
The second outcome is that you have put too much batter into each section, which means that halfway through cooking, huge globs of batter come pulsating out the sides of the machine, immediately cooking onto its surface (the machine is very hot, you see), meaning that you will have to either wipe them off immediately, keeping you from doing your side tasks, or you will have to chisel them off later when they have hardened to an unyielding carbonised crust. This does produce two full-sized, correct waffles, but it is very wasteful, and costs money.
The third outcome is that you combine these god damned methods to end up with one proper waffle with two ounces of baked-on goop on the side of the machine and one shitty half-waffle we can’t sell, especially alongside a decent waffle as it would really just draw attention to the disparity. So we have to bin them both and start again, destroying the workflow of the other four employees and pissing off the servers who are dealing with the crying child the waffles are almost assuredly for. This is also, as you might guess, wasteful, and it costs money.
And then of course you eventually have to clean both the waffle iron and the section it is in, which would normally be a ten minute job for literally any other employee. But for Danny this is an hour long task, requiring a full gallon of soapy water and a steel scrubby from the dish sink because there’s more batter on the walls, the machine, and the floor than could have possibly gone into the trays during a single shift, and half of it has been cooked into a black rind that requires some sort of tool to remove. This is wasteful, and costs money as well.
When confronted about this, a Danny’s answer is not that he should slow down, not that he should ask literally ANY OTHER COWORKER how they manage to avoid these issues, nor to apologise and make an effort to improve, but that I, the employer, who runs a much larger, busier section every day as well as the whole kitchen, and the entire administrative side of the business, am at fault because my ladle is too small (not a euphemism). It’s not Danny, It’s the ladle. Of course! How could I be so blind?
So after pointing out that the ladle does not pose any sort of impediment to anyone else in the kitchen, and after carefully pointing out every way in which his methods could be changed to ensure the proper result (which I would like to remind you all is TWO WAFFLES FROM A MACHINE SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO PRODUCE NOTHING ELSE EXCEPT TWO WAFFLES AND REQUIRES NO COMMERCIAL KITCHEN SKILLS WHATSOEVER) Danny’s solution was to wait until nobody was looking and then absolutely fucking mummify the waffle iron in blue roll so that he could get as much batter on it as he wanted and it would not cook onto the surface.
Now, I bet you know where I’m going with this, but just in case let me explain:
1. Blue roll is a paper product. Paper is well known for being flammable. It is a poor idea, in my professional opinion, to wrap a machine that operates at 180ยบ C continuously for eight hours in a flammable paper product because of the risk of fire.
2. Blue roll, when coated in huge globs of heated batter, will actually fuse to the waffle iron at the point(s) of contact, increasing the odds of fire as the batter dries/hardens/cooks
3. Blue roll is a disposable item which I must purchase every week, unlike learning what six ounces looks like, which is absolutely free
This was wasteful, cost money, and added the increased bonus of a possible kitchen fire to what should have been the easiest possible job in that unit at that time.
And this is just one example of Dannydom in the workplace. And with the post-COVID, post-Brexit industry essentially hollowed out of all its most experienced workers, your chances of pulling a Danny have more than doubled. Partly this is just generational. The youth tend to think of their very existence as a gift they are giving you, and the thought that their (totally fucked up, borderline-psychotic) approach to a task is the only one that matters and that you are being mean to them by suggesting they are not great at it. Dannydom is a now a feature, in other words, not a bug. Then you have the “I’ve been doing this for 10/15/20 years, mate” crowd, who have always existed, and yet never wondered why it is they are always taking jobs and orders from more accomplished people who have not been doing it for anywhere near that long. Life-long Dannys, beating their knives at odd angles against chipped steel, full of enough coke to raise the dead.
It was a bad industry to make a go at ten, twenty, thirty years ago. Today it is madness. We aren't even talking about cost of goods and/or "supply chain issues" (the "my dog ate my homework" of the 2022 import/transport sector). Just what you can look forward to every time you try to delegate a task.
So for those looking to enter this glorious industry, pockets bulging with someone else’s money, social media strategy in hand, please hear my plea: just don’t. You are, most likely, the entrepreneurial equivalent of a Danny, and the rest of us are too busy trying to do our jobs to come explain why you shouldn’t need nor want to wrap your (metaphorical) waffle iron in (metaphorical) blue roll. We’re trying to help you help yourself. But I bet you don’t think we have anything to teach you, right? Because you’re so smart and capable? I mean, who do we think we are, anyway?
We don’t even have the right size ladle.
*I just want everyone to think about how much shit they have heard said venue and its employees talk about ME these past four years, and then ask yourselves if you have ever once in human history heard of the innocent party in a dispute making the guilty party sign a gag order. When Trump raw dogs a porn star behind his wife’s back, for instance, she does not go and make him sign an NDA so he won’t talk about what a great time he had fondling her big fake boobs with his tiny weird hands while she doesn’t tell the world what a small penis he’s got. Because that would be insane. Just some food for thought. I’d elaborate, but I can’t. Because I had to sign a gag order.
** At one point we had the 16 year old KP doing this job because he was bored standing around waiting for dirty dishes to wash, and it amused us all to go “Yes, chef!” Or “Oui, chef!” every time he said the waffles were ready. And his waffles were perfect, because even a 16 year old with no prior employment experience can make waffles in a waffle maker after about six minutes of training.
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