(no subject)
After my three day experiment, I am quitting my job as kitchen help at The Chocolate Bar. Last weekend, I enjoyed myself - working with the main cook, prepping, making mini apple pies and fruit tarts under her supervision... Last night, working with only another new cook on an extremely busy Saturday night, I remembered why I left food service in the first place: I don't like getting paid peanuts to cater to some self-important man's bloated ego.
When I was hired, I was told that there would be some occasional dishwashing involved. I guess I wasn't expected to be responsible for washing all the baking dishes from the morning, all the huge containers, every single glass at the end of the night, pots and pans and bowls, for four hours, until 3am. Technically, I wasn't assigned to the dishes, Abby, the other cook was. And she was none too happy about it. Bill, the owner, came down around 3am to tell me to get out of there, as I had been there too long (10 hours without a break at this point), essentially telling me to leave Abby to clean up all by herself. I'm sure he saw it as an act of kindness and thoughtfulness for me, but I saw it as a complete lack of respect for Abby. And then he told me that I hadn't finished cleaning up the kitchen, that I had to put the bread back in the cooler before I left. Which was the last straw.
Earlier in the night, Bill, Dusty the upstairs manager and Stephanie the kitchen manager come out of a meeting in the office while I was slicing tomatoes. Bill walks by me and say "You're slicing your tomatoes too thick, they need to be half that size." And that was all. Stephanie said "yes, I was about to tell you, they need to be sandwich size" which she had said before, which didn't mean anything to me at the time either.
I brought a crepe upstairs where there weren't enough banana pieces on the top to garnish it, and Bill actually made me run it back downstairs to cut up another banana and fix it. Which wouldn't have been so bad, except that it was REALLY REALLY busy, and since when doesn't a restaurant owner care about speed of food getting to his customers?
Later, after having considerable trouble with the crepe griddle, and sending one up that was pretty crispy, Bill shouted - and I mean SHOUTED my name down the stairs, and then barreled down them to literally yell that that crepe was way overdone and unacceptable, and that he didn't even want to send it out, but it got taken out anyway. I told him the crepe machine was acting up, that it was too hot, and I had turned it down a little, and he raced over and jerked the dial back up, told me there was no way I cook a crepe on that level, that I should not touch it.
That's when I decided that I was not giving up my weekends to get treated like a dog, screamed at and criticized (ON MY THIRD DAY!) by some man for $7.50 an hour. I'm worth more than that, simple as that. I spend my whole week getting nitpicked and criticized by someone I hugely respect, for a good salary. No way am I going to put up with this bullshit. I don't need this.
And so ends my association with the Butterwood enterprise. (No wonder they have such a high turnover.) I'm sad I never got to actually try one of their infamous martinis, but hey, you win some you lose some.
When I was hired, I was told that there would be some occasional dishwashing involved. I guess I wasn't expected to be responsible for washing all the baking dishes from the morning, all the huge containers, every single glass at the end of the night, pots and pans and bowls, for four hours, until 3am. Technically, I wasn't assigned to the dishes, Abby, the other cook was. And she was none too happy about it. Bill, the owner, came down around 3am to tell me to get out of there, as I had been there too long (10 hours without a break at this point), essentially telling me to leave Abby to clean up all by herself. I'm sure he saw it as an act of kindness and thoughtfulness for me, but I saw it as a complete lack of respect for Abby. And then he told me that I hadn't finished cleaning up the kitchen, that I had to put the bread back in the cooler before I left. Which was the last straw.
Earlier in the night, Bill, Dusty the upstairs manager and Stephanie the kitchen manager come out of a meeting in the office while I was slicing tomatoes. Bill walks by me and say "You're slicing your tomatoes too thick, they need to be half that size." And that was all. Stephanie said "yes, I was about to tell you, they need to be sandwich size" which she had said before, which didn't mean anything to me at the time either.
I brought a crepe upstairs where there weren't enough banana pieces on the top to garnish it, and Bill actually made me run it back downstairs to cut up another banana and fix it. Which wouldn't have been so bad, except that it was REALLY REALLY busy, and since when doesn't a restaurant owner care about speed of food getting to his customers?
Later, after having considerable trouble with the crepe griddle, and sending one up that was pretty crispy, Bill shouted - and I mean SHOUTED my name down the stairs, and then barreled down them to literally yell that that crepe was way overdone and unacceptable, and that he didn't even want to send it out, but it got taken out anyway. I told him the crepe machine was acting up, that it was too hot, and I had turned it down a little, and he raced over and jerked the dial back up, told me there was no way I cook a crepe on that level, that I should not touch it.
That's when I decided that I was not giving up my weekends to get treated like a dog, screamed at and criticized (ON MY THIRD DAY!) by some man for $7.50 an hour. I'm worth more than that, simple as that. I spend my whole week getting nitpicked and criticized by someone I hugely respect, for a good salary. No way am I going to put up with this bullshit. I don't need this.
And so ends my association with the Butterwood enterprise. (No wonder they have such a high turnover.) I'm sad I never got to actually try one of their infamous martinis, but hey, you win some you lose some.