Advice from the Kitchen: F That Guy

Friends, good morning from New York, where your good Friend Sarah is learning a whole new communication style in the kitchen, as one whole morning’s conversation with my Sous Chef included a ratio of approximately 86% curse words.

 

One of the jobs I have every day I come in is to break down about 50-60 heads of cauliflower into 3 different size pieces.  This sounds easy enough, but before I get to that step, I am required to follow a whole procedure of “clean prep,” which is confusing as hell, because there are no books or manuals to learn from, which is my usual way of learning, and different Chefs have different methods that you need to remember and adjust to each time a new guy comes on shift. Instead of reading a manual, completing and filing a training form like I do in my medical world, I have to learn “on the fly” as I never went to culinary school and am under the Watch and Learn method.  Even though I did not learn these things yet, the expectation is that I know how to do it, and fix it immediately if it is wrong. 

 

One thing I learned awfully quickly is that if I screw up, I have now been here long enough that the Sous Chef will no longer coddle me and correct me sweetly.  No, Friends, the honeymoon is over now, and I had my days to learn how to do these tasks. I am part of this team, now, and they talk to me the way they talk to everyone else, finally. They have expectations of me, and I need to keep up.

 

Every now and then, from somewhere in the kitchen, Chef will loudly announce, in a big enough voice for the entire kitchen to hear him, “WHAT THE F*CK IS THIS BULLSHIT?!!”…in a voice that makes you stand up taller and suck in your stomach and even breathe more quietly, if possible. 

 

We all immediately looked around to see who had screwed up.  I looked for something spilled, or on fire, or raw fish touching fresh produce, until I realized that Chef was talking to me, and that I was the one in big, big trouble but had no idea what I had done wrong.

 

I frantically checked my work area for a knife blade pointing out instead of in towards the center (nope, thank God), to whether or not I set a metal pan on a cutting board (I stopped making that mistake last week, thanks to a few rounds of, “what the F is this?” talk from my Chef), and I confirmed that yes, my set of 50 heads of cauliflower were in two big clear plastic bins called Lexans and not in multiple metal, perforated big deep containers called hotel pans.  Yes, check, that was ok. 

 

Then I checked to see if my plastic cauliflower wrap and leaves WERE in the metal, non-perforated hotel pan, just like the first Line Cook Chef taught me.  Yes, check, that was ok.

 

Next I immediately looked to make sure I had separate opaque plastic boxes called fishboxes for the 3 sizes of cauliflower pieces I was prepping.  Yes, check, that was ok too.

 

I look up at Chef in a panic, looking for guidance, readying myself for being pronounced f*cking retarded, f*cking deaf, f*cking stupid, or all three.  All of these are fair game when it comes to Chef expressing himself, and one of the best things I am in learning in the kitchen is how to have a tougher skin and get used to constant correction and criticism.  I only wish I could sometimes speak this way to my teams in the medical world, even knowing that if I did, my boss would have me on a performance plan faster than I could blink, and an HR investigation on intimidation and bullying would be underway immediately, whereas here, in the kitchen, we don’t have time for that sort of thing.

 

“THAT’S BULLSHIT RIGHT THERE!” he announced again, louder this time, as my eyes got big and my heart sped up, knowing that I was supposed to know what the hell he was talking about but had no idea what it was or how to make it right. 

 

“F**king fix it,” he directed, pointedly looking at me, as my mouth opened just a little bit, trying to quickly think how to ask for help without looking like an idiot.  Finally Chef sighed heavily, then snapped the towel out from being tucked into my apron, and angrily yet somehow patiently swept up the 9 teeny tiny cauliflower crumbs that had spilled onto the stainless steel countertop around my plastic tray work area, and put them into the trash before snapping the towel back on my apron tie.

 

“That’s bullshit.  Work clean.  I am going to show you how to do this faster and better.”  Then, he showed me I should instead have a small metal hotel pan sitting inside the other larger metal hotel pan, and that I should have removed both the plastic wrapping AND the cauliflower cores in one movement with my knife, instead of two separate steps.

 

Friends, I am still learning the kitchen rules of how and when to adjust your work flow and process to each higher level Chef’s rules.  I did not learn this when I started, and so when I was corrected by my Sous Chef, I thought it was a good idea to explain that the Line Cook Chef told me to do it that way in the first place.  That was a huge mistake that only brought on more cursing.

 

“F*ck that guy,” was his response, and I had to bite my tongue to not have Sass Cobra’s sassiness kick in with an absolutely inappropriate response of, “You mean right now, on the counter, and do you prefer missionary style, or me on top?” because that would NOT have helped the situation, I promise you.  You do not ask this clarification, not when your Sous Chef boss is pissed and trying to get you in line.  You shut the hell up and get ready to learn.  Sass can come later.  Maybe.

 

“F*ck that guy, seriously, you have to turn to him right now and say to him, ‘f*ck you’.  You tell him that right now, Sarah,” Chef ordered.

 

Now, you’d think I would have been clear on what those instructions meant, but I was stupid enough to ask for clarification.  “I’m sorry, what, Chef?”  I asked.

 

“I said, tell him to f*ck off, right now,” he said as he looked me dead in the eyes.  I turned to my coworker that day who had taught me this method, with a look of absolute horror thinking about how I was going to actually say those words to him when he had been so nice to me.  Chef did not wait for me though, and he went on, during my pause of decisionmaking, as he yelled, “Hey Chef?” until my coworker looked up.

 

My coworker responded with a prompt, “Oui, Chef?” before being told by our Sous Chef, “F*CK OFF!” just like that.  My jaw did not even have time to drop before coworker Line Cook Chef responded, “Oui, Chef!” to those directions.  I mouthed the words, “I’m sorry,” in my coworker’s direction, with my eyes as big as ping pong balls they were open so wide.

 

“No, not sorry, f*ck him,” said Chef, “Why would you listen to him?  I am the Chef, f*ck him,” he told me. 

 

I am not used to people talking this way in the medical world.  No, we usually have all these fancy words to get the point across while being politically strategic and careful.  If my Sous Chef had been correcting me in the office, he would have said, “Sarah, can I ask you to explore approaching that process with perhaps an out of the box mindset, then run metrics to measure for me the difference in efficiency?  Let’s give that a go and circle back here in an hour, but I think this synergy is going to really help us achieve something great here, and we can knock this out of the park.” 

 

No, Friends, a Sous Chef does not have time for that, and so he just announces, often, “F*ck that guy,” and you know exactly what he means.

 

So, Sous Chef announced the f*cking of the guy, and I got quiet and watched him re-teach me to prep cauliflower so that I would now save about 2 more minutes on the process.  Duly noted, and I will now work exactly this way, until a new Sous Chef comes on shift the next day with a different style and again announces about the other Sous Chef, “Why did you listen to him?  F*ck that guy, too,” as I adjust and try to keep up, trying to know who I am supposed to f*ck and who I am supposed to follow.  I am a pleaser, after all, and if f*cking each different guy is included in my daily task list from Sous Chef, I am going to do it.  (Ok, that came out totally wrong, but you know what I mean.)

 

And so, another day in the kitchen teaches me a new language, which is good for me, even as it is so very different than my usual day.  I keep learning, I keep being corrected, and it’s good for me.

 

I do not mind being corrected, but I’ll tell you what, Friends, I am starting to worry about all this f*ck talk.  I am afraid it is starting to sink in and is going to get me in trouble, because I am going to have to remember, when I go home to sweet, wholesome, Minnesota, as I help prepare Christmas dinner with my brothers and sisters, that I do NOT announce, in front of my dear, sweet, Lutheran mother, “F*ck that guy,” as my brother peels the carrots in the wrong direction or gets crumbs on the counter. 

 

Wish me luck with that, because my mom can snap a towel harder and faster while simultaneously announcing I should go take communion AND wash my mouth out with soap at the same time, faster than any Sous Chef I have come across yet.  She’s the toughest one of all, and that’s no bullshit. 

 

 

Until tomorrow’s session of cauliflower, Brussel sprouts, and apparently, some f*cking, too,

 

With lots of love from New York, soon to be Minnesota,

Your Good Friend Sarah