Through the Double Doors: Day 2
T2D2 is a continuing series… To read yesterday’s post click here
Vision and Family
I walked into the restaurant through the side door a little after 9:50, ready for whatever the kitchen had in store for me today. I was eager to learn new things, but I was also filled with some relief because I knew my shift was going to be shorter since I was moving out of my old apartment in the afternoon. As I walked in I made an attempt to greet everyone I walked past by name, although I am pretty sure I got a few of the names switched up (but everyone was too nice to say anything if that was the case).
I quickly put my apron and shook the Chef’s hand as I said good morning, and before I knew it I was already being walked through the steps I needed to follow in order to make Tortilla Española, one of the restaurant’s most well-known dishes. The process was simple enough for me to do because the two base ingredients had already been prepped and all that was left was the VERY EASY task of dumping somewhere between five and 10 pounds of sliced potatoes into an industrial sized pot of vegetable oil heated up to 180° without killing or severely injuring anyone inside the kitchen, myself included. Chef Max must have seen my face as I tried to come up with the safest way of pouring the potatoes into the pot because he quickly grabbed the plastic container I was holding and showed me the ACTUAL safest way of pouring something into a hot liquid: always pour away from yourself while resting the container on the inside part of the pot so very little of your arm is actually exposed to splashing oil or boiling hot steam.
After making sure that I hadn’t given myself second or third-degree burns 20 minutes into my second day, Chef Max handed me what amounted to a giant metal paddle to stir the hot oil and potato concoction¹ and explained that I would have to add the onions once the oil temperature went back up, which would be some time in the next five to seven minutes. While I was waiting to pour the onions into the pot, I was told to observe how Roberto cleaned and filleted chicken breasts for the Chicken Katsu — another customer favorite — because that would be my responsibility once I was done with the tortilla. As I got closer to his station, I watched Roberto expertly rid chicken breast after chicken breast from excess fat, membranes and cartilage and slice them into thin strips at a dizzying pace. I tried to make mental notes of the size of each chicken strip cut as well as the “acceptable” amount of fat that could be left on each piece of chicken (answer: minimal) and after I was done pouring the onions into the pot I set my cutting board next to him, grabbed the nicest knife I saw from the magnetic knife rack on the wall and set off to work on the first chicken I grabbed from the tray.
My second lesson that morning came in just a few minutes after that. Chef Max glanced up from what he was doing and after observing me cut for less than five seconds he told me to stop, grabbed the knife from my hand and showed me the PROPER way of handling a chef’s knife. He said:
“There are only two kinds of chefs out there… Those who have already cut themselves and those who will.”
He showed me the proper grip for the hand holding the thing I was cutting as well as the correct rocking motion the knife should take to avoid any terrible mishaps, and he ended by saying that if I ever cut myself I would not only have to throw out all the chicken on my tray, but also that he was the best person in the kitchen to take care of the cut before half-jokingly adding that he wasn’t sure whether cutting myself would be more painful than having him dress the wound. I took his advice to heart and continued cleaning and slicing chicken for the rest of the morning, being careful not to chop off any of my appendages in the process.
After all the chicken had been cleaned and sliced then came the next step, one that I had already been introduced to the day before: vacuum sealing. Today, however, I was also put in charge of actually packing the chicken into the plastic vacuum bags too. I was told the exact amount of chicken that had to go in each bag and what followed was an hour and a half of uninterrupted chicken packing. It surprised me how quickly I got the ability to estimate how much each handful of chicken actually weighted, and by the end of it I was able to get pretty close to the required amount without having to scramble through the whole tray looking for a 10 gram piece of chicken that would put me within the 1% margin of error that I had arbitrarily decided on — all while thinking whether or not my work would stand up to the test at a 99% confidence interval or if my Operations Management professor from a few semesters ago would consider my chicken packing process as one with runaway error.
By the time I looked up at the clock most of my shift had gone by cutting and packing chicken. I moved all the vacuum sealed bags back to my station but before I could find out what I needed to do next Chef Max approached all of us and told us to put our work down and gather around because he had something to tell us.
He began by telling us many of the things that he had mentioned to me during our brief conversation the previous afternoon, and as I listened to him I hoped that talking with me the day before had been what had inspired him to ultimately think about these things. He said that he hated feeling like the kitchen was holding us back from our personal lives and pointed specifically at Roberto, explaining that even though they had both agreed some time ago that he would have a chance to go on a vacation with his girlfriend before the beginning of the summer rush, he had been forced to cancel because of all the “bullshit tasks that had to be taken care of in the kitchen.”
As I pictured missed commitments and special occasions that had to be put off because of work, the reality of the situation hit me. But as I glanced around to everyone else standing in the kitchen, Chef Max pointed directly at me. He asked me, in front of everyone else, to talk about what the best course of action would be. As he looked at me I realized he was turning to me to inspire these people that I had known for a mere 24 hours to show up to work every day with a smile on their faces, even when we all knew that there was a very real chance that they would not be able to take some much-needed personal time with their family or friends some time in the future because the kitchen needed more breaded chicken breasts or salad dressing.
I’m sure that he expected me to be able to give some rallying speech about effective management and culture that would resonate with everyone and show them how important they all were to him and the rest of the restaurant’s management, but in that moment I was drawing blanks. I couldn’t come up with any management theories that I learned in my any of my classes, and even if I had, I think that whatever concept I spouted from memory would have been more useful to impress a room full of stuffy suits with MBA's under their belts and not a room full of real people who could care less about what Guy Kawasaki, Michael Porter or FW Taylor had all written a very long time ago.
Instead I went with my gut… and my gut went straight for two words: “family” and “vision”. I complimented Chef Max on the way the kitchen was run because I felt that everyone truly cared about each other in a way that wasn’t very common in many other workplaces. I commented on how the the staff-made morning meal gave everyone an opportunity to show off their talents, and how even myself — a complete stranger with zero restaurant experience — had been able to get up to speed in no time because of how close this little kitchen family felt. I ended by telling Chef Max that the ultimate way of showing everyone their value of everyone was to share with them the vision that he had conveyed with me the day before, because if everyone knew WHY he got up every morning they would hopefully identify with that vision and choose to do the same.
I trailed off, uncertain if I had even answered the question satisfactorily or if I had just said some management platitudes hammered into me after four years of business school but Chef Max thanked me and said that I would be an asset to the kitchen for the rest of the time I was there... However, he said that this was not necessarily because of my management experience or business knowledge; instead, since I didn’t have an already-defined skill set I could be trained to do mostly anything and could free up others up to explore other roles. He went around asking everyone else about a kitchen task or responsibility that they had always been interested in doing and people spoke of their desire of becoming a line cook one day or throwing caution to the wind and seeing if a recipe they had in mind could one day be served to the customers out front.
As everyone dispersed back to their respective stations I could feel the smile on my face. In a weird way I felt like I had achieved my purpose for the day with that conversation, and as I grabbed a rolling pin to beat the packed chicken into submission for the next step of the recipe I thought about how nothing in my time at BC would have properly prepared me for that particular moment. As I continued with my work I commented to Chef Max that if he was looking to de-stress maybe beating up chicken breast fillets would be a good alternative and we shared a brief chuckle before we both fell back into our work.
I stacked the newly flattened pieces of chicken breast onto oven racks before heading out and even if my tired feet wanted nothing more than to sit down until the end of times, I hung up my apron and walked out as my mind wondered what tomorrow would have in store for me.
[1] This is EXACTLY how I pictured myself as I stood over the potatoes and stirred them that morning.
