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#service industry
weaselle · 1 month
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it was too much i had to make my own post
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line cook here. ACCURATE
if you don't get the hate, here's what you don't understand.
it takes up to 2 hours to close down the kitchen.
The last 60-90 minutes before closing time you do almost no cooking because the restaurant doesn't have many people in it and you've already cooked most of their diners.
So if someone walks in during, like, the last hour, the cook is in the middle of an industrial deep clean of the kitchen.
(these numbers can vary quite a bit from place to place but i have worked several restaurants with these actual times and the concept remains the same)
Say the place closes at 10. If you wait til the restaurant is already closed to start all your cleaning duties, you'll be there until at least midnight.
More than that your boss knows that on an average night you can start your clean up as soon as the last rush ends and get out of there around 10:45, even 10:15 on a slow night if you get lucky. That means there are plenty of restaurants where if you do take until midnight the manager is going to come up to you at some point that week and ask you what went wrong that night, and you'd better have an answer.
So this example restaurant closes at 10 pm. The dinner rush ends around 8:30, and shortly after that the cook is going to start getting every single dish possible over to the dishwasher because the dishwasher always gets hit hard and late, and the machine runs for 2 full minutes and only holds so many dishes, so the way that works out is if you wait an extra 30 minutes to give the dishwasher all your stuff it can mean adding like 60 minutes to the end of his shift. And you're gonna KEEP finding shit to send to the dishpit right up until you leave probably.
all these little square and rectangle containers in this cold table have to be pulled out and changed over into new containers, replaced by new full ones, or in some cases filled from larger containers in the back, which can result in even more empty containers to send to the dishwasher.
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while it's all pulled apart to do this, you have to clean up all the spilled food and sauce and juices and stuff from the joints and ledges and shelves and drip trays
Once you get your line changed over in this way, and fully stocked, anytime someone orders something that makes use of a bunch of that stuff, you have to restock and re-clean it some. It might already be covered in plastic. Some of it might already be stuck in the back to make room to take apart your cutting board counter to clean. To cook a dish isn't TOO much of a problem at this point, but you're really hoping for zero orders because you still have so much other cleaning to do.
Meanwhile the salad bar and appetizer section and server station and everybody are all doing the same thing. Even the bartenders are stocking olives and lemons and sending back whisks and stir spoons and shakers and empty 4quart storage containers that used to hold the back-up lemons and olives and things. Every section is dumping their must-be-cleaneds to the dishpit as fast as possible because early and fast is the only thing they can do to to help that dishpit not absolutely drown into overtime.
The poor dishwasher is always the last to clock out, soaking wet and exhausted.
Around this time you probably scrub the flat top, which has turned black from cooked on grease and is still about 500 degrees. Line cooks are divided in opinion on water-based or oil based cleaning methods for this, but they all involve scrubbing with (usually) a brick of pumice stone using every ounce of your strength while you try not to burn yourself
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you scrub it from fully blackened to gleaming silver and now if somebody orders something that needs the flat top to cook, you can either fuck up your cleaning job or fake it in a couple frying pans and pass that tiny fuck you down to your dishwasher (who usually understands, especially if you help them take the garbage out or clean your own floor drain later)
If there's deep fried stuff on the menu then the fryers have to be cleaned out, which includes straining the oil out into enormous and super-heavy pots full of oil so hot that if you spill on yourself then it's probably a hospital visit and if you slip and fall face first into it it'll be the last thing you ever do.
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Then you gotta scrub out the fryer. Like you gotta take the (hot) screen out and reach your arm down into the weird rounded pipes and curved areas (so hot, burn you if you brush against them hot) and scrub off whatever is down there
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Depending on your kitchen you might have to do up to four of these. Then you'll have to pour the (dangerously hot) oil back in
oh, and if you didn't dry the pipes and get ALL the water out of the trap and tank?
water reacts with hot oil in a sort of mentos and coke way that can send a tidal wave of oil past the open flame of the pilot light ...HUGE dangerous mess and/or burn down the kitchen if the oil lights up.
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Unless! If the oil has been used too hard and needs to be changed, it's time to carry those open topped super heavy pots full of will-kill-you-hot oil and dump them in the barrel outside by the dumpsters so you can put room temp fresh oil in the fryers. whew!
The clean up is not just some light wiping down that can be easily interrupted, is what i'm saying.
You might have to do some kind of walk-in duty (moving around 50lb cases of lettuce and 50lb bags of onions to get to the stacks of five gallon buckets full of salad dressings and sauces to move so you can reach the giant metal pots and bus tubs full of prep and get it all organized and make sure it's all labeled and i have to stop now i'm having flashbacks)
THE POINT IS
by 15 or however many minutes to close, the line cook is doing an intense deep clean and probably has the whole stove taken apart to detail.
For some industrial stoves this means lifting off large cast iron plates that weigh like 20 lbs each and are still quite hot. Whatever metal burners are on there, you gotta take off and clean, you can see here the lines that indicate the large thick cast iron rectangles that sit on top of the burners to allow heavy pots to rest on. Those five (each has one front burner hole and one back burner hole, see?) have to be lifted off and cleaned with soap and a wire brush usually, and then the underneath area also has to be cleaned because a lot of shit falls through the burner holes on a busy night.
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if you didn't do it when you did the flat top you have to do the grease trap (which can be like a full five minutes and is always disgusting).. You gotta clean out all the little gas jets in each burner with a wire or something so the burners all flame evenly, and sometimes you have to remove some of the natural gas piping that connects the burners to access where you have to clean.
you gotta clean out the bottom of the oven and the wire racks, and, oh gods, you gotta take down the filter vents from the hood fans above the stove.
See all the lined parts along the top of the wall?
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those are hood vents, and as they pull air up they also pull a lot of grease and they have to be taken down and cleaned, then you gotta climb up there and scrub where they go before you put them back...
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And then there's the mopping and floor drains and...
Anyway, that's what the line cook is doing when you walk in fifteen minutes before closing and order something that needs to be cooked on that stove. They are doing an entire industrial cleaning of a professional kitchen.
In some restaurants maybe one or two of these jobs will be every other night or even only twice a week, but in many, possibly most kitchens, ALL of these things happen EVERY night. You don't want to leave any food mess that might attract insects or rodents for one thing, so a really good kitchen is as close to brand new as you can get it every night.
IF YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO ORDER SOMETHING ANYWAY, HERE IS WHAT TO DO
open with an apology and ask the server to go ask what the cook would prefer you to order.
Any good server will already know what the cook is hoping for and what will make their line cook go into the walk in and scream. If it's significantly less than an hour to close and they say some variant of "oh anything is fine" they are either telling the lie their boss wants them to say, or they actually do not know what their line cook wants, and you can either use human connection and a conspiratorial just-between-us tone to get them to drop the customer-is-always-right act, or get them to actually go ask the cook.
It might be as specific as "the lasagna is easiest on the kitchen" or it might be a simple guideline like "nothing that requires the flat top" or "any of the sautés are easy" but a good line cook will probably have a system for if they have to make a couple of the most popular items after they start their close, so the answer is likely to include something most people like and you should be good to order that.
but for the love of all that's holy, please only do so at great need. Leave that last 30-60 minutes to the truly desperate and the crew's duties.
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animentality · 1 year
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Obsessed with this girl. Queen shit.
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I’m practicing my customer service smile
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glitchphotography · 1 year
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Garçom  (Deluxe Paint IV // 2023)
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chaoticbuka · 1 year
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The most in character moment I've ever seen from a cosplayer
I used to work for a character restaurant that was absolutely 100% not licensed. We were basically cosplaying for tips. I was "Winter Princess Anna" if you get what I'm saying...
Anyway, there were a solid handful of people working there with various drug habits. As long as they kept their shit together enough for work, it was ignored.
One day a busser came in late and had a syringe over his ear like a freaking pencil.
I was in a back bus station scarfing down chicken alfredo before going back out to sing "do you wanna build a snowman" for the 50th time that shift.
Harley Quinn grabbed the busser by the collar and slammed him against the wall fluidly removing the syringe from his ear and tossing it in the garbage.
"There are fucking children here asshole! Get it together"
The waitress said in the most vicious voice ever.
It was honestly the most Harley Quinn shit I had ever seen
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paracosmicessence · 5 months
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as someone who has been working at starbucks for three years i’m very upset that no one told me that because of the murder of sonic the hedgehog game people made an au where shadow is a starbucks barista
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nansheonearth · 22 days
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Important question for white/European people
Global majority, people of color, non white folks click here
Reblog to get more diverse answers
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loverboy1717 · 4 months
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Me, working retail/food service in November and December and seeing millenials and Gen z out with their family:
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saraharveypatrick · 6 months
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That one barista who's always dialed in. 🔥☕
From "Persephone in Hell!" The goddess Persephone runs a coffee shop in Hades. A web comic and soon-to-be paper/digital copy (preorder til Nov. 1, 2023).
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Insane to think about how fast food workers are treated like shit when we literally spend like half our waking lives feeding people. And not "feeding people" in a metaphorical capitalism government way, we literally make food and give it to people. And people are convinced we don't deserve to own a living space or get healthcare or have nice things. Same goes for farm laborers and grocery store workers btw.
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bisexualseraphim · 3 months
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Possible spicy take but I’m so bored of people crying ABLEISM!!! whenever someone has a controversial opinion such as “hi I am a service worker and I feel dehumanised when all you do is stare blankly at me or bark your order at me please smile and say hello”
As an autistic person who until just 2 years ago was so socially anxious I couldn’t go outside alone, if you’re an adult and you can’t even give someone a quick smile and a “good thanks how are you?” that’s not poor social skills due to autism or social anxiety, that’s you being a prick.
It is the absolute most basic human decency and manners to fucking smile at someone and say hello and if you’ve made it to adulthood without learning that then someone deeply failed you. It takes 2 seconds and costs absolutely nothing. Yes you may find small talk or whatever uncomfortable, but most people do and it’s just a part of life that you’ve got to learn to deal with. Being a bit awkward or uncomfortable isn’t trauma. You don’t have to tell your whole life story when they ask you how you are, but don’t just fucking ignore them. And tbh associating neurodivergence with acting like an asshole is ironically one of the most ableist things you can do
Also, I see a LOT of people daily who just walk up to service workers and go “CHEESEBURGER” without a “please” or “hello” and I know that 90% of people aren’t autistic adults who were never taught the bare minimum social skills so don’t bullshit me with that excuse. You all just want any reason to be mean or rude and it’s gross
*NOTE: This post is obviously not talking about non-verbal people or anyone else who may struggle with the simplest general conversation due to disability. It’s about people who are capable of having a normal social interaction with for example friends, but then use neurodivergence as an excuse not to treat others with basic decency
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vernalseason · 2 years
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Here's why I'm so goddamn feral about The Bear.
I ran an ice cream store for about five years. No, it wasn’t fine dining, it wasn’t even a restaurant, but it was still food service. We were in a vacation town, and our place was the only ice cream store in the area, and the ice cream was GOOD. Customers used to ask me all the time if I got sick of eating it and I’d say no, and I meant it. It was reasonably fancy as ice cream goes, with some pretty out-there flavors, but mostly it was just GOOD. Super flavorful, dense but not chewy the way that some ice creams get where it feels like it’s stretching unnaturally when you pull your spoon away…
Point is, it was an ice cream shop in a tourist town, and in the summer we got killed during service every single night. Nonstop lines from 7 til 12 or 1 in the morning, no breaks. We got after-dinner crowds, after-show crowds, hordes of camp kids a busload at a time, and it might not have been fine dining but we worked HARD. We had 8, 9, 10 people on peak days all scooping, cleaning, making milkshakes (which is The Worst, in case you were curious), restocking by running down rickety definitely-not-to-code stairs to our tiny walk-in and hauling ice cream up 4 boxes at a time—because goddamn it, time was valuable and running up and down the stairs sucked and no one was going to go down multiple times when you could just grab 4 at a time and grit your teeth and shove them onto the counter upstairs feeling like you’d just benched your own body weight.
At the start of the summer, Memorial Day weekend, we were at our absolute peak. Following a truly herculean hiring effort aided by the promise of unlimited free ice cream, we had a crew of 20-odd overcaffeinated teenagers and twentysomethings who were working a truly awe-inspiring pace to kill the line. My favorite moments were, variously:
Being so busy I had to run two registers simultaneously, waiting for Square to process a transaction on one (chip card readers were murderously slow in the early days) while taking cash on the other;
Absolutely shattering every store record on a Saturday night with a skeleton crew and getting approval to order 12AM pizza on the company card, and taking a long, long hour to eat before we finally had to get around to scrubbing the calcified ice cream off the floors;
Gearing up to call for a restock on spoons, napkins, and other such necessities only to find that my assistant manager was behind me with a milk crate of those very things;
And so on.
There was about a month and a half of beautiful, well-staffed, smooth-running time before things frayed at the edges. Suddenly the factory couldn't get enough ingredients, since the company was chronically broke (turns out wholesale ice cream is a bad idea, folks; retail is where it's at), or the store walk-in broke down and we had to resort to chest freezers for storage for a month, or, most commonly, we started losing staff. I was always after the owner of the company to hire more year-round full-time staff, but there was always something more urgent for him to spend money on, like rent. So inevitably our staff would start leaving for college, and we'd be left with about half to a third of the staff we really needed to run. Which is when things started getting bad.
There are only so many doubles you can work before you start losing your grip on reality. I recall one day in August when I was somehow, improbably, the only person available to fill an entire day of shifts, and worked from 9AM pre-open to 11PM at night. The only thing that I remember is that the tips were phenomenal. But by Labor Day weekend we were down to our last seasonal staff and the entire core crew had worked at least two doubles that week and we limped into the off season with about two remaining brain cells between us.
Anyway. This post was supposed to be about The Bear.
I've never seen a show—or at least, never seen a FICTIONAL show—that so deeply understands what it means to be in food service. I watched the first episode in absolute awe of how they captured the intensity—just GOING until you get a moment to yourself in the bathroom, in the walk-in, in the office. And when you slow down, you think about how tired you are. How burnt out. How much all you really want is just to sit, maybe eat a slice of pizza, and stare into space for an hour. But then you go back out, and you get back to work.
I've also never seen a show that so accurately captures what it looks like and feels like to be a manager. Carmy losing his temper, giving in to that righteous anger in 'Review'—how DARE you not cover your station, how DARE you leave me with this mess that you created—I've been there. I'm not proud of it. I didn't punch a ticket printer, or scream in anyone's face, but I lost my cool, and that sticks with me. You don't get to take it back. You apologize (even if you were right), you patch things up, but no one ever really forgets.
But the show also does justice to one of the great joys of the service industry: getting to see people improve. One of my favorite subplots is Tina going from sabotaging Sydney to respecting her, trusting her, defending her. But mostly, it's my favorite because we see her get BETTER. She goes from just holding down her station to being a pro, from throwing things together to being careful, and thoughtful, and focused. And that moment when Tina says 'thank you, chef', and means it, really MEANS it, that's the kind of thing that gets me all teary. Because it's so much more than just 'thank you', but you'd have spend a hell of a lot longer to get it all out.
I guess if I was going to trace my rabid and, so far undiminished love of the show to a single thing, it would be the fact that it makes me feel seen. I haven't done that much reading on the people who made the show, but enough of them clearly lived this life or got close enough to it that they understand what it does to people, and what it requires of them. I loved working in food service, and sometimes I even miss it. I loved getting to make people's days, to give kids their first-ever ice cream, to feel like people were leaving in a better mood than they came in. And I met my partners through this life, all three of them, which is as exactly as wild and improbable as it sounds. But every time I look back on it fondly, I make myself remember that it was miserable too. The late nights, the early mornings, the days off cut short by delivering emergency stock or jumping in to cover a shift or just ending back up at the shop out of habit. The crushed toes and ragged wrist tendons and hoarse throats, the constant phone calls or checking sales to try and anticipate if we needed more staff. The sensation that after service, the rest of the world was dim in comparison.
I sank so much time and energy into that life, and I think the last thing I love about The Bear, the other thing that makes me tear up a little bit, is that for them it turns out alright in the end. They work through the problems, they make things run smooth, and they get the chance to build the place they dreamed about. That was always what I wanted, what I was working toward—the chance to make things better. And even in fiction, it makes me happy to see that come true.
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im-okay-mj · 1 year
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Holiday reminder that people in the service industry are human too and we deserve to be treated with respect and kindness.
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wangxianficrecs · 1 year
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simple love | 簡單愛 by auberjing
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simple love | 簡單愛
by auberjing
E, 19k, Wangxian
Summary: “Of course! Zhan, fourth tone, water radical.” Wei Ying traces the correct character before them. His gaze is expansive. Lan Zhan feels it burning through him: knowing, accepting, acknowledging. He's glowing from within, all his messy thoughts and emotions and insides laid bare for Wei Ying’s careful, thorough examination. “Zhan. Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying murmurs. “It suits you.” Or: after a chance encounter with a dashing KTV shaoye, Lan Zhan, a 996 office worker, is left deeply questioning his life and priorities.
Kay's comments: Ah, I've read this story as a thread fic on twitter originally and I'm super happy to see it on AO3 now as well! It's such a delight! In which Wei Ying is a shaoye (male service staff) in a KTV lounge (karaoke/entertainment lounge) to which Lan Zhan is dragged by his new boss. When his boss forces him to drink, Wei Ying manages to save Lan Zhan by drinking the first shot, but the second one he can't decline/can't let Wei Ying drink without both of them getting in trouble for it, so he drinks it and gets knocked out in classic Lan Zhan fashion. Wei Ying then takes him home to sober up and lets him rest there and over the following days, he stays, helps clean the apartment and take care of Wei Ying and Wei Ying's home becomes a safe space for him, where he can think about his life and his job and where he wants to be. It becomes their home. Through Lan Zhan, we also slowly learn more about Wei Ying's life, about the family he had and the pain he carries and ah, it's also very sorrowful and heavy, but so good. This is the kind of story that holds up a mirror for you and you'll have to look inside you and look at your own life and ask yourself: "this is it? Is that OK? What will you do to change it?" and I enjoyed it very much, even if it left my heart aching a little, because there is no shaoye Wei Ying who will save me from my boss ;_;
Excerpt: His hand trembles ever so slightly as he reaches for the glass. “Wait,” a familiar voice says. It’s the shaoye from earlier. Grinning cheekily, he steps between Lan Zhan and the proffered glass. He has a cigarette behind his ear, and his eyes sparkle with good humor. Lan Zhan has never seen anyone more magnetic or attractive in his life. “I'll drink for him.” The shaoye takes the drink from Lan Zhan’s boss’ hand and knocks it back easily. Lan Zhan can’t stop staring. He’s transfixed by the sight of the man’s throat moving, the crystalline slide of liquor down his chin.
Excerpt²: Lan Zhan takes a step towards the front door. There he stops, mind working. The house is tiny — there’s barely enough room to stand, to think, to simply be. The occupant works two jobs, which means they probably have little time to tidy their space, and to relax or recharge in it. Nevertheless, they had still looked after him. Time and effort and care. Priceless things. Things far removed from the world of numbers and sales and contracts. Things that cannot be measured by any known instruments, save the human heart. Thank you, Lan Zhan thinks. And then a beat later, I’m sorry.
modern setting, modern no powers, pov lan wangji, service industry, bar/pub, strangers to lovers, getting to know each other, office worker lan wangji, fanart, past wei wuxian/others, past character death, jiang family dynamics, service worker wei wuxian, jiang cheng & wei wuxian reconciliation, angst and hurt/comfort, angst with a happy ending, grief/mourning, smut, hopefule ending, nude photos, nude modeling, good uncle lan qiren, lan wangji & wei wuxian get a happy ending, @wrecklwj
~*~
(Please REBLOG as a signal boost for this hard-working author if you like – or think others might like – this story.)
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Thanks. I hate it here.
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