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The Life of a Short, Angry, Brutally Honest Line Cook

And How It Feels to Have a Job That Kills Your Sanity

By Rebekah RaynardPublished 6 years ago 4 min read
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This industry sucks. I say that with all the love in the world. But as much as it may suck; where would all of us tattooed, pissed off pyromaniacs who need a place to swear work? None of us are happy but we wouldn't do anything else. We can come into work with no injuries and come home with four stitches, two burns and blisters the size of a cherry and still say it hasn't been a bad day.

I'm not sure why we love it so much; maybe it's the adrenaline, maybe it's the friendships you build you get when you have to communicate. Who knows. But being someone who has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, you could say I'm a sucker for pain.

You guys don't make it easy either, with all the modifications and making sure every detail is perfect to give you guys the best service and the highest quality of what we have in front of us. Not that I fully blame you. (I'm quite the picky eater myself.) But our number one priority is to make sure your food is fully cooked, that it looks the best we can make it, and to get it done in less than 10 minutes. And then multiply that by six because that's probably how many bills we have on our screen.

It's not for the faint-hearted. I work in a male dominant kitchen.

In fact, I am the only female in Back of House; which that term refers to everyone who's either cooking your food (line cooks), yelling at you because it's taking too long for you to cook the food (sous chef), the person who communicate between the servers and the cooks (expediter), and the person who washes all your plates when you are done (recruit/dishwasher).

You know the quote, "If you can't handle the heat, get out of the kitchen"? It is absolutely true. In a figurative and a literal sense. It's a cramped up area with angry, sweaty people and it can get dangerous. That is absolutely why communication is key. I have had the frames of my glasses break on my face because someone didn't tell me they were behind ME. One clumsy mistake and you throw off everything.

And you're absolutely screwed if you are short. When you are short and you work on the line, everything that can be used as a stool, will be. Whatever you can't reach, you have to inconvenience others for. You can completely forget about being able to properly to the expo/servers, unless you enjoy smashing your stomach five times an hour.

But as much as we all despise being in that kitchen for extended periods of time, it doesn't feel right not being there. As much as we all hate to admit it, the best feeling in the world is when you push through a huge rush of people as a group, it feels better than when your soccer team won first. We complain about this job, we couldn't work anywhere else.

Feb 3rd 2018

So this story will talk about my day to day struggles of being the only female in a completely male kitchen and the limitations my shortness causes me.

I work at a slightly more than casual chain restaurant in Alberta. Our main goal is to serve up a variety of different meals coming from different backgrounds. We have everything from steak to sushi that has deep-fried prawns. I usually work transition shifts so I forced them to train me on a variety of stations because it's usually only one of my sous chefs and I working at that time.

Well, today somebody who was scheduled to work had slept through 3 hours of his shift and I had to run his station for awhile while on Tylenol 3 for tooth pain.

Surely enough panfry had more bills than it usually does as well as having a new menu item I had not been trained on. I had burnt approximately 7 meals and had to start over. I had never felt so useless in my life.

Once the late coworker shows up, I go back to my scheduled station. It started off bumpy because I was getting blamed for every mistake that the person who had taken over for me; but by the end of the night I had gotten to leave early and had meals up before they had even shown up on my screen. I was beyond ready to leave, I had been ready to leave since the minute I had gotten there.

Don't get me wrong, I love cooking but not enough to say no to a night full of sleep.

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