I should have known better than to ignore my paranoia when Chef said that he’d announce last week’s Chef of the Day first thing in the morning. I could have even seen it coming when the bus arrived late, and I was subsequently running even later just from being held up by getting changed and throwing stuff into a locker. Chef casually swung past in the corridor, no doubt on his way to the office to get something, and called out as if to remind me, that I was Chef of the Day.
This is kinda like what happened to me in boot camp when I was chosen to be the first course orderly. I didn’t think I gave any impression that I would actually have a clue what to do when given responsibility over a group of people, but maybe there’s just something written down in my record somewhere (or perhaps it’s just on my face in ink that’s invisible to me) that I turned down the prospect of Officer training because I baulk at the idea of being in charge of things, let alone people. For some reason, despite me thinking I have no idea what I’m doing most of the time, and believing that I don’t begin to exude confidence until I’m really comfortable with something, people seem to think that I know what I’m doing.
Well, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from boot camp, it’s this: bullshit baffles brains. There’s a possibility that I’ve known this for a long time, but it just hadn’t been put so concisely before. I had all the paperwork on hand to know what was going on in my section, and had glanced at the restaurant menu the night before to get a wider picture of what was going on overall in the whole kitchen, but a handful of paper does not a head chef make! Chef later told me that he chose me to be the blow-in CotD because he thought I was the only person in the class that could handle it, and use my voice. I pointed out that we were constantly getting into trouble as a class for using our voices way too much, but he countered that by saying I knew when to use mine. Touche.
I tried to look on the bright side. At least I could put off being in patisserie for another day, which was what I spent most of the night before worrying about. It’s good to get my worst section over and done with early in the piece, but on the other hand, everyone’s a critic and I know there’s enough bakers around the joint that if the bread turned out badly, I wouldn’t be able to forget it easily. No matter, a temporary reprieve from the boundaries of bread land! I also suddenly realised that despite the bits of paperwork I had to fill in over the course of the day, and having to come up with constructive criticism for the class at the end of it, I had it pretty easy. I could treat it as a practice version instead of bunging things up on my rostered CotD shift!
With all this in mind, it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, but we only had a handful of customers to deal with in the restaurant, and I think if we had any more than twenty or so, we would have struggled. Remember that we are far from a team of professionals, and for most people it was only day two or three with their particular menu items, and only day one working in the restaurant kitchen. All things considered, we pulled through remarkably well. The dishes looked good, didn’t get held up too long, and for the most part were satisfactory.
I think the class has a lot to learn about working together as a team, and how the sections of the restaurant kitchen can work best together in order to get ADF lunches as well as the restaurant menu out in a timely and efficient manner. I was pleasantly surprised at how the dishes turned out, although I’m sure more effort will go into the presentation of each dish and associated garnishes/sides once people get the hang of what they’re making and what’s expected of them in general.
I still think I aged about six years in the process. Sometimes it’s really frustrating to be ultimately responsible for the output of a group of people, when you’re technically not allowed to get in there and help them, or take on any of the components of work yourself. I always thought I was better at organising other people more than my own mess, but when I’m a lone ranger I know exactly what I need to do and how to do it. As CotD, I felt like a bit of a gofer, fielding all sorts of questions and buzzing about finding ingredients and equipment for people, when I thought that a lot of my stress could have been avoided if people were a little more organised.
I’ll practice what I preach, too. I’ve come to realise that you can’t always get away with figuring out what you need to do preparation-wise in the first five minutes of the morning. You never know when you’re going to get held up by something like a chase for ingredients, or a talking to by Ma’am, or answering a bunch of questions from random passersby. I always feel better when I have the mental and physical space to get through my work in peace. Anything I can do to make things easier for myself should be obvious, but I guess this is a classic case when a tiny bit of laziness or overconfidence comes back to bite me.
I’m thankful for the taste of CotD, and I’m sure I’ll feel less trepidation the day before my real turn comes around. In the meantime, I’m going to try and see how other people go about it, and learn from their strengths and weaknesses. It’s a pretty awesome feeling, being in charge of the kitchen brigade, and it’s only a couple of weeks until I get another try at it again!
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