Memoirs: DC Humor

My first lesson about working is that, of course, job training bears very little resemblance to the real-life situations.

My second lesson was that learning process is involved, in rather surprising ways.

Aside for a few cooks who were nice enough to instruct you on what you were supposed to do in his/her kitchen (thank you, Dan), on the whole you're expected to arrive at the kitchen, observe for all of five seconds, and jump in.

Somethings "jumping in" can be taken very literally, such as when the dishroom floods. Anyone fancy swimming?

It wasn't often just the case that the cooks were not always on the same page as the helpers, but that sometimes the management had a pretty hazy idea as well. The most horrible situations, of course, were the times when there're multiple shift-leaders/managers on site and they can't agree with each other. There were always a few new people around. The cooks expect the helpers to know what's going on, while the helpers expect the cooks to know what's going on. Neither side is completely certain, at any given time, about what's going on but somehow we always manage to cover through the entire shift. From what I know, this is the typical case in jobs, so the experience is yet another valuable lesson.

My first in-kitchen experience went a little something like this:

"Hello," I said, stepping into the kitchen and pulling on my gloves. "Nice to meet you. What should I be doing?"

"Hi," said the cook, who was scrambling eggs (it was morning, and therefore not completely chaotic).

"Um," I said, wondering whether or not there was a certain set of instructions somewhere that I forgot to read (there wasn't). I waited. Eggs were scrambled. Finally, feeling guilty with all the people busying themselves around the kitchen, I ventured forth again. "Is there something I'm suppose to be doing?"

"I'm not sure," the cook eventually replied. "I've only been here for about two weeks." He thought for a moment. "Here," he squinted at my name tag, " 'Susan'. Want to help me out and put this dish of eggs in the warmer?"

"Sure," I said. "Which one's the warmer?" Which brings up the point that for the first month of your job, you will find yourself constantly looking for things. There have been people who have worked far longer than I who still looked for things. In fact, I think looking for things is an inescapable part of the job. It just wasn't included in the job description. Somewhere between the dishwashers who weren't entirely sure where to return certain dishes ("Okay, I picked up this pan from the Salads on Tuesday, but yesterday I got it from Bistro?")and the people who weren't entirely sure where things were suppose to be stored at ("The scooper? Check Salads, if it's not there, try the Dish, and if it's not there, try the pot room in the back kitchen) there were always some things to be found.

Why is it that we never have organized scavenger hunts?

But I digress. The gist of my first time in the kitchen involved me carrying dishes of eggs around to Benny Goodman, played over the speaker, and a later task involving the refrigerator and hundreds of slices of cheese.