The thing is, returning to the same place for a second time turned it from a seasonal fun gig into a serious life challenge. While last year, business or med students cooking on the line were treated with some leniency, this year, nobody is cutting us any slack.
The season has intensified to the limit, we're slammed with customers, and the restaurant owner and managers are demanding even more. And this is where it gets, excuse my language, a total mess. Nothing is ever right for them—this is wrong, that should be the other way around, you know? All while they spend the bare minimum on this whole spectacle, pinching every penny on every single customer.
No, seriously. Is this what business is all about? Saving on everything that moves? When the kitchen manager removes two extra fries from a plate I'm serving right in front of him, explaining that I put too much on there. My restaurant apparently didn't quite balance the books last year, so this season they decided to save big on ingredients, buying more frozen pre-made food that you just toss on the grill or in the fryer and... voilà. Last year, we made almost everything by hand. Of course, labor is expensive.
But it didn't end with saving on food. Last season, every kitchen worker made pretty good money working overtime because there were few cooks and a lot of work. Apparently, the owner caught on and decided to cut our hours this year, which, to be honest, really degraded the food quality. Though, who really cares? Our restaurant is the only one in the area, and people flock here regardless of their last visit. They have no choice. It's practically a monopoly.
At the same time, the owner and managers pressure us about the food quality not meeting their expectations. One of the managers loves to run secret checks, placing orders so we don't know it's for him. Thank goodness the owner always orders directly.
All this led to Weldon—my colleague from last year, the lead line cook here, and my close friend—losing it and deciding to quit. The reasons are clear. He was under intense pressure from management over every little detail regarding the food, and he wasn't getting the hours he needed to cover his debts. He expected to earn a decent amount since the company raised his rate by $2 an hour, but they were craftier than that. Yes, they raised the rate, but they cut the hours. Now, at best, he gets the same paychecks as last year.
It ended with him getting a conditional warning on his profile because his girlfriend stayed the night in his room. Well, that only threatens a 25% deduction from the conditional bonus our staff gets at the end of the season, but for Weldon, it was the last straw, after which he decided to return to his old job back home in Texas.
Every attempt by the company to cut hours and save on us led to situations where, for example, only one cook was running the line, which is practically impossible, considering they even complicated the menu a bit this year. Naturally, orders were incredibly slow, and the food wasn't always good.
And closing, of course, took an eternity. I think I already mentioned that we intentionally dragged out the kitchen cleaning process at the end of the day just to get a second cook on the night shift. Later, third cooks started appearing periodically because it was impossible to handle the rush without them. The owners didn't know how to deal with it, since we were short-staffed, so they still had to pay overtime. And what do they do?
They hire more people in the middle of the season. They take people from other parts of the restaurant and throw them on the line to cook. One day, the owner walked past the line with a Romanian guy from the ice cream shop and asked me: "Aziz, you can train him to work the line, right?" What am I supposed to say? Of course, I can.
So now, during the rush, we have people working who have no idea what they are doing. And instead of focusing on our own stations, we have to watch over them. But the owners are happy. They think it all happens with a snap of the fingers. Put a person to cook. They cook. Voilà. We save money on overtime.
But the thing is, I actually care about this restaurant and the food coming out of the kitchen, since I've been here for more than a year. Although sometimes it seems to me that even the owners care less than some of our cooks, because for them, it's more important how much people leave on the bill, not how satisfied they will be. That's business in these parts. And the system "do better, and people will definitely share their experience and come back" doesn't work here. Here, the system is: do it as cheaply as possible, sell it as expensive as possible, and people will come anyway because they have no choice.
But damn it, I love this place like crazy, because every day I get such a massive amount of experience for a lifetime. Sometimes it's hard, but isn't that how real life is supposed to be?
