You Have to Push Yourself

Pushing yourself seems to be the mantra of chefs, I hear it several times a day at work. Either directed at me or at someone else by someone more senior. And in my current position, everyone is more senior than me -even the 20 year old apprentice.

I've been almost two months at this job now and I am beginning to get a better picture of my roles. When I see my roster, it tells me when my shift is and where I should report. Mostly I've been in the production/runner role, followed by wok bar chef, and sometimes I'm a prep-chef at banqueting. Of all the roles, wok bar is where I feel most competent in, though my sous chefs may disagree. I get put on wok bar when the brasserie is not that busy -because when it is busy, they want somebody who is quicker and more experienced than me. But I'm cool with that, I like the slow days, I have time to chat to guests and distract them while it takes me ages to cook their food hahaha.

Today I met a lovely gentleman who was celebrating his 46th wedding anniversary. They've been married longer than I've been breathing. That blows me away, especially since I'm in love with Beatriz, my mind hit an imaginary fast-forward button and wondered if I could stay alive long enough to be with her for that long. I confess I wished that I would. But enough about that romantic sidetrack, I think what you really want to hear is stories about work. So here goes more.

Sometimes I really dread work because I feel so incompetent at things. When you get told a few times a day that you have to move faster, that you have to "push yourself", it starts to erode your confidence. Yet on the flip side, they keep putting me on shift. If I'm totally useless, then why do they insist on giving me shifts? At my previous job at About Life, they just stopped giving me shifts (and they weren't paying as much as the Sheraton).

Another sign that I think I'm improving is that I am now becoming aware of the politics at work. Is the head chef a good guy or a bad guy? Last Monday, I was ready to label him a bad guy, but today I was working alongside two young chefs and they were saying he was a hard working chef. So now I'm not so sure.

I'd just point to the evidence at hand. According to HR, we have 6 people leaving the kitchen in the space of one month. Since I started working there, there have been 2 other new kitchen staff to join the team. That still means that there is a shortfall of 3 from current staffing levels. But when you factor that the people leaving are quite senior, and the staff joining are very junior, the experience loss is quite evident.

What I'm seeing is the same as what I see in the white collar sector where the jobs that need doing are still the same, but the expectation is to accomplish the same level with less staff. Hence why you must push yourself, so that what used to take me one hour to do now takes me 30 minutes and I can do more. But when does it stop? I bet the Sous Chefs no longer push themselves.