BOH: Rule with an Iron Fist!

Sometimes plans just don't work. I won't be working in the school's restaurant kitchen this fall. I'm giving a conference that people actually pay to attend, and will be forced to miss two days of class.

This breaks The Rule: anyone missing two days of class will be dropped. Since it would happen after the drop deadline, I suppose this means the school keeps about $400 and I get an "F" adding insult to (financial) injury.

Only a fool would enroll in a class with terms like that.

To be fair, one of the chefs tried to find someone to swap shifts. It's a Good Chef / Bad Chef schtick. One wants to crush everyone, break them, make them run screaming for the doghouse, their tails between their legs, get them out of the hospitality business now before they sully the reputation of the school. The other, although strict, genuinely seems to want everyone to succeed. This chef is the one who smiles, and it's a real smile all the way to the eyes. The other person smiles like the cat when it's about to engage in some play at the expense of a small furry creature, generally vermin. 

Here's the funny thing: if I just flaked and didn't show up, it's considered no different than trying to work out a schedule a month in advance, make up time lost, turn in paperwork early, or any other advance mitigation.

The class guidelines say to be professional, communicate, plan ahead - but when you actually do these things the message is that none of this counts. Apparently these rules apply to things initiated by others.

So, imagine that this is a business. That's what the school keeps saying, that this class is just like working in a real restaurant, because you are working in a real restaurant. The only difference is that you pay them instead of the other way around. The other difference is that you only work part time, two days per week.

So, here's how the business is run: Anyone who knows in advance that they won't be able to work a shift will have to find someone to take their place. If they can't, they're fired. If anyone is late too many times, they're fired. If someone does not show up without notice, they're fired. There is no hiring after the beginning of September. If they wind up with a skeleton crew after mid-November, that's just the way it will be. There are no excused days, no matter what attempts are made in advance. No show: goodbye!

I think this place would be bankrupt rather soon, due to a lack of staffing. Their reputation as a hostile place to work would spread as those removed from employment spoke to their friends. Fewer and fewer people would apply, and those who did would likely not be the best qualified for the job.

The main message is that you can't negotiate with management. They are not your friends. They are not reasonable. It's futile to even try.

I would have missed two days in the semester, true. But I would have made up the hours, and even offered to replace others who could not attend on their work days. In a real business, things could probably be worked out. Someone would call in sick, I'd replace them, food would happen. They will probably eject other people for breaking The Rule. If I were there, I'd replace them where possible, keeping the kitchen staffed.

Maybe restaurants really are run this way. Since I need to have work experience to get work experience, I won't know. It seems like a great way to increase turnover and create animosity in a profession that's already demanding. It also conflicts with a "fair but firm" rule in management - how is it fair that trying to work things out in advance earns the same penalty as just not showing up? Where's the incentive to communicate, negotiate, work things out?

Chefs are fighting the idea of food as a commodity, where all chickens are identical (except for size), all factors other than price are irrelevant. They want each bit of food to be traceable to some source, where happy animals and plants live in happy ecosystems, happily converting sunlight, water and nutrients or whatever they eat into delicious things for us to eat.

Yet, when it comes to human resources, we are all commodities. At school, our value is measured in hours. We're interchangeable. Our pasts, desires, feelings are irrelevant. We are but cogs in the machine, mechanistic automatons executing preplanned instruction sets.

How can an industry that wants to strengthen complex interconnected food production and sourcing do an about face and reinforce the industrial groupthink concept of people as commodities?

I always viewed Zen as something that breaks rules, thinks outside the box. Right thought, right action does not seem to mean commoditizing people into cogs in a food processing machine.

If this is our best paradigm for kitchen management, it's time to choose again. The food, its origins, the people preparing it, the path of the matter and energy in the food, the building and its systems are linked. Saying one part of the system is organic and ecological while another is mechanical and linear just doesn't make sense.

If I ever get this Hospitality Management certificate, some day I could be management. I would make the inflexible rules, fix my victims with the angry reptilian stare, send them articles on Zen Buddhism while practicing something else. This is supposed to be a model of how to run a restaurant, right?

Perhaps I will, though hours of meditation, achieve some form of enlightenment and find a solution - although I fear it would be dynamic and changing. The truth is not the thing that can be contained in words, as they say.

I've dropped the class. Gone, forgotten. Although several fellow students gave their condolences, there was not even a note of regret that it didn't work out from anyone involved in managing the class. A new cog was found, the machine works. Nothing further need be said.

Rejection letters: what if...?

What if rejection letters, when they bother to send them, actually said something interesting and useful? What if, instead of say-nothing pieces of corporate pablum, they informed, amused, guided? What if they just told the brutal bitter truth, without any sugar coating?

What if a company, in the rare instance where they bother to send anything at all, also set up a feedback or question channel? So there could actually be some real communication? Do I mean waste some employee's precious salary time to actually respond to follow-up questions by useless people? Yes indeed. Useless people still talk, they might have even been customers. They might not be so useless if you communicate directly - maybe their lives don't fit into predefined little boxes on a computerized application form. You never know. 

Here are some rejection letters that will never get written:

Brutal Truth

Dear Applicant,

 In analyzing your application, we determined that you have more experience and education than our managers. Hiring you would make them uncomfortable, and we worry that you might not be controllable nor fit into our corporate environment. 

Please stay away. You make us nervous.

The Management

Honest

Dear Applicant,

We get so many applications that we just let the computer sort them out. There's not really much difference between all of you, so it comes down to this: since you didn't know anyone in the store, we didn't hire you. Next time, remember that boot licking is a valid tactic.

I'd say that we wish you the best of luck in your employment search, but that would be a lie. I really don't care.

If by chance you become friends with one of our managers, re-apply. If not, don't bother.

The Management

Sadistic

Dear loser:

If we wanted to hire you we would have called. Some technocratic MBA in our company requires us to notify useless toads such as yourself whether we want to or not. If it were up to me, you'd remain in suspense forever and I could do something more useful with my time than write form letters. You really don't deserve anything.

We looked at your application. It tells us that you're a washed-up, unsexy basket case who can't do any better than to apply for a no future, part-time seasonal position doing menial tasks that could be done better by a monkey. Your life is a waste, you'll never amount to anything, and there's a reason your love life isn't working.

In case you're too stupid to figure that this letter means NO, it does. We don't want you, we never will, and please don't ever come here again, not even to buy a cork to plug your leaky butt.

Mr. de Sade, personnel.

Feel good

Dear Valued Applicant,

We loved everything you've done with your life, but regrettably cannot hire you at this time. 

Our store is small, and even though you seem wonderful, we just don't have room to hire that many people. We'd really like to hire everyone, but we can't.

Thank you for considering us as your employer. We are honored by your confidence that we could make you happy in the workplace. Thank you again.

Thank you for your time and we're so very sorry that we can't hire you.

Have a nice day and thank you again,

The loving, caring personnel department

Poetic
Electrons flash, phosphor glows,Information flows luminous.
Eighty-three words, a life.
Digital Freud 101010... 101010;
Analysis/cognition/evaluation/calculation/correlation.
Helium II heart.
Conclusion.
Result.
Sorrow.

Paranoid

How did you find us? Why did you apply? It seems you have knowledge, experience and skills. It says you work hard for low pay and don't mind. Are you here to take my job? I have fifteen cats and three turtles to feed! You can't do that to me! I have needs, and you're trying to destroy my life. Did John in human resources put you up to this? Well, I'm on to you now. I know he's wanted me out ever since I broke his beer stein at the office party five years ago. I see what you're up to and it won't work! I'll stop you! You can't work here! I'm not afraid of you! I say who gets hired, your plot is foiled! You won't infiltrate my company. Your evil attempt to destroy me is over. Terminated. 

Bonkers

I had a pair of socks that looked just like you. They didn't have any toes. Maybe you have toes, though. Socks are nice. I want them back, but rodents took them away for nesting material. I never saw them again, just like I'll never see you. 


Depressive

I don't know why you want to work. There's really no point. It does no good to work when the government and the banks will just take your money away and leave you shivering in the cold. What would you buy with it? Stupid things that you'd never remember ten years from now. Buying things only makes you feel better for a few minutes, then you get the bills and feel worse because now you're more broke than when you started. You only think you need a job, but you don't. You don't need anything, because nothing matters. Whatever you do, you'll die eventually, probably alone and unaided. That's life. It's all dark, there's no hope. Your money will run out, you grasped at the wrong straw and we're throwing you into the raging current to drown, bloat and wash out to sea. We only hire people like myself, who see reality for what it is.


Short, direct and obscene

Hey Asshole!

Who the fuck told you that you could work here? You can't. Your application wasn't good enough for us. Looks to me like you don't know shit about anything, so don't come back later knockin' on my door. It's closed. 

What do you think we are, a charity? We're not here to save the world, pal. We're here to get rich. So we owe you nothin'.

My asshole boss makes me respond to jerks like you, so between you and me, I'm gonna tell you some things. The pay here sucks, it's not even enough to buy cat food, there aren't any bonuses, they ask for unpaid volunteer hours to "stay competitive" but the shithead bosses all drive new fricken Audis. Figured out where you'd fit in? Yeah, right in the shit, up to your eyebrows.

Louie, personnel

We are the one percent

There are 49 million people living in poverty right now in this country, almost a fifth of the population.

You're one of them. 

I'm not. I have a fat bank account, a stable of luxury cars, properties all over the world. My mistress gets more money per year than the operating budget of Burkina Faso. I also happen to be the boss of the huge conglomerate that owns the store where you applied.

I don't care about you, because you're poor. If you weren't poor, you wouldn't have tried for a low-paying temporary job and I wouldn't be sending this message. 

You'll stay poor and I'll stay rich. There's not a damn thing you can do about it. We own the government. They won't help you.
Geeky

:-(

Succinct
No!

Informative

Dear Applicant,

Our state-of-the-art job applicant analysis software scanned your application. While we cannot give you a favorable response to your request for a job, here are the results of the analysis:

• The computer determined that based on your experience and education that you're older than our standard hiring age. Perhaps you should try babysitting.
• Your skill set was excessive for someone who would just be selling knick-knacks, expensive little machines that sit on a counter, gizmos and cookbooks. You would just be bored.
• We received over 1204 applications for this position. Some were recommended by our employees. They get the jobs; you don't.
• Your use of words such as "consequentially", "numerically" and "mise en place" place you outside of one standard deviation of the current norm for Pacific State Standard American English. Our customers wouldn't understand a word you would say. 
• Your experience in this exact position was insufficient. You indicated three years or more of sales experience, but it was not in one of our stores nor a virtually identical store run by a competitor. We require that you did the same thing for at least ten years, sold the same items and were never promoted.
• The position you applied for requires a total lack of ambition. It's seasonal, so no matter how well you perform you will be released from employment on December 25th at 1:00 am after you finish cleaning and re-stocking the store.
• Currently, we prefer applications filed in text mode: U will C 4 me is gr8t 2 wrk @ your biz. This communication form wastes less server space.

We hope this information will be helpful to you in the future, and that it will console you to know that there was really no possible way for you to get this job short of a close personal connection with the Management.

So long,

The Management

Rejection slips, corporate America's way of saying they care

You're going downtown!

Sur la Table
in this case, "Dans la Poubelle" would be more accurate.

Well, amazingly enough, I got an answer from Sur La Table, one of the places that requires an online job application. It came from someone named donotreply@surlatable.com. They said this:

"Thank you for your interest in Seasonal Sales Associate position at Sur La Table.

After careful consideration, the decision has been made to pursue candidates whose qualifications more closely meet our needs.

Thank you,

Sur La Table"

I doubt that even an A.I. could have formulated a less human response, nor one that gave less information as to what, exactly I didn't qualify for. "More closely met our needs". OK, fine. In what way? What needs does a store hawking cooking supplies have, if not knowledge of the goods being sold and sales experience? 

What the hell is "careful consideration"? Do they have "careless consideration"? Did someone get a message stating, "We carelessly considered your application, and after a few beers, a kiwi martini and a couple of drinks we'd rather not name, we decided we don't like you. Go away.". What would the careless process be, exactly? Darts? Dice? Cockroach races?

I also love the use of passive voice: "The decision has been made". As though they didn't make it, as though some other agent made the decision, but they're going to keep who it was vague. Perhaps a well-worn ouija board kept in the closet for seasonal hiring? Did someone channel a nameless dybbuk out of the void?

Then they "pursue candidates". Right. Hello! If YOU were pursuing candidates, they wouldn't need to fill out your application! YOU would contact THEM! Get this: candidates pursue YOU. That's how this whole nasty, degrading, depressing evil corporate mindfuck works. They apply, you reject. Get it? Just say "contact", "follow up" "respond to". Not "pursue". Wrong verb. 

This said, I do like Merriam-Webster's definition of "pursue": "...overtake, capture, kill, or defeat". Maybe I should count my blessings and be happy they're not "pursuing" me after all.

It's not like I was applying for the position of CEO. I was going for Seasonal Sales Associate. Expendable, temporary, and not necessarily highly qualified. So WTF? I didn't list elf boots as an asset? Not enough, ho ho ho?

Your application was processed. You don't fit in. The Decision Has Been Made. Go away, and never come back. You're off the table.

I had a painting gig (watercolor) in the area, so I decided to pop in and see what their "more qualified" people looked like. They looked kind of like this, from memory:

The design creeping under the woman on the right's top is a tattoo. She is not sheltering a large green creature on her breast. Yes, her top did plunge like gnocchi dropped into hot water.

None of them looked to be over thirty years old. Some of them didn't even look like they'd hit twenty-five. Is age a qualification?

How dumb are we, exactly?

 

One of our big corporation run supermarkets is at it again. Here's the deal: buy one steak, get one free. The week before, this meat was running about $7.00 per pound. On sale, it was around $14 per pound if you bought one steak, or about $7.00 if you bought two. The second one is "free". Get it? Funny, though. If you'd bought two steaks at the old price, the total would have been... probably less, since they had smaller steaks then.

Where you might have (gasp) bought one large steak, grilled it, fanned it out and served it to two people, now you either buy two steaks for twice as much or go elsewhere.

Welcome to the 21st Century, where everyone is a victim and Corporations are King! We really seem to be living in some sci-fi dystopia, but the real question is which one? Minority Report? Blade Runner? 1984? Brave New World? Little Heroes? All of the above, with a few twists thrown in?

Why is nobody screaming about this? Where is the organized boycott done as a retaliation against being treated like idiots? We're being conned, mislead, manipulated and disrespected, with no end in sight and not even a token protest.

It's not just about pricing, either. What's in that food we're eating? What's the "color added" in the salmon? Why is there sand in my spices? Which foods have ground up bugs that live on cacti added for color? If something isn't sustainable, how come it's renamed instead of discontinued? Greenwashed yet un-green. Does high-fructose corn syrup really need to be in everything? Why can't they ferment and distill the stuff for ethanol to add to my gasoline instead of feeding it to me?

Is is true that as long as we have good televisions, we'll remain pacified and controllable? Like the graffiti in Porto said, "Don't wait for the revolution while sitting in front of your TV" But, figuratively or otherwise, we're ALL sitting in front of our TVs.

Oh, and to all those idiots who think industrial geniuses like the ones in Atlas Shrugged will save us, please remember this: that was a work of FICTION. It also neglected to mention what happens to the ordinary workers, since everyone can't be a genius CEO. Although, if every worker were considered an independent asset instead of a cog in a corporate machine, where the government existed to ensure fair treatment to all and guarantee equal access to services... wait. That would mean re-writing the entire system, taking the power away from those currently at the top and giving it to those at the bottom. Using some sort of just informational system to eliminate concentrations of power and wealth that lead to inequality (yes, I'm also talking to you, Communist Party leaders!). This is only a food blog, not a revolutionary political manifesto.

If it were a manifesto, I'd also mention that it's no wonder that governments are broke, when they have "spend it or lose it" rules that don't reward saving and working within a budget. What if agencies could carry over unspent money, allocating it for special projects like people saving up to buy a house?

But, this isn't a manifesto so I'll stop. Now.

Flashback: November 2010, waiting for a call. Any call.

You can fool some of the people... not that I really considered myself one of these people, but still I thought at least someone would call, e-mail or maybe send a message to my chef/instructor to let him know why they ignored his recommendations and left me twisting in the wind. That someone would answer one of my messages even if it were just to tell me, "sorry".

At this point, my perception of the restaurant industry, and chefs in general is not exactly at a high point. Some of these guys made big-headed architects look positively humble, and with much less justification. Although some people I talked with were straightforward and correct, never promising to recontact me or otherwise stay in touch, others were poster boys for case studies in bad human resources management.

Before, I considered chefs in local non-chain restaurants to be artists exploring new culinary frontiers, delving into fascinating flavor combinations, and living for the joy of bringing great, unique food to hungry people. I thought they, like people in other industries at a management level, would act professionally, with courtesy and respect for others. Or at least go through the motions of doing so.

I naively thought that chefs would want to hire people passionate about food, regardless of their age. That in fact, someone who had traveled, sampled other cuisines and cooked in other parts of the world would be seen as a valuable addition to a team. That kitchens had at least some minimal degree of collaboration and exchange of ideas, like in that video about El Bulli (yes, comparing El Bulli to Sacramento's dining establishments is like comparing mud pies to beef Wellington, but still...)

Now, my opinion of the norm has shifted. I see many of them as poor managers imbued with a large dash of arrogance. People who don't look for broader skill sets than someone able to stand upright, brunoise a potato or julienne a carrot as fast as possible for the least possible amount of pay.

Worse yet, I'm beginning to think that I'll never even be given a chance. That this whole culinary arts thing is a waste of time, at least as far as actually working in this industry goes.

People tell me not to give up, that I just haven't met the right people yet. That a place exists where I could contribute something and be accepted as a comrade instead of a nuisance.