You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a stick. — Jack London
Let’s say that your desired result is to become an Executive Chef. At the moment, perhaps you’re at the Chef de Partie or Sous Chef level, clamoring to advance.
Promotions don’t happen often and they don’t happen by accident. Hopefully the kitchen you’re in now is more challenging than the last place you worked (which should always be the case if you don’t want to stagnate). Workplace positioning is relative—you may have been the baddest bear in the woods of that former kitchen, but now you’re in a new one where you’re just a scared and hungry squirrel trying to survive.
You have certainly heard stories about the backstabbing, sabotaging line cooks and sous chefs who tried to take someone else’s job by any nefarious means necessary. Those cooks 1) get found out, 2) don’t last, and 3) cannot create a healthy, sustainable kitchen culture if they ever do find themselves in charge.
The path to promotion through the brigade can be counterintuitive. Here is the best thing you can do to earn a promotion: make your boss look good. That is Job One. Hell, make everyone around you look good. At daily lineup, tell the crew that your station partner is crushing it. Take all of the bullets and none of the bouquets—those will come later, more than you could ever carry. For now, you are to take accountability for every failing, whether yours or the team’s.
Here’s part of the first premium lesson, to give you a taster….
Imagine this: the restaurant owner comes into the kitchen waving an invoice over his head and yelling “WHO THE HELL ORDERED SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS’ WORTH OF BLUEFIN GOD DAMN TUNA?” You’re the Junior Sous Chef. You ordered the bluefin god damn tuna at the request of your boss, the Chef de Cuisine. She’s not around; it’s her day off. What do you do, hotshot?
Option A:
Say “Sorry sir, the CdC wanted that tuna for a special that she’s going to run when she gets back tomorrow.” That will cause the owner’s face to darken from hot pink to blood red, because you have complicated his problem and made him look foolish. You implicitly questioned the ability of the person he hired to run his kitchen, and now there is no one around on which to issue his venom.
He will storm out of the kitchen, smashing the door in frustration. He will have to find the CdC’s number and wrestle with calling her to yell at her on her day off or sending her an angry text, both of which he’s well aware are rash. He craves a reckoning, and will angrily demand an answer from her. Or he’ll stew on it until he has a stroke or else ambushes her tomorrow with his pent-up rage.
And what happens if he does manage to reach her? The CdC, furious at being bothered on a much-needed day off by an irate boss, calls you and yells at you, asking what the f___ you were thinking. You didn’t even know she could yell that loud. Meanwhile, all the cooks have observed this and it’s clear to them what is going on. They are very quiet.
The CdC hangs up on you. You now have an owner who thinks you’re a damn moron, an irate immediate supervisor who doesn’t trust you, and a crew who saw you fold like croissant dough. And if you thought this situation might help you take her job, think again: when the owner confronts the CdC in person about the tuna, do you now think there’s a snowflake’s chance in hell that she will say one good word about you? Because that’s what you are now: a snowflake in hell.
Option B:
You’re far better off with the (counterintuitive!)
say “Yes sir, that was me. I apologize that that was so outside of our normal spend. I placed that order; would you like me to send the tuna back?”
You are not argumentative. You are not defensive. You are not sarcastic or contradictory.
You have no idea if the fish company will take the tuna back, and ordering it wasn’t your idea in the first place. None of that matters. Your mission, in that moment, is to take the burden of confusion and stupidity that the owner is carrying and to put it on your own back.
Your earnest response is disarming, because the owner, after years and years of working with all the lying bastards in this industry, is expecting obfuscation and finger-pointing. You will have immediately, and almost as if by magic, defused his rage. Instead of turning blood-red, his face will fade back from hot pink to its customary roseacea.
He may yet have the gaseous urge to vent a little more in your direction—“Hell yeah, send it back, goddamn it! We can’t afford six hundred dollars’ worth of tuna this late in the month!”—so just let him. He may make a face at you and storm out. He may relent completely, deflated by your willingness to step forward (“Fine, whatever, keep it I guess”). Your heart will be hammering and your teeth will be clenched. Take a deep breath.
Here is everything you just won:
The rest of this article is the first lesson when you sign up for premium content. For less than the price of a Caramel Macchiato, you’ll get 2 lessons a month, plus bonus content, all designed to turbocharge your career in the restaurant industry. Everything I wish I’d learnt long before I did.