In the spirit of themed blogging days… this is another I can get behind. Fire Me Friday is the weekly post where I get to talk about my life in the kitchen.

I am willing to bet at least half of you already know that I am a Chef.

If you didn’t.. Surprise?

I have been employed in A LOT of kitchens over the years. These are the stories.

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I started my restaurant career, part-time my senior year. As a kid I had always been interested in good food. Let’s not lie… no one dislikes good food.

But.. you can’t always trust the actual name of the food.

Pro Tip: Just because the food has the same name, doesn’t mean it’s the same.

A perfect example is a good old classic.

🍔The Cheeseburger🍟

The Cheeseburger is known first and foremost for the quality of its beef.

A quality beef patty should be cooked to the consideration of the guest, YET remain succulent and juicy. Each bite should feature the purity of the protein, ACCOMPANIED by the featured toppings.

If your beef is bad… well your burger is bad.

NOT SORRY

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The same rings true when you are managing kitchen staff and the multitudes of personalities there associated. It’s a little different than business management because these people have open access to knives… and they know how to use them.

Safety is key.

A huge part in integrating yourself as someone with copious amounts of experience into an already established team is a matter of patience, establishing rapport and trade learning.

Otherwise known as basic people management skills.

There is one other thing..

Any management staff that pulled a Drake and ‘started from the bottom, now we here’, fully understand the weight of the following graphic.

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This is where I am going to begin. I will keep the identity of the kitchen and the actual people concealed for privacy.

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I was employed in a different kitchen, but it was just not working out. I am one to know pretty quickly if I am going to fit in a kitchen, and this one just wasn’t working.

So, as any person would… I bitched to a close friend of mine. I did not expect him to come back with, ‘send me your resume.’

As someone who is new to Arizona, and still pretty lost on how things work- having the help of a local was like winning the lotto.

Long Story short, I was hired by the Co-Owners of the company. I started Aug 15, 2022.

I was given a time and place to show up. I showed up..

…and I was welcomed into the most chaotic, pieced together group of personalities I had experienced yet. Everyone seemed to be run down and just pushing to get what they needed and get out the door.

My teammates had already arrived and I was told to go find them and get started.

It’s my first day. Keep it together.

I head through this beat to hell $160 white framed door from Home Depot into this warehouse of a kitchen with people everywhere. In my head, I’m losing my shit. How the fuck was I suppose to find two people with names I didn’t know because they were mumbled. I found someone that had the same tshirt as I did and I asked.

If it wasn’t for my teammates, I probably would have walked out that day. They helped me find who I was looking for. We got everything loaded and I was riding cooler.

I should probably tell you that I was hired as the Events Coordinator for a food trucks. Most food trucks only feature a drivers seat, and there are no cupholders or functional seatbelts most of the time.

I was full of company pride and ready to go… and I walked into a something just this side of semi organized chaos and you expect me to do what exactly?

So I started at the beginning.

I started talking to the staff. Wouldn’t you know that as soon as they found out that someone would actually listen..

The job became increasingly easier.

This particular staff is filled with amazingly skilled mid level folks. I was intrigued to interact with them each, and learn their story at that place.

This particular employer has a very high turnover rate, especially on the team I was to be leading. When I arrived, only two team members had been actively employed for more than 12 months.

There was something very seriously spoiled here, and it’s been stewing for about a year.

It didn’t take long for the spoiled patty to come to the surface.

We were being sent on events with low tires, lights falling off the roofs and malfunctioning equipment.

Forced to rush out the door, and berated while doing so.

The staff was directed to document all vehicle issues on the end of event paperwork. These were to be turned in at the end of the event.

Not to mention the one catalyst starting the trouble, also happened to be in a position of power.

I’d go home and cry. Tell anyone that would listen about how my direct manager would make fun of me for being a woman. How he would schedule me 10 doubles and no days off. Back to backs, day before off at 11pm and back at 4am. He was doing everything in my power to get me to quit. He even suspended me for having a round of seizures, but because I didn’t feel comfortable letting complete strangers who were already fucking me over to know about my personal life…

After 7 months of working on the trucks and stressing about it, I decided to do something about it.

The conditions were deplorable, yet if we said anything about it or refused service to a client because of the issues… we got a write up.

Hold the phone…

Employees are being forced into potentially life threatening situations to service ‘a birthday party’ – yet you’d rather take the risk of death or serious injury for a dollar?

There was grave importance put on certain clients. Corporate clients were suppose to be taken care of. Instead… this is what the staff that worked the location got left with. Not to mention the Hot Box had been left on and the whole cafeteria smelled like burned Nachos.

…and I was suppose to set up Taco Thursday in these conditions…

How about some delicious chicken that was left to thaw in a dirty wash sink which had been there since I left 7 hours earlier..

I don’t know about you, but if this was the food for my party the next day… I wouldn’t trust it.

But when I reported it… I also put the shit away. It wasn’t until the next day that I got reprimanded because I had executed proper food safety measures- and someone else had to do 5 extra minutes of work to get everything out fresh again.

The final blow came less than 3 weeks before I was fired.

I was slated to go on an important high value event. The day the event fell on, I happened to be blacked out as non available. I had been asked by a higher up to make myself available and I complied. Call time was 9am.

I arrived on time, ready to rock this event with my team.

As I walk in the door, I don’t even have a chance to take my sunglasses off and I have another higher up in my face telling me my event had been switched. I needed to leave within 4 minutes to make it to the site on time. It was a co-owner of one of the lines of business.

I normally wouldn’t have minded the switch, but the Event I had been switched to didn’t include the increased gratuity for the event.

Gratuity was the tip money for the staff that works the events. This was we don’t ask for tips on the road. In the events world, you make your money on gratuitous events.

So I complied but not without verbally expressing my discontent. I said,”Then I have to leave right fucking now. Someone should probably get all this other shit (vehicles parked in the way) out of my fucking way.” I think proceeded to walk to the door.

About half way down the 40ft path to the door leading to the yard… I overheard the same individual speaking to my direct manager.

DM: “Well, she’s pissed.”
LO: “She’ll be okay. *my loves name* will calm her down.”
… and they both chuckled, like it was funny…

I didn’t have time to stir the pot right then, but I had fully intended on addressing it when I had the time. It wasn’t until I heard it from three other people who were witness at the time, that I really started to dig into the situation.

I just had a financial partner to the main business make a misogynist comment about a female employee during work hours, on work property, and with multiple witnesses present.

More primal than that… some fucking MAN just tried to imply weakness because I am a WOMAN and I am upset.

OH FUCK NO.

I had spent months putting in my all for the company. Days, nights, anything they asked of me. I had built a rapport with the staff, and they were consistently showing up to work.

As a team, we had structure and accountability. The team operated and communicated with one another.

We were just starting to become what this staff should have been from the jump..

A TEAM.

So we’ve made it this far into what was suppose to be a short story… so where’s the beef?

The Events Team had finally started to operate, yet there was a spoiled stench stirring.

Little did we know that to the rest of the building, we were secretly the enemy.

I knew I was targeted the week I got fired. The once cheerfully filled hall I walked down daily.. no one would even acknowledge I was there.

The mastermind behind it all… my direct boss. The man that couldn’t even be bothered to show up to my interview, yet had spent 8 months exhausting his efforts trying to drive me into seizures or get me to quit.

You’re Very Own District Manager: Spoiled Beef!!!

I hadn’t stayed silent. I launched a counterattack using the brutal truth.

If you want something to succeed, you don’t make excuses, cause drama or make people fight like dogs for their jobs.

Instead you should admit your faults and learn from those who have walked the same path successfully before you.

I called out time and time again. Bringing cold, hard, immediate threats. I even stopped vehicles from going out because of gas leaks. I did what I could do.

The next weekend was Super Bowl. I was finally going to get a chance to do my job, and coordinate three major events. SB and I met at the location, he drove his little cash for clunkers and I drove the fully loaded trailer to the site. I was tasked to park it at the site and move the end of the complex for a client meeting to negotiate kitchen space. It was Thursday at 3pm when I got left with no notice and no assistance to set up Shaqs Fun House, Sports Illustrated: The Party and Gronks Beach Party 2023.

I left the site around 4pm in order to be back and lead the load in team at 8am. I stopped at Walmart and purchased Pre packaged sustenance for the upcoming weekend. There clearly wasn’t going to be time to cook.

Boy was I right. The next morning I showed up to one person helping to park the Burger truck and they had to take off for an event right after. I didn’t know it yet, but…

…no one else was coming until the event staff showed… in 10 hours.

I did it. I only managed a high ankle sprain, pulled calf and hyper extended knee. All on the right leg, but damn it was worth it.

I was ready to be home with my leg up by the time it was all said and done.

By the time I returned to work after my two days off… the countdown had started and it was like the whole building had forgotten the weekend.

The person who took the entire weekend off and pulled all my help before going home… he was dismissing anyone telling him what a good time it was.

It was also like he has put a gag order on the owners of the company. No one cared about anything but the COOs acquisition of a giant cardboard cutout head.

The next two weeks were thin with events. I spent most days training new people or taking the vehicles for maintenance or emissions. I was building an interactive google document regarding the vehicles.

It’s no surprise that I got fired, at least to me. Someone had to fall on the sword, and he had been punishing me for breathing since I arrived.

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The very unfortunate part is, nobody in the upper management listened. Instead they are content to try to mitigate the damage and hope the burger passes.

Still to this day, I hear my friends complain about their days. My soul hurts for them because had it not been for one spoiled beef patty, we would have made some really fantastic advances in the burger world.

I never disliked my job, but when it comes to jeopardizing your personal morals and boundaries for something that isn’t even positively affecting you.. is it really worth the money they are paying for your time? Especially when you’re losing quality employees for someone’s personal vendetta.

To this day I can only speculate as to what the documented reasoning for my dismissal. I haven’t been financially rectified for any of the uncompensated time and there has been no corrective action taken to help the staff that is hanging on by a butchers tie.

It could have been a really good Cheeseburger… I’ll opt for frozen White Castle next time I want trash.

-🍋💋