ALSO...

I was featured in a local publication, that was pretty cool. I also did a dessert that will be on the next month's cover. I am in no way a pastry chef. I did a creme brulee napoleon with crispy won ton skins. I will post that picture later. I was also offered a job as executive chef of a Marriott resort, that I am kicking around. I would hate to move again, my resume is pretty shaky for this last year with the move from Vegas to Florida and now again to ? The US census bureau stated that chefs move from job to job more than any profession. I know this and they know this but prospective employers do not. Some see this a sign of flakiness. I see it as an opportunist who knows a good thing when he or she sees it. Only sometimes it may not pan out the way you want it to. Only recently that this profession of ours has started to employ normal people. Before cooks were the dregs of society, convicts, nomads, unsociables. Now we get college grads, second careers, housewives and anybody who watches the food network and says, "I want to play with food." I wish their were more shows that showed what it is like behind the line on a busy night.
Since, I have you here let me share my frustration with servers again. We have been going through some front of the house changes in systems, how things are being done. In my kitchen I like for each course to be fired through a ticket. When the diner is ready for the next course, the server or whoever will go to the computer and fire the table. We will get the ticket and act on it. For whatever unknown reason in the universe of food and beverage they can not get this one simple request. They will walk by my expo station and tell me they are sorbet(ing) table something. I want my guys to be quick so I might tell them to fire that table but I also want it to be correct. I look at my tickets and I do not have that table, so I ask the server what table and he tells me another fictional table. I ask him how many restaurants are you working in tonight? He looks at me like a deer in headlights and goes to check what table he has. (???????????) The next night we have only one person, the captain (who is 18yrs old) take the orders and enters them in, he takes his handwritten ticket to my expo and hangs it for the back servers to get salads and whatever. The problem here lies is this, they can't read his writing and he forgets the table number and gets their seats wrong. CLUSTERFUCK!!!! The two back servers, we will call them Clifford and Fonzi, start to get the salads and Clifford asks Fonzi if he got the salads for THIS table, to which Fonzi replies what table? CLifford says I don't know the number do you? How should I know the number your getting the salads. While this is going on my crew starts laughing out loud because you couldn't script this any better than Abbott and Costello, Who's on first?
This goes on all night long and I do mean long. Keep in mind that we do tableside cooking: salads, apps, entrees and desserts. The Manager wants to be the only one to cook tableside so he can get a cut of the tips. He can NOT cook for shit. So when the server fires the ticket and there is tableside cooking he backs us up by ten to fifteen minutes because he is not ready to cook or does not have his mise en place, or has several tables needing tableside and he wants to do ALL the cooking.