Change We Can Believe In

Thursday...

I have put in over 50 hours this week, I still have 2 days left to work. I am in here 2 hours before we open the doors to the public to simply clean. I have consolidated more things in this restaurant then I have in any kitchen I have ever worked in. Do I take pride in the work I have done? I am too tired to even care about how things look in this place. It looks better then when I first got here, everything dealing with the kitchen looks great. The office in the kitchen looks beautiful and if a piece of food dropped onto the floor I still wouldn't eat it. That made no sense but not much does around this place right now.

My chef is already well on his way to finding a new job and that is great for him. I am here watching over a kitchen staff that is unsure of what they want to do as well. I have cut back to a single cook on the line most nights with me doing everything else on the line. We are still doing a decent amount of covers but I can feel my body wearing down. The integrity of the food is dropping as well. You can say it's too early to say that but myself and one cook did 90 covers on Monday night. That's also 90 covers within a matter of 2 hours, no fun. It is impossible to cook good food like that, but that's not what the guys in the office upstairs want to hear. I am sure they are happy with the way labor cost has dropped like a stone in the water, but at what quality cost?

The only person capable of running the kitchen is working himself into the ground. The staff on hand is disgruntled at the lack of hours. The servers are upset with everything from lack of business to the state of the economy. The managers are holding on just like the sous chef, by threads.

Who would have thought that a billionaire owner that just 3 months ago said he would ride this recession out and we would all make it through it OK, would let this happen? I wonder how much he knows? He is coming back for a few days next week. Him and my chef were mighty close...he was like the golden child of the company for the past 5 years. Should be a good show when he comes back to brood over his toy restaurant and notices all that has changed. He hates change...