Practical Jokes in Restaurants

[greyeaglem]

Every reataurant has something they do to break in the newbies. Just wondering if you guys would like to share some of your classics so we all can have a laugh to relieve some of the stress of the season. I'm talking about things like sending the new guy to a neighboring restaurant to borrow steam for the steam table or a left-handed saute pan, that kind of thing. Looking forward to some good laughs. Thanks in advance and Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

[RAS1187]

At TGIF... it was often enjoyable (not really responsible though) to tie baloons, gloves, small vegetables, etc. to the back of the newbie's aprons.

One would engage in conversation with the newbie to distract him, while another person ties the trash to the back of their apron delicately so he doesn't notice. The whole kitchen then keeps quiet and waits for him to finally notice he has something hanging from behind him.

We also would make sure the new guy takes out the trash, then lock the door behind him for a little bit.


I cannot support/condone our actions towards the new guy, as I was immature at the time, and I myself fell victim to some of the noob traps, but yeah we were definitely not professional/responsible when we did things like that.

[Blade55440]

At McD's (not exactly a restaurant...) we would break in new folks by asking them to do various things:

mop the freezer
scrub out the dumpster (with a handbrush and a 6th pan of water)
I think we went so far as to make them have to pull the grills/fryers and clean behind em their first night closing.

Needless to say it got bad.

As for where I am now (TGIF), we've only gone so far as blaming everything that goes wrong on the new guy (aka me...)

[foodnfoto]

My favorite was to instruct the newbie to get the tools out of the drawer in front of the sink (obviously, it's only a false front) and then watch him/her try to open it.

Another, though not a joke on newbies alone, was to compete to see who could drop the most perfect pyramid of softened butter on the toe of someone's shoe without them realizing it. The winner was the one who dropped the "buttermid" that stayed on the shoe throughout the entire shift .

[blueschef]

get me a bucket of steam, or a left handed spatulia

[foodpump]

All depends on how gullible they are, I guess. Had one apprentice who knew it all, nothing could shut him up. So, one day I got a hunk of puff pastry margerine, shaped it to resemble a schnitzle, flattened it, then double breaded it and lay it on a plate. Told him to be carefull with it as it was a sample and the Chef was to try it, so don't burn it, allright? Ah, the look on his face was priceless as he saw a pan full of greasy crumbs growing darker and darker.

About a year later we had a Chef saucier who was a bit more sadistic and had the same apprentice clean out the fryer "the easy way". "Look, you clear a consomme with egg whites, right? So, you just stir in a few eggwhites into the fryer, let the raft form, then lift it out, and Viola! a squeaky clean fryer." So off the apprentice goes and dumps in about a half liter of eggwhies into the hot fryer. In they go an nothing happens for a few seconds, then...Swamp-thing starts to emerge and foam, filling up the fryer, displacing some of the oil which is now trickling over the sides of the fryer. The "raft" grew to enormous proportions, as a souffle would rise, then collapsed, burning in the hot oil. That sadistic s.o.b. played it to end and gave thepoor apprentice heck for using so much eggwhite, took the poor guy all afternoon to clean up the mess....

[panini]

From the sweet side,
Going back when things were not all PC. We would get some interns that were perticularly nosey about everything, even to the point of not paying attention to what they were doing.
If it got bad, we would gather around a bench and start pondering over a metal container. We would pretend to be taking very large sniffs of this product to see if it was ready for use. We discussed it in depth for minutes and then just walk away from it. Inside was ammonium Bicarb.
So needless to say, in 2-3 minutes, we would hear the intern hit the floor like a ton of bricks.
I know, really bad
pan

[Pastry Maven]

These posts remind me of my hubby's days in the Marine Corp...he worked in a Helicopter maintenance/repair squad, and they would send the newbies out for a bucket of "Prop Wash" or ___ Ft of "Flight Line"

He gave the bucket joke a twist when he entered the high-tech world, and would send the new young trainees out to find a "Byte bucket" and collect all the spilled "bytes" in the data center -- LOL

Way off topic, but these things happen in every industry...

Cheers,

Micki

[MikeLM]

The "bucket of steam" is a really old Navy prank. We'd send a newbie on a bridge watch down to the engine room...

Which, depending on the ship, could be eight or ten blocks away and down eight or ten flights of stair... oops - ladders.

Mike