Games People Play

[cookM]

Food and Beverage Music got me to thinking about the games we used to play in the kitchen. Not that we had a lot of free time...

1) We would ask each other to name 12 mushrooms, oysters, etc. No looking up in books allowed.
2) That I would have less than 6 tags on the rail during a shift. My chef gave me a candy bar.
3) Bowling with plastic cups and anything that would roll.
4) How many grapes a person could catch with their mouth open.
5) The farthest someone could go before they couldn't hear the other person screaming as loud as possible in a closed walk-in. (Bad consequences...)
6) Who could put their fist in their mouth..
(Really bad consequences. Don't try this. Someone broke their jaw trying to retreive their fist.)

Yeah, I know I have lowered myself in everyone's eyes...

[Isa]

I can see the scene...Well you see Dr we were playing a game at work...who could put his fist in his mouth. It went in fine but when I tried to take it out, I heard this cracking noise, that is how I broke my jaw...

The things we do to amuse ourselves...I'll have to remember this one it's too funny.

[Nick.Shu]

we used to make a really soggy doughy mix of flour and water and heave it up on the roof in front of the pass and then do a sweep in the kitchen as to which FOH staff it would fall on during service.

Alright so it's childish but we used to like to put a metal skewer through the baguettes and watch the waitstaff try to cut through them. We also used to enjoy tying up the sauceboats and watching them grab them. But my favorite would be when we would put whipped cream in the earpiece of the kitchen phone and tell someone they had a call, that one's good for a ton of laughs!!!

[cookM]

You guys crack me up!!!

[Nick.Shu]

i have another 2 - pretty funny stuff.

1st) We had this chef who wasnt very good -so what happened was one day he was roasting potatoes and forgot about them - so my cohorts and myself, took the potatoes out, and replaced with the equivalent amount of bread rolls and turned up the oven to the max. When the 2nd chef got back from the toilet, CDC asked him if everything was ok, nothing in the oven huh?. Whooah, what a wail, just like a banshee.

2nd) I have a rather curious kitchenhand who makes a resolution each year year (about this time) to change his career. So far i have on record: Interior Designer, Fashion designer, Hair Stylist, Molecular Biologist, Quantum Physicist. The bizarre thing is, when i asked him about being a interior designer and applying for the course, he replied "what is a portfolio, i dont know what you mean?"

At the Intercon in Chicago, we liked to play golf with a rolled up piece of tin foil, and a modified steele. We would shoot the ball across the kitchen to the salad/dessert station. We rarely did more than 30 covers, so we had plenty of time to play. Until one weekend, the local papers called us the best kept secret. That was the end of the Boulivard Open.

[augiewren]

I worked at a place that had karaoke (long story) and when people would get up to sing, the kitchen staff would rate them on a 1 to 10 scale and hold our ratings up to the glass window in the kitchen door. We would also howl like coyotes if someone was really bad. Two of us went out and sang "Day-O" one night and got a sanding ovation.

Sounds like the restaurant version of the "Gong Show". Any body out there remember that show?

I can't wait to get in that kitchen and start having fun.
Danielle

I used to work at a Smoothie place and healthy food Restaurant. If you put a frozen banana in the dish water, it gets slimy and feels almost furry. It's always a good one to get the dishwashers.

I also like to smear the oldest, stinky, slime I can find on their sprayer handle. That's a fun one to watch them clean! I have "an understanding" with the dishwashers I work with!

Where else but a kitchen would we get away with such fun pranks.

[Greg]

Try this one: take the liquid that has accumulated in the bottom of a pan of meat that has gone bad and dump it in the sink below the sprayer. Next time they use the sprayer, the hot water hits the stinky meat juice and the smell is released into the steam. Keeps working for a while, unless they're smart enough to dump some bleach into the sink. Of course, this trick should only be used on dishwashers you have an "understanding" with!

[Nick.Shu]

i like this one: the young and not so cluey suffer greatly around myself and my sous.

He is greatly interested in learning cantonese so we have been giving him some impromtu lessons.

The unfortunate thing is that this cantonese is not really that practical.

i.e.: i gave him 5 dollars and sent him over to the chinese takeaway and told him to say (roughly translated from cantonese to english) "i really want some fried rice with dog and cat meat".

i cant really say what other things we got him to say here.

[This message has been edited by Nick.Shu (edited 12-12-2000).]