Good bad days

You've got a tight crew there, take you left hand and pat your right shoulder.

I usually work alone.

I remember coming into work one morning and before I made it to the parking lot, saw a 4' hole in my window.  As I pulled up, I saw the regualr security guy with his foot on the bumper of his car yakking into his phone.  So I asked him if he had already called the cops.  I'll never forget his answer:

"No.... Why?"

Then I saw the front parking lot was under a half-foot of water, the water main to the bldg had burst.  Things kinda slid downhill from there on. 

Took me half the morning to clean up the glass, but It didn't really matter 'cause we had no water, had to cancel 3 days worth of contracts.

Icing on the cake was a month later when the landlord billed us for "our share" of the repairs to the water main......  

I was a 3rd shift line cook for a small chain restaurant while in college.

The general manager was around my age but not much in the way of brain matter.

He bypassed the first day of deer hunting season and did not schedule accordingly.

4:00 am comes and the restaurant starts to fill up.

Just me and a server, and 125 hungry hunters.

I told the server to take orders and I started to make the coffee.

As the morning rolled on we lost a few customers to the wait but most everybody else was patient and understanding.

The server got great tips and she shared.

7:00am rolled around and the morning shift came in to a disaster.

I never got a thank you or even a acknowledgement of what we had accomplished from the kid mangler. 

We had a catering for 600 people for san diego catering to complete by 3 PM. We began prepping around 9 am and around 10:30am the water stopped flowing, somebody cut off the water and we had no idea what was going on. One of our neighbors had a busted waterline and had management cut off water to the whole building. We were like, now what are we going to do. We have another location that is twice as small but managed to drive as fast as we could (legally) to the other site and begin prepping for the order. Somehow we managed to deliver the food on time and now we always have some kind of emergency plan just in case something goes really goes bad. I was so relieved after the drop off, because earlier I thought we were going to disappoint 500 people.

Reza

San Diego Catering

My first busy night alone in the kitchen. The place I was at at the time seated about 25. We did 60 that night. It was a Wednesday evening and the chef wasn't picking up his phone and we didn't have a dishwasher. I was ripping through pans so fast there was a point where I was cooking pasta orders in pots. Pretty much anything that had a surface that could be heated was fair game at that point. Needless to say, at the end of the night the server and I plowed through a veritable Mt Everest of dishes. Never has a beer tasted so good. It may sound cheesy, but I think that experience forged a friendship between that server and I. We had a couple of other nights like that one, but judging by the fact we had gotten through, we knew we could do it again. And again if necessary. You just have to put your head down and work. Oh and halfway through a couple of cooks (I assume) came into the kitchen to ask if they could borrow some dough. I think the raging death-stare I threw their way was more than effective in answering their question.