Service Please

               I have never met a chef who objected to being called “chef”. No matter how senior in the kitchen team they are, calling them “chef” is always fine. ‘Morning chef’, ‘thanks chef’ and of course, ‘yes chef’ are normal things to say to anyone wearing white standing near an oven. It’s odd, we would never define other people by their job role – ‘thank you HR advisor’, ‘yes procurement officer’ or ‘morning systems analyst’ would all be very strange, but chefs are different. Plus, it has the added bonus of nobody needing to remember their actual names.

               I was discussing this phenomenon with somebody from the restaurant team at the semi-finished hotel and they felt that not only did they not know the names of most of the chefs, but the chefs also don’t know the names of the waiters either. They just yell ‘service’ at anyone they see, regardless of how busy that person is or what their job role actually involves.

               A more serious reason behind some of this is that due to a variety of circumstances, staff turnover is extremely high in food service businesses and learning names can be tricky. It is not unusual for a new chef to arrive without knowing where anything is or how to make many of the dishes on the menu. The person who was supposed to show them didn’t turn up (or has been poached by a place down the road offering an extra £1 per hour) meaning the new chef is in at the deep end.

               The waiters may not be in a better position either. On a summers night I visited a small pub for dinner, the place was packed, and a young lad (approximately 19 years old) was running round in a panic. I would have estimated that there should have been four of them but it seemed to be him on his own. Then his mother arrived to help out. Although it quickly became clear that she had never worked a pub shift in her life and had no idea how to do anything. Even pouring lemonade proved a challenge for her.

               There were danger signs. The table I pre-booked wasn’t set (or even clean), nobody seemed to have food in front of them and the young lad looked on the verge of tears. I was tempted to volunteer but maybe that wouldn’t have been too useful either. I would have ended up tripping over an excited dog with a tray of glasses. When the waiter took our order, we were told there were no chips as ‘the chef can’t find them’.

               This kind of thing is happening all over the country. Good people trying their best, but the industry is severely understaffed. The politicians tell us it’s “unskilled”, yet I wonder if they can tell the difference between Coke and Diet Coke by sight alone. And if they can, perhaps they can help chef find the chips.