I just saw The Menu (very good) and the military regime-esque sycophantic "YES CHEF" chants repulsed me. Gordon Ramsay has made a career out of screaming insults at his workers. How much of this is true to life and what is the leftist view on it?

I worked as a dish-hand and started and quit in the same weekend. Unbelievably high pressure and aggression from your co-workers. Is the answer "if they're well paid and have adequate time off it's fine"? Can a high pressure environment work with politeness and tact? Is the grotesque heirachy inherent in these workplaces?

I haven't read much so I have no clue.

  • knifestealingcrow [any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Of course there's the obvious general things like better pay and more time off, but imo a kitchen environment kinda requires at least some form of hierarchical structure because of how high pressure it tends to be. Whether that hierarchy forms organically/naturally and a team is built around experience and chemistry or is rigidly enforced and built solely on which potential new hire management deems is the cheapest is what makes the difference.

    The "YES CHEF" sounds cultish and is definitely on the more pretentious side, but it also serves a very important purpose. The role of the Chef is to translate a jumbled list of vague requests into a series of very specific instructions, ensure the final product conforms to those instructions, and to deal with any hiccups along the way. Having some sort of dedicated response to communicate to the chef that everyone's on the same page is crucial, and if someone isn't it communicates to the chef that they need to catch you up. "Heard" and "acknowledged" are also common, and I had one chef say my response could be "fuck you" as long as I gave one. A good kitchen should treat the title of Chef as just another role rather than a place at the top of the pyramid.

    Biggest key problems are:

    1. FOH and BOH are usually seen as competitors when in reality they're both incredibly crucial and rely on one another. My last kitchen job had such good solidarity between the two that once, when management really screwed FOH over on a busy night both FOH and BOH threatened to walk out on the spot, and that's how it's supposed to be. If a Karen is yelling at a server, back of house needs to be ready to start a brawl over it.
    2. Half of the pressure comes from having to deal with asshole customers over non-existent problems. If we were allowed to take them out back and [REDACTED] them during our smoke breaks it'd be a lot better.
    3. Management serves absolutely no purpose if the kitchen is allowed to do their own thing. More often than not, management inserting themselves into the process in an attempt to improve it does the opposite. Getting rid of the position entirely and letting the people running the kitchen figure out how to make it work the best for them would solve this entirely. At my last place it was kinda like this. Even though we weren't officially unionized, management couldn't do shit all without our approval because we were such a close team that if they tried anything they'd have to hire an entirely new staff and the well oiled machine we turned that place into would break down in a second. I could, and did, literally tell the managers to get the fuck out of my kitchen on day 3 as the newest trainee purely because of how often we'd just straight up ignore them if they tried to push their little reforms. Once BOH sat down and came up with a better schedule than the one management made, walked into the office, and basically just said "hey boss this is our new schedule," and afaik it's stayed relatively the same ever since.
    • PaulSmackage [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I worked as a bartender at this italian place for a few months, and the way you described the foh and boh as willing to go to war for eachother is spot on for my experience. The sous chef had a claw hammer on the wall, "in case any customer gets too touchy with the servers" was his reason.

      • knifestealingcrow [any]
        ·
        2 years ago

        The sous chef had a claw hammer on the wall, “in case any customer gets too touchy with the servers” was his reason.

        That was me too except it was literally a comically large spoon

        Management does everything in their power to split the restaurant vertically into two competing groups. The second both FOH and BOH turn that split into a horizontal one between themselves and management it becomes much much harder for them to fuck you over or retaliate against you. Capitalism is pathologically incapable of seeing the long-term and always prioritizes short-term profit, so even if it's not a formal union or strike the threat of even an afternoon of lost profit is often just enough to act as a shield. Remaining vigilant is very necessary, they'll try every subtle trick they can and the staff needs to be an immovable object in the face of it every single time. A hard "do what we say or we all walk this second" stance (ideally in less blunt and more plausibly deniable phrasing) can really put management in a deadlock. Having the chance to look my boss in the eye and say "hey, wouldn't it really suck if no one showed up on our busiest and most profitable day of the year?" was fucking euphoric.

        Obviously this isn't legal or unionization advice, just stating how we ran the show at my last job. By the time I left the only purpose management really served was as cover. They kept up appearances because "we have absolutely no control over them, every decision is made by the staff, and our jobs are near-useless at this point" isn't a very good thing to say to a stingy cost-cutting boss if you want to keep your job, and we were fine with them taking the credit as long as it translated to regular raises and the owner was kept in the dark.

    • threshold [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      love that answer- very pragmatic while still being worker focused