Thursday, August 5, 2010
Welcome to your blog
Comments from students in Introduction to Management class. Post a comment on any issue discussed in class as it relates to your experience or your observations in school, at work or in the industry as a whole. Feel free to comment on your classmates' posts. All comments should be appropriate to the classroom environment. Remember to sign and post your comments before the deadline. Points will be deducted if posts are too short, do not refer to concepts we have discussed in class or have spelling, grammar or other mistakes.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
While I was on my externship I ran into some management problems. As individuals all of my chefs were great, as a team on the other hand not so much. One chef was new to the kitchen and always try to set up a station differently or plate a differently. He was one of those people who never had a set answer for anything; I’m not a mind reader. Another chef only had something to say to you if there was a problem. It was hard to go and talk to him about any product issues or just ask for help. That chef was always one to not have as much faith in the line and always be interfering telling us to be quiet and run a silent kitchen. The third chef I had was great; he always had faith in the line and always knew how to take some of the stress off a busy day. The three of them never talked about anything. If there was a change in the schedule and they needed you all the chefs would be asking, not just one. Or anything to do with the line items depending on who was there it would have to be done that way. Where is the consistence with that? I guess that I am writing this because the biggest thing in the kitchen is communication and if there isn’t any confusion begins and bad vibes will arise because of frustration.
ReplyDeleteAfter spending far too much time trying to reinforce the concrete basics of cooking I have learned, I find it difficult to remember if there were any catastrophic demonstrations in management. Truth is the manager position itself was contingent upon the mood of the owner. The restaurant I spent my extern on was in the midst of a court battle between keeping the name of the place and possibly risking shutting down. The end result was extreme paranoia between both fronts of the house/back of the house which lead to many cases of distrust among others.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, my chef and the executive Sous stepped up to the role allowing more responsibility to the already arduous job. This pairing has allowed me to witness the general structure of management by a chef firsthand. And it did help that I was an extern, after all they did ask that I return because I embedded myself so deep into the routine.
The chef I worked for, Hung Huynh, made it his business that I demonstrate a previous technique he taught to make sure: I either didn’t forget it step-by-step or did it too slowly (timing was everything to him). He would always repeat “Place (i.e. Mis En Place) is everything” reinforcing that I should always be aware of when he might throw something unpredictable at me. It’s the simple things that have made such an impact on how I view him as a chef and a mentor. He’s a wonderfully passionate person when it comes to teaching, he just doesn’t know it.