K-OCD
Working in kitchens you develop a sort of Kitchen OCD. You adapt to your kitchen and you shift things around to make it work best for you. The Garlic Oil goes in a certain spot because after reaching for it 3000 times that’s where your hand is trained to get it from. When someone sets things up differently or moves your shit around it can be frustrating to say the least. It can make you want to cut a bitch.
My K-OCD starts with my apron. Whether I have to wear a chef coat or not, I cannot work without an apron. It’s a totally different mental mode…the apron is professional, ready to work, ready to get dirty if we have to and I wear it a very particular way. The top of the apron gets set on top of my belt, the strings go behind my back, get pulled snug and then tied at the front below my buckle. The whole thing makes my pants/apron combo tight enough nothing slips throughout the day as I’m bending, weaving, dipping, ducking, and dodging. That ensemble gets finished off with a towel, folded lengthwise in thirds, tucked into my apron strings on my right hip. If we are low on towels I’ll tuck in 2 or 3 to save for later. YES I KNOW THIS IS WEIRD. I also know I can’t possibly be the only one who does this.
My Sharpie is my next compulsive piece of hardware. I have one on me pretty much 24 hours a day. “Hey Jim can I borrow your Sharpie?” is a pretty common phrase where I work. “Get your fucking own.” Is another.
I don’t know why but I fucking love cleaning the fryer. I told my K.M. I get a cleaning boner when I do the fryer. He said “Me too.” I think it’s the sense of completion. When you load it up with fresh oil and you can see down to the bottom of the tank like fishbowl…it feels good. Then you cook a thousand chicken wings and it looks like a murky porter again by mid-afternoon. Le sigh.
Drinkware in the kitchen is a big one for me too. I hate it. I even get on myself for it. I touched on my volatility surrounding coffee mugs in the kitchen in Kitchen Pranks but it’s more than that. I’ve knocked over countless cups of water, soda, coffee, beer…what the fuck ever…that’s been in the kitchen on a board, prep table, in the pass…somewhere it wasn’t supposed to be…and when food came where the food is supposed to go, BAM, there’s wet food. WTF Kevin. It’s messed up too because (Food police alert) the general rule everywhere I’ve ever worked is that IF they allow you to have a drink in the kitchen it’s supposed to be in a non-breakable container with a screw on lid…so you can you know, knock it over and not splash your DNA and sugar water all over the counter. This one always moves my needle. Moving on.
Downsizing. If I see a big container storing 10x the air as product, I’m doing something about it. I can’t not do something about it. Some people can put a 4 qt container with 4 oz of product back into the cooler and not think twice. I hate those people. Those people suck. Moving on.
Sweeping the floor at the end of a push is like the last little bit of erasing the chaos. You get everything cleaned, wiped, restocked, and reset and you can go about your day like nothing happened. It’s like shaking the etch-a-sketch. I don’t get people that can work in the midst of a mess. Probably because I can’t stand…
Clutter. Random shit. Peelers, knives, 6 pans, gloves, recipes, rogue onions, Band-Aids, phones, chargers, speakers, ramekins, pens…anything random strewn about on cutting boards or prep tables. I’m having a mental tick thinking about this stuff.
Stocking. I’ll do a mental stock sweep of the line about 200 times a day. I’ll sell one ticket and want to check to see if anything needs to be restocked. It means I’ve got a pretty constant idea of what I need for stock but I’ll admit I can tone down the urgency a little. But not on…
Tickets. Man…nothing freaks me out more than when I DON’T hear the printer go off, or if I duck off the line and come back to tickets on the printer. Every time I come back into the kitchen my eyes go to the printer, then the board. Every time. Even when we’re closed. Then I’ll finally hear the printer go off. In my sleep. Fucking tickets man.
