Catering people and/or bakers: Stories from Hades?

Knocking out* at 100 degree + air temp. Thank the gods we had a walk in freezer for a cooldown after....


*A thankless task at the best of times: take a rack of loaves out of the oven, knock them out onto cooling racks. If it's brass monkeys, you get sweaty. Summer? Hoo boy.... I still have burn marks on my arms where the gloves weren't quite long enough - you always end up catching yourself at some point.


Oh, yeah, and the day one of the bakers pretty much chopped a whole finger off. He puts the dough into the hopper and flips the lip down, but doesn't get his hand out of the way in time. The lid isn't sharp, but it does have a powerful scissor action. Baker wanders round to us cradling hand. 'Um, guys, I may have got some blood in the machine....' and then faints.(He did manage to get it all stitched back on, and got four weeks off work during the World Cup - we wondered whether it was all a cunning plan...) We had to shut down production while the plant was sterilised, and while most were sympathetic when we explained, some customers did NOT give a crap, because where was their bread?

Customers squishing a loaf to see if it was fresh, *squidge squidge* and then refusing to buy it because it was squashed. /facepalm.

Oh, and yeah, when they wire up the counter wrong, and you put your hand in just the wrong place and get lobbed across the room by an electric shock. I'd tell you more about that one, but my brain pretty well scrambled for a little while

Oh, and if I EVER see a doughnut again, it will be too soon.

I used to work in a kitchen in a holiday camp. One day, a white kitchen porter picked up a black kitchen porter and threw him through a glass window. And didn't get fired for it.

You could check out notalwaysright.com

Anyone who works for any amount of time with ovens will have thin white burn scars on the outsides of their arms. I've still got them and I stopped working in catering over 10 years ago. No matter how hard you try not to, you will touch the side of the oven as you're taking stuff out.

Common tricks to play on newbies:

1. Warm some plates on an oven or grill, then hand them to the new guy. Who will immediately juggle them. Feeling the pain but too scared to drop them.

2. Send him to the freezer for a leg of liver.

I used to work in a café in a rougher district of town: six months of total hell. My manager was useless and wouldn't turn up most of the time, so I'd run the place alone, and I'd have to deal with drug users, drunks...and my manager when she came in. Then I'd have to listen to her boring sex stories all day. And cover for her while she shagged policemen downstairs (-_-)

They found a body in our outside bin ffs!

If you want to check it out you can look at my old blog about it,http://captiouscafe.wordpress.com. It's a bit bleak and cynical, but who knows, you might like it

I worked in catering for seven years in a variety of settings, from weddings to corporate events. What sort of horror stories do you want? The catering staff really didn't deal all that much with bridezillas or batshit insane customers. We just sort of served the food, cleared that plates, and then helped ourselves to the food and alcohol.

I think the worst was the high school graduation party I worked where the ultra-rich parents somehow influenced the cops not to keep an eye on the event. I had to herd drunk kids away from the road and chase them out of the bushes when they tried to sneak into them to fool around.

I was thinking (yes, that was that grinding sound) would you like some fun stories to balance it out? Past the obvious duel with french sticks...

Strawberry tennis. One person has punnet of strawberries that are about to go out of date. Another person has a whisk (catering whisks are pretty big!). Bowl strawberry towards whisk, see how far you can get the juice to splatter.

Sticky doughnut game. When you make dough, it has to be 'proved' in special cabinets that are warm and very humid and make the dough rise. When dough comes out it is VERY sticky, especially doughnut dough. Each take a raw doughnut and lob at the wall. Whichever one stays the longest, wins.

When hungry (especially as we weren't supposed to eat in the bakery, or we'd get the push, but we could go round the other side and, from the shop floor, eat tasters). All decide on what we are hungry for. Often this would be cheese and tomato bread. The patisserie girl heads to main shop floor to snaffle extra cheese that we 'need' (the guy on the cheese counter fancies her). Load about 5 times as much cheese on bread as normal and bake. Wait till no customers on horizon, then put bread out as 'taster' and take in turns to stuff your face.

When teh baker who is known for super sweet tooth heads over, make sure you load that doughnut with as much jam as possible and slip it too him on the quiet. It will prove too much, he will bite into it, jam everywhere.

See the rudest shapes you can make the dough into...

Doctor the labels so that bread/cake is labelled 'Huge fungus', 'Ocelot's spleen' or even 'Wolf nipple chips, get 'em while they're hot, they're lovely'. Persuade the deli counter to label meat as 'elephant trunk' etc. Laugh when they get caught when a little old lady asks customer services how to cook elephant trunk.

Etc etc. It's a boring, repetitive job, you have to do something to liven it up...