I?ve been on the hunt for a part time job, and let me tell you, it has not been easy. Mainly because I am being picky. I have had every job known to man, and have hated 99.8% of them. I don?t want to work on the weekend or at night, because that is the only time I get to see my man, and I don?t want to be a chef at a restaurant, because it is a back breaking thankless job and will stress me out. My ideal job? Ice cream scooper. But alas, there are no such job openings. Anywho, I was calling establishments today that placed help wanted ads in the local paper, mostly snack shops that serve sandwiches and coffee. I spoke with two different people at two different places, and they asked me what sort of experience I had with food. So I told them: I?ve worked in the food industry since 1997, first as an ice cream scooper, then a pizza maker, then culinary school, a job as a line chef at a fine dining restaurant, an assistant pastry chef at a gourmet bakery working for one of the top chefs in the country, and then a brief stint at a smoothie shop when I had had enough of the restaurant world. And both people asked the same question after hearing my experience: but do you have any SANDWICH MAKING experience? What? So I rolled with the punches and told them sure, I can make sandwiches. One of them scored me an interview. The other, well he had the nerve to say this with a snippy tone of voice: Yeah, actually, I need someone who has experience making sandwiches in a snack shop, and clearly, you are not qualified for that. I have heard from other people who have worked with sandwiches and frankly, I think I am gonna go with them. Sorry! What. The. Fuck. I could tell what they were looking for?someone who can handle a fast paced environment while making food for the masses. Duh. But I guess the fact that I had worked in a fine dining restaurant, in a fast paced environment cooking high quality food, using much more difficult methods than sandwich making entails, and a much higher stressed environment than any caf? or snack shop would have means nothing. I guess the fact that I am able to nearly slice my thumb in half with a 10 inch bread knife in the middle of a Friday night service at a busy restaurant and still have enough strength to put out my braised pork belly with apple walnut slaw before blood drips all over it and the other appetizers going out with it get cold means nothing. And I suppose the fact that I have made 20 pound batches of ciabatta bread, cut and baked them in under an hour for a busy bakery in front of a window that customers stare at you through like a caged animal and knock on repeatedly asking when the bread will be done is nothing. Same with the culinary school finals I had to face, where I had 2 hours to fabricate a chicken, make three dishes with it, make a consume, make a main dish, three desserts and two breads along with table settings, well that just proves I cannot handle the IMMENSE PRESSURE of working part time at a sandwich shop. Good to know. Bloody Aussies. ~LTG
Seriously, Adelaide?
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Megan
