For Lilian and the Indigos - Above Top Secret

First we begin with the Restaurant Trinity:
Chef/Owner = Creator
Waitstaff/Customer = Maintainer
Busser/Dishwasher = Destroyer
The economy of this system is using different currencies – time, food, etc... One
important currency is PLATES. What happened demonstrates the failure to differentiate a
PEOPLE problem from a SITUATION problem and correcting this failure is the basic
premise of this book.
Chef ran out of “squares.” This happens once every couple weeks when a certain dish is
popular. Chef comes back, sees some squares in the rack drying and he politely asks,
“Can you get me those asap?” NO PROBLEM. About a half hour later, for the fourth
time in four months, he gets in my grill, pushes me aside and starts frantically doing the
dishes. I stood back aghast AGAIN. This time I had the nerve to call him out: “Shall I go
out and cook?” Chef replies, “I’m showing you the proper speed blah blah blah.” OK, I
think I’ll just go get some coffee and do something else. OH, there’s some silverware to
put away, better do that. Done. OK NOW coffee. Get coffee, come back to pit, Chef is
still in there and just returning to the line where he belongs. Then I realized that not only
had I been completely caught up, nothing in the rack was anything the line needed. And
wasn’t Chef ranting about his girlfriend again when I came in? This latest outburst was
not about me being slow. Realizing that this was going to continue, over and over again, I
left.
Chef is not stupid. Chef is not a novice. So why did this happen? My high standards
match his; in my pit I demand everything to be just right before I can work – I can
appreciate it if anger stems from the requisites not being fulfilled but…
The first problem is that Chef didn’t leave his personal life at the door. This is classic
logic vs. emotion, rider vs. elephant, forgivable.
The second problem is that they never bought a new water heater when they renovated
the old Pizzeria in the building. If Chef had no gas to cook with, things would slow down
quite a bit, and you’d better bet it’d be fixed pronto. I was forced to turn off the hot water
to the sprayer to conserve it for the machine. To compensate I would once over hand
scrub each plate with a green scrubby dipped in detergent. This adds about 2 seconds to
each dish. Half way through the shift the machine’s hot water would be tepid which
means the plates would not evaporate dry in under 60 seconds like they should, so I’d
have to hand dry them sometimes, taking time away from everything else. OK, if the
problem is that I’m just slow, give me some Red Bull, but it happens when the other guy
is working too. Hmmm. If the owner had bought the water heater over vacation as he said
he would instead of going to Florida (Record lows that week – Ha!) I would be 25%
faster because I would not need to scrub or hand dry plates.