Like most restaurant chefs, our chef is a pompous, humorless, solipsistic, imperious egomaniac. Everything he says comes drenched in condescension, from work specifics ("That's called a RAMEKIN, have you ever heard that word before?") to simple pleasantries ("How was YOUR little weekend, hmmm?").
He recently did a restaurant tour of the southern U.S. and returned full of inspiration. He demanded that everyone show up to Thursday's dinner shift 30 minutes early so he could share his revolutionary idea. He strutted in a half hour late, proud to have kept everyone waiting for such genius.
No time to greet everyone or apologize for keeping us waiting; he dived right in. "We'll take chicken..." he widened his stance and grinned. "Season it, prepare it, then serve it...in...a fried batter," as if to describe the cure for cancer.
"You mean...fried chicken?" I asked.
"Exactly!" he smiled. "For the next few nights, we'll be featuring Chef's Original Fried Chicken. Sell it, upsell upsell upsell! I want it to be the only thing you sell," he insisted. "And the server who sells the most wins a $50 gift card [to our restaurant, fun!]. So don't be afraid to promote it on your social media. There will also be some kind of prize or something for most social media..." he trailed off.
Cut to Friday night, and people were actually coming in for this shit. We'd boasted on social media that we'd have the special for the entire weekend, and people made reservations because of that fucking fried chicken. We were slammed, but I was sauced.
Around 6:45, as the older crowd gave way to the Tindr types, chef and one of his line cooks got in a pretty big argument over the temperature of something. This held up the kitchen, and because no one was paying attention, we ran out of fried chicken due to a problem with the fryer. It was now just shy of 7pm, and we were out of the reason everyone showed up. A small but vocal group of displeased patrons demanded an audience with management. The host team was told to call every Saturday and Sunday reservation and let them know we goofed on the fried goodness.
On Saturday, prior to our dinner shift, chef took all avenues around blaming himself for Friday's failure. "We won't be able to serve fried chicken as promised," he said solemnly. "Maybe if we operated more like a team, maybe if people took sales seriously..." he once again trailed off, continuing to pace around the kitchen. It was tense. It was quiet. But I had a question.
"Yes?" chef said to my raised hand.
"So which server won the $50 gift card?" I asked.