End of routine (again)

Apologies for the recent lack of posts - as you can imagine, restaurant hours and time for blog updates are not exactly a marriage made in heaven!! Since my last work posting, there have been some changes in the kitchen. We have had 2 more people joining the section but they are cuisiniers by trade and will inevitably head back to the kitchen at some point and the struggle for hiring pastry chefs continues......

There was a bit more of a routine for me in March which was working weekdays and having Saturdays and Sundays off but this is all about to change again because the pastry chef cannot delegate responsibly and this has meant the Saturday service for my "restaurant" has been in the weeds for the last 2 weeks - I guess that's what happens when you think its a good idea to send a colleague up to do service there without giving them any guidance/time to prepare/instructions whatsoever.....

Service for me has become less daunting and the butterflies have now disappeared. I have a good rapport with the restaurant staff as well which makes for things to work more smoothly, especially during busy times, no mean feat! The next area for me to work on is to really get my presentation up to the standards that I want.....

So, all in all, things have been pretty OK but it looks like its all about to change again this month:

• One of my colleagues who joined a month ago has to leave now because of family problems so 1 staff member down .
• My Saturdays off are now gone and the pastry chef has also decided to give me doubles for Thursdays and Fridays as well, the busiest days of the week to look after.
• I was left in charge last Monday - not meaning to sound arrogant (I like to call it "quietly confident") but naturally, everything went OK and the pastry chef now feels that he can leave me to be in charge every Monday which means an extra day off for him. All fine and dandy but at this point, if there is going to be a(nother) mountain of responsibility heaped on me, there had better be talk of a promotion "toute suite".

As you can probably guess by now, I am still undecided about the job. The hours are the one thing that I still cannot come to terms with and I'm not sure whether I ever will. Since I have been focussed on doing service all the time, I have not been involved with doing as much "mise-en-place" which means that in terms of learning, I have become a little stagnant. On the other hand, a big plus is that the atmosphere in the kitchen is great (bar 1 individual) and the majority of people are nice and friendly which is not easy to find elsewhere. The waiting staff in my restaurant are also lovely so what does one do??

I now have a few days off for Easter and I'm heading home to see Ma Chan so hopefully, this will allow me to clear my head and get a better perspective on things :)