Teamwork
The kitchen is a battleground. It’s you and your team versus everyone sitting in the dining room. If that team isn’t a cohesive unit, you go down in flames. When your team doesn’t work together, it’s like going to war with just your sidearm.
Recently I have become frustrated with my team. No, not with the whole team, because most of them are on the same page as me… rather with one member of the team. The weakest link. The one whose ass I’m always dragging out of the weeds, and the one that I keep going down for.
… it’s like pairing up with a complete noob to play MW3. You’re ass is constantly taking fire because they ran out into the street and got shot and now you have to go revive them. The only difference is that your friend that’s never played modern warfare before will eventually learn their lesson and keep their head down so you’ll both stop dying and make some progress.
This guy never learns. I keep running out into the street for him, keeping his ass alive, but man am I taking fire. And though I haven’t gone down yet, I am hit. In the legs. The arms. The chest. I’m losing a lot of blood here, bro.
… When your noob friend is all revived, and you two make it to cover, he will help you out. He’ll give you time to recover and get “healthy” again. If you’ve taken one shot too many just before you get to cover, that friend will stick their head and arms out of cover and revive you so that you can play on.
I can’t seem to get to cover (I’m bleeding out, three feet away), and this guy won’t stick his hands out and press and hold x. So I’ll just lay here, dying by exsanguination, while you sit there and watch. Thanks for the help.
You might at this point be asking what the point is. So here you go:
Teamwork is crucial in the kitchen…
….and it has to be fluid, flowing in every direction. If “teamwork” is a river (flowing in one direction) to even just one person on the line, you run the risk of the whole line ending up on the rocks in the rapids. Teamwork in the kitchen has to be more… a series of little whirlpools between every member of the team… they go eternally around and around and around, one side to the other: I help you, you help me and back and forth over and over and over. Because there are nights I’ll be in the weeds, and nights you’ll be in the weeds, and no one wants to be alone out there with just a sidearm. So I’ll help you, and you’ll help me, and at the end we will consider it even, because we made it out alive.
Lesson? When you’re hiring line cooks, look for athletes (there are other types of people that understand this too, it’s just the best example I have at the moment). People who understand teamwork. People who get that if one guy doesn’t hold up their end of the deal, everyone else will suffer. People who are willing to go out on a limb for their team, jump in front of that bus, dive in front of that bullet. If you can hire a whole staff like that, you’ll never go down. Everyone will have everyone’s back, and even when you’re slamming busy, you’ll be running like a well oiled machine at 10,000 RPM. Get it?
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