#cook service

[weaselle]

it was too much i had to make my own post

line cook here. ACCURATE

if you don't get the hate, here's what you don't understand.

it takes up to 2 hours to close down the kitchen.

The last 60-90 minutes before closing time you do almost no cooking because the restaurant doesn't have many people in it and you've already cooked most of their diners.

So if someone walks in during, like, the last hour, the cook is in the middle of an industrial deep clean of the kitchen.

(these numbers can vary quite a bit from place to place but i have worked several restaurants with these actual times and the concept remains the same)

Say the place closes at 10. If you wait til the restaurant is already closed to start all your cleaning duties, you'll be there until at least midnight.

More than that your boss knows that on an average night you can start your clean up as soon as the last rush ends and get out of there around 10:45, even 10:15 on a slow night if you get lucky. That means there are plenty of restaurants where if you do take until midnight the manager is going to come up to you at some point that week and ask you what went wrong that night, and you'd better have an answer.

So this example restaurant closes at 10 pm. The dinner rush ends around 8:30, and shortly after that the cook is going to start getting every single dish possible over to the dishwasher because the dishwasher always gets hit hard and late, and the machine runs for 2 full minutes and only holds so many dishes, so the way that works out is if you wait an extra 30 minutes to give the dishwasher all your stuff it can mean adding like 60 minutes to the end of his shift. And you're gonna KEEP finding shit to send to the dishpit right up until you leave probably.

all these little square and rectangle containers in this cold table have to be pulled out and changed over into new containers, replaced by new full ones, or in some cases filled from larger containers in the back, which can result in even more empty containers to send to the dishwasher.

while it's all pulled apart to do this, you have to clean up all the spilled food and sauce and juices and stuff from the joints and ledges and shelves and drip trays

Once you get your line changed over in this way, and fully stocked, anytime someone orders something that makes use of a bunch of that stuff, you have to restock and re-clean it some. It might already be covered in plastic. Some of it might already be stuck in the back to make room to take apart your cutting board counter to clean. To cook a dish isn't TOO much of a problem at this point, but you're really hoping for zero orders because you still have so much other cleaning to do.

Meanwhile the salad bar and appetizer section and server station and everybody are all doing the same thing. Even the bartenders are stocking olives and lemons and sending back whisks and stir spoons and shakers and empty 4quart storage containers that used to hold the back-up lemons and olives and things. Every section is dumping their must-be-cleaneds to the dishpit as fast as possible because early and fast is the only thing they can do to to help that dishpit not absolutely drown into overtime.

The poor dishwasher is always the last to clock out, soaking wet and exhausted.

Around this time you probably scrub the flat top, which has turned black from cooked on grease and is still about 500 degrees. Line cooks are divided in opinion on water-based or oil based cleaning methods for this, but they all involve scrubbing with (usually) a brick of pumice stone using every ounce of your strength while you try not to burn yourself

you scrub it from fully blackened to gleaming silver and now if somebody orders something that needs the flat top to cook, you can either fuck up your cleaning job or fake it in a couple frying pans and pass that tiny fuck you down to your dishwasher (who usually understands, especially if you help them take the garbage out or clean your own floor drain later)

If there's deep fried stuff on the menu then the fryers have to be cleaned out, which includes straining the oil out into enormous and super-heavy pots full of oil so hot that if you spill on yourself then it's probably a hospital visit and if you slip and fall face first into it it'll be the last thing you ever do.

Then you gotta scrub out the fryer. Like you gotta take the (hot) screen out and reach your arm down into the weird rounded pipes and curved areas (so hot, burn you if you brush against them hot) and scrub off whatever is down there

Depending on your kitchen you might have to do up to four of these. Then you'll have to pour the (dangerously hot) oil back in

oh, and if you didn't dry the pipes and get ALL the water out of the trap and tank?

water reacts with hot oil in a sort of mentos and coke way that can send a tidal wave of oil past the open flame of the pilot light ...HUGE dangerous mess and/or burn down the kitchen if the oil lights up.

Unless! If the oil has been used too hard and needs to be changed, it's time to carry those open topped super heavy pots full of will-kill-you-hot oil and dump them in the barrel outside by the dumpsters so you can put room temp fresh oil in the fryers. whew!

The clean up is not just some light wiping down that can be easily interrupted, is what i'm saying.

You might have to do some kind of walk-in duty (moving around 50lb cases of lettuce and 50lb bags of onions to get to the stacks of five gallon buckets full of salad dressings and sauces to move so you can reach the giant metal pots and bus tubs full of prep and get it all organized and make sure it's all labeled and i have to stop now i'm having flashbacks)

THE POINT IS

by 15 or however many minutes to close, the line cook is doing an intense deep clean and probably has the whole stove taken apart to detail.

For some industrial stoves this means lifting off large cast iron plates that weigh like 20 lbs each and are still quite hot. Whatever metal burners are on there, you gotta take off and clean, you can see here the lines that indicate the large thick cast iron rectangles that sit on top of the burners to allow heavy pots to rest on. Those five (each has one front burner hole and one back burner hole, see?) have to be lifted off and cleaned with soap and a wire brush usually, and then the underneath area also has to be cleaned because a lot of shit falls through the burner holes on a busy night.

if you didn't do it when you did the flat top you have to do the grease trap (which can be like a full five minutes and is always disgusting).. You gotta clean out all the little gas jets in each burner with a wire or something so the burners all flame evenly, and sometimes you have to remove some of the natural gas piping that connects the burners to access where you have to clean.

you gotta clean out the bottom of the oven and the wire racks, and, oh gods, you gotta take down the filter vents from the hood fans above the stove.

See all the lined parts along the top of the wall?

those are hood vents, and as they pull air up they also pull a lot of grease and they have to be taken down and cleaned, then you gotta climb up there and scrub where they go before you put them back...

And then there's the mopping and floor drains and...

Anyway, that's what the line cook is doing when you walk in fifteen minutes before closing and order something that needs to be cooked on that stove. They are doing an entire industrial cleaning of a professional kitchen.

In some restaurants maybe one or two of these jobs will be every other night or even only twice a week, but in many, possibly most kitchens, ALL of these things happen EVERY night. You don't want to leave any food mess that might attract insects or rodents for one thing, so a really good kitchen is as close to brand new as you can get it every night.

IF YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO ORDER SOMETHING ANYWAY, HERE IS WHAT TO DO

open with an apology and ask the server to go ask what the cook would prefer you to order.

Any good server will already know what the cook is hoping for and what will make their line cook go into the walk in and scream. If it's significantly less than an hour to close and they say some variant of "oh anything is fine" they are either telling the lie their boss wants them to say, or they actually do not know what their line cook wants, and you can either use human connection and a conspiratorial just-between-us tone to get them to drop the customer-is-always-right act, or get them to actually go ask the cook.

It might be as specific as "the lasagna is easiest on the kitchen" or it might be a simple guideline like "nothing that requires the flat top" or "any of the sautés are easy" but a good line cook will probably have a system for if they have to make a couple of the most popular items after they start their close, so the answer is likely to include something most people like and you should be good to order that.

but for the love of all that's holy, please only do so at great need. Leave that last 30-60 minutes to the truly desperate and the crew's duties.

[jaienterprises]

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[trashy-raccoonz]

kimharry getting groceries tgt but instead they melt because of the heat, send post

also i might have gotten carried away and did a lil follow up comic....

[happyglittertimemachine]

Elevate Your Home's Charm: Let Our Expert House Maids Work Their Magic.A Taste of Heaven at Home: Our Cook Services Elevate Your Dining.Growing Up with Love: Our Nanny Services Support Your Child's Journey

[aimapandu]

Tweels on cleaning duty

[spaltedrat]

cowgirl yuri for thy weary soul

[yuwuta]

the best stereotype to assign to toji is that he is the dude who is defensive about and honestly a little nerdy when it comes to grilling. he will guard that grill and he will deliver perfectly cooked hamburgers and steaks no you cannot help him and he knows he shouldn’t call it a “man’s job” but it’s his job and your job is to sit in the little beach chair he pulls out for you when it starts to get warm and sip your drink and keep him company and tell him what you think of the new spice rub he tried out and sure if you wanna kiss him on the cheek that's fine too he won’t object 

[lastoneout]

I think the best thing about NileRed's videos where he turns weird things into food is the sheer difference between his skills as a chemist and his skills as a chef. I mean he's def improving, but it's SO funny to see someone spend weeks or months turning plastic gloves into nordihydrocapsaicin only to put it in the saddest hot sauce recipe you've ever seen made in a tiny little blender. It's never not hilarious for him to get to the end of huge project and have this very specific chemical only to approach the food part like "eh whatever this should work" like it kills me, it's never not funny.

I do appreciate that the only thing that did turn out correctly was the chocolate and the american cheese because making both of those is way closer to chemistry than most cooking imo, so that tracks, but everything else...it's just amazing, I just can't get enough of his garbage food. It's everything.

[dragonflavoredcake]

Tango: Hey guys, we're out of candy.

Xisuma: Already?!

Zedaph: Haven't there only been like four trick-or-treaters?

Tango: Yeah, but Doc brought Little Doccy by in a little creeper costume and they told me they loved me, so I just gave them everything.

[sanjiaftersex]

you know how the strawhats eat everything from dragons to sea kings to dinosaurs to weird vegetables found in different islands, if sanji wasn't extremely neat, precise and hygienic, half of the crew would've been dead already

[cowboy-kidd]

“hello, sweet prince…”

x - x - x

x - x - x

x - x - x

for @tinyowlet ᯓᡣ𐭩

—DNI NSFW—

[heynhay]

mid week klance because my queen @klanced is on the struggle so I made lawyer au

[afterlife-2004]

[maaxverstappen]

Mandy… we must discuss max/oscar… what is the lore… what are the notes…. Im clocked in ma’am im ready to be deluded — wiz

ok so i called myself the unofficial head of this ship (lol) but actually looking through the tumblr tag i must denounce myself and crown @nyoomfruits instead bc she has been on it from day 1

max and oscar are just so similar i think they get each other!! they're both very down to earth and very focussed on the job. both of them hailed as extraordinary in lower formulas and quickly making their way up (ofc max's was very quick and oscar had his year out, but still all things considered). i feel like a lot of it is max being surprised about oscar, i dont think he expected that deadpan energy/serious but enjoying it/quick wit from him and now hes like oh i see, i get it. maybe also helps how much lando gets along with oscar and max obvs likes lando. trusts his opinion.

max praising oscar when he hardly ever praises anyone like this

oscar looking up at max with awe and eagerness (its a still from a video but let me have this)

this tho!!! max never sits on the floor but sees oscar doing it so joins him?! for no reason?! lando was in the chair it wouldve been so easy to sit next to him (as he then does later) "thank you mercedes" and then max's fond laugh and almost surprise. surprise that oscar can be witty like that!! max didnt expect it oscar turning around to watch the screen and being too late. max laughing at him, checking to see if lando is laughing too. if it isnt weird that max is laughing at oscar's joke/misfortune. max then doubling down and voicing what happened as if they didnt all just witness it right there.

like i said on the oscar discord too, i think oscar would indulge max's maxplaining!! he enables it and is like "Huh, I never thought about it like that. Have you considered that [x]" and then suddenly its 11pm and everyone else has left the paddock before they even look up from their convo

and

they would absolutely bicker over Everything but neither would really perceive it as bickering. thats just how they are

also they both have cat energy so

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Greedflation, but for prisoners

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW (Apr 21) in TORINO, then Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Today in "Capitalists Hate Capitalism" news: The Appeal has published the first-ever survey of national prison commissary prices, revealing just how badly the prison profiteer system gouges American's all-time, world-record-beating prison population:

https://theappeal.org/locked-in-priced-out-how-much-prison-commissary-prices/

Like every aspect of the prison contracting system, prison commissaries – the stores where prisoners are able to buy food, sundries, toiletries and other items – are dominated by private equity funds that have bought out all the smaller players. Private equity deals always involve gigantic amounts of debt (typically, the first thing PE companies do after acquiring a company is to borrow heavily against it and then pay themselves a hefty dividend).

The need to service this debt drives PE companies to cut quality, squeeze suppliers, and raise prices. That's why PE loves to buy up the kinds of businesses you must spend your money at: dialysis clinics, long-term care facilities, funeral homes, and prison services.

Prisoners, after all, are a literal captive market. Unlike capitalist ventures, which involve the risk that a customer will take their business elsewhere, prison commissary providers have the most airtight of monopolies over prisoners' shopping.

Not that prisoners have a lot of money to spend. The 13th Amendment specifically allows for the enslavement of convicted criminals, and so even though many prisoners are subject to forced labor, they aren't necessarily paid for it:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch

Six states ban paying prisoners anything. North Carolina caps prisoners' pay at one dollar per day. Nationally, prisoners earn $0.52/hour, while producing $11b/year in goods and services:

https://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2024/0324bowman.html

So there's a double cruelty to prison commissary price-gouging. Prisoners earn far less than any other kind of worker, and they pay vastly inflated prices for the necessities of life. There's also a triple cruelty: prisoners' families – deprived of an incarcerated breadwinner's earnings – are called upon to make up the difference for jacked up commissary prices out of their own strained finances.

So what does prison profiteering look like, in dollars and sense? Here's the first-of-its-kind database tracking the costs of food, hygiene items and religious items in 46 states:

https://theappeal.org/commissary-database/

Prisoners rely heavily on commissaries for food. Prisons serve spoiled, inedible food, and often there isn't enough to go around – prisoners who rely on the food provided by their institutions literally starve. This is worst in prisons where private equity funds have taken over the cafeteria, which is inevitable accompanied by swingeing cuts to food quality and portions:

https://theappeal.org/prison-food-virginia-fluvanna-correctional-center/

So you have one private equity fund starving prisoners, and another that's gouging them on food. Or sometimes it's the same company. Keefe Group, owned by HIG Capital, provides commissaries to prisons whose cafeterias are managed by other HIG Capital portfolio companies like Trinity Services Group. HIG also owns the prison health-care company Wellpath – so if they give you food poisoning, they get paid twice.

Wellpath delivers "grossly inadequate healthcare":

https://theappeal.org/massachusetts-prisons-wellpath-dentures-teeth/

And Trinity serves "meager portions of inedible food":

https://theappeal.org/clayton-county-jail-sheriff-election/

When prison commissaries gouge on food, no part of the inventory is spared, even the cheapest items. In Florida, a packet of ramen costs $1.06, 300% more inside the prison than it does at the Target down the street:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24444312-fl_doc_combined_commissary_lists#document/p6/a2444049

America's prisoners aren't just hungry, they're also hot. The climate emergency is sending temperatures in America's largely un-air-conditioned prisons soaring to dangerous levels. Commissaries capitalize on this, too: an 8" fan costs $40 in Delaware's Sussex Correctional Institution. In Georgia, that fan goes for $32 (but prisoners are not paid for their labor in Georgia pens). And in scorching Texas, the commissary raised the price of water by 50% last summer:

https://www.tpr.org/criminal-justice/2023-07-20/texas-charges-prisoners-50-more-for-water-for-as-heat-wave-continues

Toiletries are also sold at prices that would make an airport gift-shop blush. Need denture adhesive? That's $12.28 in an Idaho pen, triple the retail price. 15% of America's prisoners are over 55. The Keefe Group – sister company to the "grossly inadequate" healthcare company Wellpath – operates that commissary. In Oregon, the commissary charges a 200% markup on hearing-aid batteries. Vermont charges a 500% markup on reading glasses. Imagine spending decades in prison: toothless, blind, and deaf.

Then there's the religious items. Bibles and Christmas cards are surprisingly reasonable, but a Qaran will run you $26 in Vermont, where a Bible is a mere $4.55. Kufi caps – which cost $3 or less in the free world – go for $12 in Indiana prisons. A Virginia prisoner needs to work for 8 hours to earn enough to buy a commissary Ramadan card (you can buy a Christmas card after three hours' labor).

Prison price-gougers are finally facing a comeuppance. California's new BASIC Act caps prison commissary markups at 35% (California commissaries used to charge 63-200% markups):

https://theappeal.org/price-gouging-in-california-prisons-newsom-signature/

Last year, Nevada banned any markup on hygiene items:

https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/NELIS/REL/82nd2023/Bill/10425/Overview

And prison tech monopolist Securus has been driven to the brink of bankruptcy, thanks to the activism of Worth Rises and its coalition partners:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/08/money-talks/

When someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time. Prisons show us how businesses would treat us if they could get away with it.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/20/captive-market/#locked-in

[blue--ingenue]

Staircase Ballet ("Half Life" by Imogen Heap)

Turn your sound on, I promise it's worth it :)

the lovely @bawbawbridgie kindly informed me that all of the songs in the score are songs written by Imogen Heap. she also noticed that that most of the lyrics fit the scenes they belong to. so here's a little edit I made and some things that make me go feral about this sequence :)

everytime i listen to this i imagine the lyrics are Scorpius' thoughts

the NAMES. Staircase Ballet. they are literally dancing around each other, separated but remaining in each other's orbit. Half Life. they feel incomplete without the other. they've lived the last several years at school, practically inseparable, and now they forbidden from even being near each other

Scorpius' devastated confusion. it's the same expression he wears when he confesses "Sometimes I wonder if they're right. If I am the son of Voldemort." he's so tired that part of him wonders if it's him that wrong

the lyrics "the stickler is you played not one beat wrong, you never promised me anything" - i'm imagining Scorpius, not yet out, hanging onto whatever he can. he doesn't imagine that Albus returns his feelings, but he loves him so much that he'll bear anything to be with him in any capacity

the PINING

"there may well be others, but i still like to pretend, that i'm the one you really want to grow old with"

"will you ever slow down, will i ever come first?" - thinking of this as a precursor to the "Try my life" speech in the library

THE WHOLE TIME NEAR THE END WHEN THEY'RE INCHES APART, THE LYRICS ARE A REAPEATED "HOLD ME"

the pining and agony of "you know you'll never be lonely, you know you'll always be loved, and maybe you never need more than that"

poor Scorpius, whose only family is his father (i have a headcannon that he's disowned the blood maniacs he's related to) wishes he had a family as large and tight-knit as the Potter-Weasley-Granger clan

(thinking about the library speech again) even when everything else is horrible, Albus has people who love him

"maybe you never need more than that" - my translation: "Maybe you don't need me." Scorpius loves him despite the overwhelming belief that Albus will never love him back in the same way, and he can't help it

"but for the surplus that loves, what's to become of us? does it even register on your conscience?" is the lyrical equivalent of the library monologue's "Can you imagine what that's like? Have you ever even tried?"

the use of the word "surplus," as though Scorpius' love for Albus is an unneeded, unrequited excess