# What the Strangest Thing you've Seen whilst "On the Tools" ???



## chef bilby (Nov 14, 2012)

As the title suggests - What is the Strangest , Dodgiest , Biggest Cowboy Move you've seen in the Stainless Steel Jungle

Here's a few of my favorites

12 min Roast Chicken - Wrappes in foil and Deef Fried from frozen !!!
Running out of Baked Beans for a Customer and Sifting them out of a Minestrone Soup ( Me I must confess/img/vbsmilies/smilies/redface.gif )
Watching a Chef during clean down dust off her bench and when asked why she wasn't scrubbig it down the reply was " I did it Yesterday Chef "
An Exectuive Chef tearing apart - literally - a kitchen mid service to find his favorite paring knife only to find it locked in his tool box 5min later
Watching a Sous Chef on his first day slice his face open while trying to sharpen a knife on his steel in a very tigh kitchen - on his first day
I found a student crying in the toilet the other day after he went to the bathroom after chopping chillis ..........owi owi owi /img/vbsmilies/smilies/eek.gif
The list is endless - I'll remember some more and post them up later - What have you seen , heard , perpertrated ???

Come on fess up , this should be fun /img/vbsmilies/smilies/drinkbeer.gif


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## meezenplaz (Jan 31, 2012)

Eee those are some nasty ones. Your "Executive Chef tearing apart...." reminded me.....

Chef I worked with did exactly that, opening night, 10 minutes before the serve, FOH

full of 90 or so hungry, paying high-end clientelle, while Chef was shouting every swear

word created in clear view of the pass, dumping out drawers of utinsels onto the SS tables,

even the floor, FRANTICALLY looking everywhere.........for.........**wait for it**........

a gawdang _zester_! /img/vbsmilies/smilies/rolleyes.gif


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## flipflopgirl (Jun 27, 2012)

oops.


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## someday (Aug 15, 2003)

I've never heard the phrase "On the tools" before. I can gather through context what it means, but what is the origin of this term? Anyone know?


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## arugula (Sep 13, 2012)

A guy dropping his lighter into a deep fryer.


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## chefbuba (Feb 17, 2010)

A guy pouring bleach on some shark that was way past its prime. He was trying to get the amonia smell off of it. I didn't work there long.


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## kuan (Jun 11, 2001)

This guy put a 10kg block of Callebaut in the steamer to melt.


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## chefross (May 5, 2010)

chefbuba said:


> A guy pouring bleach on some shark that was way past its prime. He was trying to get the amonia smell off of it. I didn't work there long.


I actually watched a Chef instructor do something similar with ammonia and baking soda to soak bad shrimp to bring it back.


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## chefbuba (Feb 17, 2010)

How do you bring something back that's gone bad?  I'll take my fish fresh please.


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## chef bilby (Nov 14, 2012)

Someday said:


> I've never heard the phrase "On the tools" before. I can gather through context what it means, but what is the origin of this term? Anyone know?


Hey Someday it is an Australian Phrase - a bit of Aussie Lingo -

Strewth !!!! Bleach on fish that is just wrong !!! I had a similar experience many years ago during my Apprenticeship the Japanese Restaurant that I worked in had the Crayfish tank short out over a long weekend once and the chefs boiled and froze , boiled and froze these poor smelly ( and incredibly expensive ) Crayfish about 4 times before they were used to make a Crayfish Salad !!! Very Dodgy !!!


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## foodpump (Oct 10, 2005)

Ever see someone put 4 baskets of strawbs on a flatware d/w rack and then put the rack IN the dishwasher to "wash' them?

I've seen coerced "dumpster diving" (crawl into a garbage dumpster) to find missing knives.

One place I worked at had a cheap-o meat slicer,  the locking knob for the carriage assembly was missing. We had a Vice-grip permanently mounted on the carriage shaft to clamp it down.

And in the Army, one (deleted) put hot beef stew into a 24 liter insulated shipping/serving container, but slammed the lid down before it could cool off.  An hour later we were called on a 2 day training exercise.  When we got back...... the lid latches had blown and stuff was dribbling and foaming all over the place.  Yeah, those kind of memories tend to stick into your mind...


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## chef bilby (Nov 14, 2012)

I know a bloke who had a recipe for Dish Washing Machine Poached Salmon - Whole De-boned side of Salmon  ( skin off ) Coated in chopped dill & a little lemon rind julienne , wrapped in Plastic and bound tightly in a tea towel - which was then placed in the Dish Washer and set on a long cycle to poach it at 86 deg C ( conversion please ? ) twice as this gave a 12 min poaching time . I never let him do it , but I did work in a place years later that did something very similar but we replaced the washing machine with milk and the process was basically the same .


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## vic cardenas (Nov 11, 2012)

- At a fast food joint I worked when I was a kid. A cook who was about to be fired took all the plastic forks and dipped the tips in the fryer for a few seconds, he pulled them out and while the plastic was still warm he would bend 2 spokes on one side down and 1 spoke on the other side down so it would resemble a hand giving you the finger! He did that for about half an hour to the entire box and then proceeded to stock the FOH fork bins with them so the customers would find them.

- Obligatory General Manager who would pull rotten food out of the trash and serve it to customers.

- Cooks making water balloons out of gloves and having a water balloon fight in the kitchen. Occasionally throwing them over the fryer.

- FOH staff filling a clean spray bottle with blue gatorade and going out onto the floor in front of customers and acting like he's cleaning stuff, occasionally pausing to spray some in his mouth for shock value. Most customers would "get it" and laugh, or ask him if it really was a chemical, but some would really freak out. The best part was when the GM grabbed it and started cleaning a window with it. He would wipe and it it would streak and he'd look at the bottle with a confused look and then spray and wipe again over and over about a dozen times, every time stopping and looking at the bottle and rag bewildered.


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## chefedb (Apr 3, 2010)

I have seen this done in a home dishwasher. It actually worked


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## chefedb (Apr 3, 2010)

Any instructor ( or  so called one should never show his or her students that. You are doing both them and the public as well as yourself a disservice. There are many ways to salvage and bring things back. Teach them how not to let the items get like that in the first place.


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## mazaradhe (Nov 20, 2012)

I could Go on for Hours.. Lmao.. been Cheffing too long..  Here is a few Choice memories. 

   This was recently in a NYC kitchen I came into as the Exec. Line Chef Taking the Ice from the Calimari and Shrimp from the night before and putting it over the Carrots and celery sticks on the line. This same Fellow was caught pounding out chicken on his cold line, with the doors swung wide open. i actually showed him the chicken "flecks" on the produce and made him flip the line (but he had been doing this for maybe the two years he had been there before I got there, according to another line cook) This guy also washed his Taters and Romaine in the dishwasher, he claimed in broken english that he does indeed Pull the Soap wand out of the dispenser before he washes them (yet failed to empty the basin of food debris, not that that would have made washing stuff in the dishwasher cool, but at least.....  lol..) Ton's of these things with this guy, at first I just focused on re-training, at one point I realized the futility yet couldn't fire him. Until one morning he was playin "mubly-pegs {sp} with two pairing knives onto a cutting board, a tip broke off and embedded itself in my hand, that had just moved up to kinda cover my eye, so I could flip my hat around to look under a fridge.. Otherwise I might have lost an eye. he has since left food service =)

   But on the Safety note, the following are not funny. As real people died or were seriously hurt.

   Working in a Very large convention hotel kitchen, had recently been promoted to Exec Sous, with about 60 guys on my brigade's in Four kitchens. Early morning Sunday brunch, a young CIA grad was decorating a smoked haddock platter, slicing lemons on a mandolin. (I had corrected his technique a few times in the past, as he held his arm Parallel to the Mechanism) opened his wrist, bled out before anyone even noticed.

    A porter, who had been there at least seven years before i got there, was doing his usual friday Oyster shucking when he stabbed his hand with the Knife (the cheap place I worked never kept new or functional glove's around, I was a New Chef who didn't know how to demand safety =( ) It didn't bleed alot, and He said he was cool, But I still sent him home a bit early with Dinner and a Six pack. He died during the night of Iodine Poisoning.

   Sadly this was me..   I was carrying a *230 degree pan full of freshly seared 10 oz burgers tossed into a Boiling Au jus for a "Burger bar" at a very busy nightclub. It was double wrapped, I had two rags to carry it, Yet I went Maitre d style and put it on my shoulder, I was taking this out of the Kitchen, A Short hallway from the kitchen door to one of the dance floors, a Young waitress, clad in a Tube Top, came Racing, Bolted around the corner As I was yelling "CORNER" knocked this tray onto herself taking off most of her neck and chest skin to slough off. she lost most of that skin. And although it was Concluded that it was entirely her fault, and she got 13 million bucks, i still feel horrible about the some 20 years later,,, 

this is the most bizarre.  Again, Early in my Career. A tiny "fine Dining" place in the Sticks. Hour from town, But a pretty decent clientel. The late night Line guy was finishing up, Dishwasher and front of house people had already left. This guy decides to run the hood vent's through the Dishwasher, And to retrieve them he puts a sheet pan over the fryer bank wedged in between a wall and 6 foot Char grill to use it as a step. The pan slid off of course and one leg into the fryer, (this was an Old Bell fryer) and the other leg wedged in between the grill and fryer, effectively pinning him there. and sadly the fryer was still on (maybe to make his dinner? I don't know why) His wife found him dead two hours later when He failed to come home, and she went looking for him.  The Owner, the Next day, told me to clean the fryer that had cooked a mans leg off, and get it ready for service. This was the only time in my career I have punched My boss/owner. Knocked him out cold and walked off the job. Even more oddly three days later this same guy was Bitten by an Diamondback rattler on his outdoor patio at his restaurant, and died alone as well..


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## mazaradhe (Nov 20, 2012)

As Far a "bleaching" food, I sadly saw this too much while working as a consultant for a Chinese "mall food" concept in the early 90's. They would bring in these Chef's from China, pay them $600 a week (not horrible for the early 90's, but) and got them a little apt. again, not a horrible perk. But work these guys 80 hours a week minimum, During a opening One chef had clocked 107 hours that week. And the Corporate atmosphere was extremely strict on waste, and the Chef's happily complied, being beaten down as they were. But at no less than four of these places in Arizona/cali I found Bus tub's full of Grey, Bubbly chicken "marinating" No date but was informed (by a couple of the chefs} that they must sit for 10 days before service, to have time to properly marinate for just the right Chinese flavour profile of their Bourbon chicken . Not pickled, or preserved, simply rotting in the tub before service.


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## mazaradhe (Nov 20, 2012)

There is a place in Virginia, that has these old fashioned Top loading rack dishwashers, used just for this purpose, He would fill the rack with aprox 20 lbs of Misc clams, mussels, diced fish etc. add two bottles of Sautern and a Bouquet and run the thing for a full cycle, Dump the rack on a specially made steel tray, douse it with a Bottle of 151 and light it on fire, all the while throwing big butter balls into it. He called them Maytag party's and did at least one a day at the cost of $450 + grat =) actually tasty stuff....  lol


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## chefedb (Apr 3, 2010)

And I thought I saw some wacky things.You have some winners.

        One I won't forget . 2 cooks decided to bet $50.00 that one would put his hand past the wrist  into the fryolater, and because he did not feel heat it would not bother or hurt him ??

.. Well  he did win the wager  but  wound up in the emergency room and then 2 day stay,. Infection started to set in and another 2 days. This jerk almost lost his arm for $50.00.. Plus he lost about 2 weeks pay. It was not workmans comp because he elected to do so..


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## meezenplaz (Jan 31, 2012)

But the guy DID pay up, yes Chef? Would be tragic if he didnt.

Cant TELL y'all how many kitchen bets I've WON, only to be welched on. /img/vbsmilies/smilies/mad.gif

(Never any foolish, self mutilating ones though.)

Mazaradhe has my vote: on BOTH stories.

*Thems be what NIGHTMARES are made from! /img/vbsmilies/smilies/eek.gif*

Had a relative working in a downtown hotel kitchen, co-carrying a barrel of 300° oil,

dropped one end, splashed down all over their leg, did a lot of damage. That one WAS

a work-comp case but what good does that do when you cant work, are in constant pain

and are maimed for life.


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## laurenlulu (Sep 9, 2012)

Mazaradhe, my jaw is on the floor.

I can totally see all of that happening though, most people don't realize what a dangerous place a kitchen is. Just a couple of months ago I was starting a load of laundry and concentrated bleach splashed into my eye, a few days ago I was scrubbing the steamer that had Lime Away in it and some flung off of the wire scrubber again, into my eye.

Having to remove a large roasting pan full of hot water and two turkies at eye level from the oven because the person who put them in was a 6 foot tall linebacker shaped man, the list of hazards is long.

I really identify with the person in your recount who was trying to clean the hoods.. Although I would never try to stand on a sheet pan I do struggle to maneuver the hoods from above the flat top/grill/range from a ladder since I'm only 5'6. It's a scary job.


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## chefedb (Apr 3, 2010)

All kinds of NUTS and Whack jobs work in kitchens, and the heat gets to them and makes them worse.


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## flipflopgirl (Jun 27, 2012)

My BFF (a nite auditor for a fancy upscale hotel chain) slid my new (well not really new, he was number dos) hubs (no I did not mean hump ;-) and I into a very nice suite  so we could get our drunken/hungover as**s to the gate on time for our 10 am flight to paradise.

As most brides in our mostly Czech community usually skip the meal and hit the schnapps with beer (pivo) chasers I arrived at the hotel VERY HUNGRY.

Bought a bag of micro popcorn and proceeded to the kitchen to throw myself at the mercy of the all nite room service staff to do the popping.

How sweet, right?

Well as I was still toting the not yet empty bottle of peppermint heaven around, and was feeling sooo generous and sad that they missed the party (had never even met these people, much less invited them to wedding reception blow-out, lol) we decided SHOTS FOR ALL!

As I waited for my popcorn to be ready, and was feeling a tad dizzy, leaned up against the gas burners.

My wedding dress went up in flames and had to strip and I mean strip fast!

Hubs was pretty puzzled why I left wearing a full length ballgown and returned sporting a chef coat with the name Chuy embroidered on it.

Poor dress, I had every intention of having it heirloomed for any girl child out marriage would have produced.

Moral of the story?

Moral?


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## petalsandcoco (Aug 25, 2009)

> Originally Posted by *Mazaradhe*
> 
> this is the most bizarre. Again, Early in my Career. A tiny "fine Dining" place in the Sticks. Hour from town, But a pretty decent clientel. The late night Line guy was finishing up, Dishwasher and front of house people had already left. This guy decides to run the hood vent's through the Dishwasher, And to retrieve them he puts a sheet pan over the fryer bank wedged in between a wall and 6 foot Char grill to use it as a step. The pan slid off of course and one leg into the fryer, (this was an Old Bell fryer) and the other leg wedged in between the grill and fryer, effectively pinning him there. and sadly the fryer was still on (maybe to make his dinner? I don't know why) His wife found him dead two hours later when He failed to come home, and she went looking for him. The Owner, the Next day, told me to clean the fryer that had cooked a mans leg off, and get it ready for service. This was the only time in my career I have punched My boss/owner. Knocked him out cold and walked off the job. Even more oddly three days later this same guy was Bitten by an Diamondback rattler on his outdoor patio at his restaurant, and died alone as well..


Maz, I think you can write a book .....but this last one, well its just so shocking.


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## meezenplaz (Jan 31, 2012)

Mimi, that's frakkin hilarious!! /img/vbsmilies/smilies/lol.gif

I mean...er.... dang it, that-is-SOOOOOO sad! /img/vbsmilies/smilies/crying.gif

Actually I'm pretty sure I mean both! /img/vbsmilies/smilies/rolleyes.gif


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## duckfat (Aug 7, 2008)

arugula said:


> A guy dropping his lighter into a deep fryer.


LOL When I was young and still busting suds in a bakery my boss dropped his Rolex in the donut fryer. Stick his hand right in to get it...

Dave


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## meezenplaz (Jan 31, 2012)

Stuck a hand in an active fryer for a rolex? Did he still have a wrist to wear it on? /img/vbsmilies/smilies/eek.gif

Oh and Mimi....

Could the moral to your story possibly be......

" It is unwise to burn your britches behind you." /img/vbsmilies/smilies/lol.gif


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## dabears (Dec 8, 2012)

Our range went out on a Friday afternoon and couldn't be serviced till Monday, so we got some portable butane's and got to work. One of the butane cans was leaking and shooting flames a foot or so into the air so a guy who was still doing his externship decided to throw it in the closest direction which happened to be the waiter station.


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## meezenplaz (Jan 31, 2012)

So? One less waiter in the world?

I love those butane burners, cheap to buy cheap to run and they have saved my

derrier more times than I care to acknowledge.


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## twyst (Jan 22, 2012)

So this morning, a newish hire prep cook comes in and starts to set up the fry station.   She puts about half a gallon of oil in the fryer and turns it on and walks away to go get more oil.   Needless to say, massive smoke etc coming from the fryer, I saw it and turned the fryer  off.  Im really rattled by this, but she says its no big deal and if the fryer catches on fire you just pour more oil on it and the fire goes out.  She seemed quite annoyed that I found this practice to be highly questionable.  

Is this something people do that Ive just bever heard of, or is this girl just clueless and going to burn the restaurant down?


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## michaelga (Jan 30, 2012)

Even if it goes out... the oil will still taste burnt, yuck!

Tell her to stop wasting oil, not to mention cleaning off the burnt on stuff will be a tremendous pain in the ass.


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## thetincook (Jun 14, 2002)

Yeah, that's just weird. The only time I've heard of filling a fryer in 'installments' is with solid shortening, and only then because if you just put the entire cube in, it could get stuck above the heating elements while they over heat, leading to a fire hazard.


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## chefwriter (Oct 31, 2012)

Twyst,

The practice is not only highly questionable, it's downright dangerous and stupid. Apparently she has never been corrected by some one whose opinion she respects. Let her explain it to the owner or chef or better yet the fire marshal. That she is creating conditions for a fire and is aware that she is doing it is worrying. Since she walked away from the situation, she should explain what the proper response to the fire should be if no one is there to add more oil. Until she gets smarter or more informed, keep her away from the equipment.


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## rbrad (Apr 29, 2011)

clueless and dangerous


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## hozz (Dec 22, 2012)

> this is the most bizarre. Again, Early in my Career. A tiny "fine Dining" place in the Sticks. Hour from town, But a pretty decent clientel. The late night Line guy was finishing up, Dishwasher and front of house people had already left. This guy decides to run the hood vent's through the Dishwasher, And to retrieve them he puts a sheet pan over the fryer bank wedged in between a wall and 6 foot Char grill to use it as a step. The pan slid off of course and one leg into the fryer, (this was an Old Bell fryer) and the other leg wedged in between the grill and fryer, effectively pinning him there. and sadly the fryer was still on (maybe to make his dinner? I don't know why) His wife found him dead two hours later when He failed to come home, and she went looking for him. The Owner, the Next day, told me to clean the fryer that had cooked a mans leg off, and get it ready for service. This was the only time in my career I have punched My boss/owner. Knocked him out cold and walked off the job. Even more oddly three days later this same guy was Bitten by an Diamondback rattler on his outdoor patio at his restaurant, and died alone as well..


I did something akin to this years ago, cleaning the overheads with a sheet pan over the fryer as in your story, stepped on it, slipped and placed both feet in a still-hot fryer. Obviously, I'm still alive, but it did hurt like sh*t and left me with blisters the size of golf balls on my feet. Couldn't work for two whole weeks. I have pictures somewhere on my hard drive, but I doubt anyone will want to actually see them. I can still see the scar tissue in summer, as my feet tan the affected bits stay white.

Other stories; I've seen chefs taking metal stuff straight from an oven with their bare hands, chefs spilling boiling hot stock down themselves while carrying the pot, seen cleaning agents put holes in people's skin, spilled more of my own blood than any job should be worth after enduring severe cuts, heard of a chef actually spitting in someone's food, seen a guy closing a cut with a sharpening iron held in fire for a couple minutes, rambo style, and loads more. Heck, even today, I myself, while cleaning our ginormous gas grill (my boss tells me it's the biggest in all of Denmark, though I doubt it), I managed to pour industrial grill-cleanser into my shoe and left myself with a chemical burn that looks like I wore the wrong shoe and let it wear on my toe for an entire day. Nothing big, but accidents happen every day.

None of this has made me want to quit cooking, though


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## jakwob (Jan 17, 2013)

Not as shocking as some of the other stories but funny none the less

The cold water hotplate challenge, hold your hand in iced water for 5 minutes and then onto the hotplate for another 5... I lost feeling in my hand for a day

Watching the potwash finish everybit of food, that is sent his way from the restaurant

Getting locked in the cleaning cupboard for 45mins lol

Watching the sous chef try to fit in the dishwasher...

During a busy service, and after running out of pie, there was a gastro tray of pie cooling on the rack which got knocked off and in turn done a full 360 in the air landing perfectly flat on the ground, one of those wtf moments


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## just jim (Oct 18, 2007)

Hozz said:


> I've seen chefs taking metal stuff straight from an oven with their bare hands


I've grabbed a pan that was finished in the oven, then set on the range. I quickly learned to place those pans on the range backwards, so that the handle wasn't pointing towards me.

This way even if my muscle memory kicked in, the lack of grabbable handle would prevent me from making this mistake....again.


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## laurenlulu (Sep 9, 2012)

More idiotic and dangerous than strange but an "Exec" (in title only) putting a case of frozen raw chicken in dry storage to thaw overnight and then forcing his sous to cook it the next day. I nearly tore his ears off. My one superior whom I called C*cksu*ker instead of Chef.


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## garrettjames (Oct 25, 2011)

Not to add insult to injury or be disrespectful, but have people here not been trained to use an old broom stick to pull hood vents?


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## wpgcook (Dec 26, 2012)

I hate reading stories like these! I've always tried to be safety conscious whenever I'm in the kitchen and to correct errors I see other staff making. It seems to be almost a full time job at times which drives me crazy.

Some of the things I've seen...... A cook left his boning knife overhanging (point side out) the counter. Because there was a cutting board behind it, the knife didn't move when another cook came along carrying a large tray and sliced open his belly.

When stock gets unpacked in the kitchen (like the blocks of mozzarella cheese) some of the staff had a bad habit of flattening the boxes and leaving them on the floor. Other people wound up tripping on these boxes or slipping on them. I always envisioned seeing a face getting slammed onto the grill or a hand in the deep fryer. It doesn't happen anymore since I started pulling a "Chef Ramsey" on them.

On my birthday three years ago, I received a call from work that a new cook I had just hired and a senior line cook were having a knife fight in the dining room during a busy dinner service. It was about who was better at rolling out dough. Both were fired immediately.


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## junglist (Jul 13, 2010)

I'm fresh off the boat compared to you guys D:

I think I blocked most of my trifling moments out of memory, but some I can recall:

- Me working a Thanksgiving stretch, and cooking racks full of whole turkeys in the oven. Pulling out the top sheet pan, I didn't even think of all the rendered fat/grease/oil that had accumulated. It all spilled on my forearm and it hurt like crazy. Funny enough I didn't drop the tray, set it down and strolled to the manager's office for the first aid kit. Applied some treatment and bandaged myself, and went back to work. This was six years ago and I still have the scar; think my managers would kill me for not reporting it...

- Seen a cook breaking down avocados, and instead of sliding the seed off his knife like any normal cook would do, he would wail his knife like a madman trying to get it off like he was a maestro orchestrating an insane piece. Not only would someone run the risk of getting hacked if they went near him, but the seeds didn't always 'fly' into the trash. Yeah, had to stop that one myself...

- Plating rice pudding one of the cooks was using ground cumin, instead of ground cinnamon to garnish the plate...

- During one of my stints as a buyer I was in the office and noticed a knife sitting on my desk, but it was only the blade and the tang. I asked my boss 'Wtf is this!?' and he said, 'We found this in the fryer.' Apparently someone either left the knife in the fryer after cleaning it, or dropped it into the fryer without noticing/caring, and deep fried the plastic handle off. And they sent out food cooked in that oil...

- At the same job, we had some repair men come out to service our blast chiller that had been down for months. After some time I asked them what the problem was. They told me the compressor might of been malfunctioning, plus the fact that there was a nest of cockroaches in the unit. So glad I wasn't there when they startled the nest, even happier I don't work at that place anymore.

- A lady from the front of house came back into the kitchen and set one of the iron griddles used for quesadillas on our stovetop to 'quickly heat it up'. Not only did she not tell anyone what she was doing, but she herself forgot about it. Keeping busy with my normal tasks, I suddenly look up and notice our 4 top is engulfed in a massive wall of flames. I think that's the only time I've used a fire extinguisher in a kitchen, and some credit goes to one of the cooks who somehow procurred milk out of nowhere and help me douse the flames...


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## michaelga (Jan 30, 2012)

> I suddenly look up and notice our 4 top is engulfed in a massive wall of flames. I think that's the only time I've used a fire extinguisher in a kitchen, and some credit goes to one of the cooks who somehow procurred milk out of nowhere and help me douse the flames...


Ha Ha - reminds me of the time someone lit the stove on fire also - the closest thing I noticed was a case of good old glass bottles of "Pop Shop" soda. I started grabbing them with one hand and using the back of my knife to 'chop' the lids off and using them to extinguish the fire. The carbonation and violent opening created a pretty forceful stream of liquid.

The mess was an absolute nightmare as we couldn't clean it up right away (middle of service) and the sticky syrupy result was cooked until black onto the stove.

I don't think it ever came clean, but at least the automatic hood extinguisher didn't go off!


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## borkbork (Dec 19, 2012)

I use oil and a screen to clean/season our cast iron flat top, apparently the new cook didn't know you have let it cool a bit. He spilled some apricot glaze and wanted to give it a quick touch up during a 600 cover sat night. Wall of flames in our windowed kitchen


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## pollopicu (Jan 24, 2013)

Once witnessed a chef spit in pan to test if the oil was hot enough. A technique they seemed proud of.

/img/vbsmilies/smilies/frown.gif


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## meezenplaz (Jan 31, 2012)

> "Once witnessed a chef spit in pan to test if the oil was hot enough. A technique they seemed proud of."


Wow it's amazing how much wrongness gets done in the name of "350° will kill ANYthing."


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## chefchadnyc (Jan 20, 2013)

to Pollopicu,

Mario Batali is famous for doing that...ON TV.  You may still be able to find it on youtube.

I shouldn't bash him though, as I am one of his proteges.  I was banquet chef at his flagship restaurant for years.


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## pollopicu (Jan 24, 2013)

chefchadnyc said:


> to Pollopicu,
> 
> Mario Batali is famous for doing that...ON TV. You may still be able to find it on youtube.
> 
> I shouldn't bash him though, as I am one of his proteges. I was banquet chef at his flagship restaurant for years.


omg that is so freakin gross! I'm sorry but that is inexcusable, regardless whether he's a celebrity chef or not.


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## chefchadnyc (Jan 20, 2013)

He's changed a lot in the past 10 years though - and I remember, it was a flat top


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## pollopicu (Jan 24, 2013)

I actually met him once when he was promoting his book with Gweneth Paltrow. I have a signed copy of it.


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## patrick spriggs (Dec 12, 2012)

seeing someone in a restaurant that shall remain nameless cop a pot of piping hot broth in the face. Then the head chef who threw it having to write out a police report mid service.


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## laurenlulu (Sep 9, 2012)

Wha?? Some people are not fit to be around others.


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## hamlrt (Feb 11, 2013)

Hi there , in the job I just left , I was surrounded by blithering idiots .....
A executive chef ....who could not cook , what he knew about basic cooking you could get on the back of a cigarette pack .....total tosser . 
And the best was a diminutive chef , who got really upset when the guys too the mickey over his height , couldn't cook either . He instructed another cook in the art of poaching cod filets in cold milk placed in the bottom of a ancient hot plate , braised beef steak cooked in a pressure cooker with no covering (steam)
Food ruined beyond all recognition ....however he could talk a good shift , he also enjoyed stealing beef burgers and hosting his own BBQ's ....how he kept his job I don't know however he was eventually caught stealing and fired .


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## carrionshine211 (Feb 11, 2013)

I was working in a big hotel downtown, A cook was slicing a huge mountain of ham for stupid boxed lunches for 1200 people. He ate a piece without chewing it, started coughing and choking on, finally got it unstuck from his throat, and it flew onto a pile already sliced ham. The banquet chef came walking by, picked up the coughed up piece of ham, and ate it! Nobody said a word to him about it. Our jaws just hit the floor as he looked at all of us staring at him, and he just looked at us and said "what?"

Another one, kinda f'd up. And let me just say to begin, I dont hate animals. (and this is a friends story btw)

Cook goes to empty out the old fryer oil into the grease trap outside. It was winter time so the oil that was in there was cold and coagulated. He dumped the hot oil into the grease pit, and heard a horrible noise erupt from it.....then a cat jumped out, covered in 300 degree oil. Since the oil was coagulated, and smelled like food, it was in there walking around at just the wrong time. He gave it a mercy kill with the biggest stock pot available, and went home. :/


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