Bad Time Management

I went to work yesterday, thinking it couldn't get any worse than what it was like last weekend.... I was wrong.




Apparently the restaurant management decided to have this promotion for the entire freaking week where they are giving away a free plate of pancake to the customers if they were to spend a minimum amount at the restaurant, which if you are going in a group of 2 or 3, it's an amount that you will definitely hit. I found that to be an extremely horrible idea because we are SEVERELY LOW on manpower in the pastry kitchen, at the end of last night, someone from the hot kitchen had to come to my side to help me along with one of the managers.... we needed 3 people just to get the orders out and they weren't even on time, both who came to help were shocked at the amount of orders that were constantly pouring in.




The boss on the other hand has stopped pushing the pastry kitchen so hard, so that was one good thing. He was still rushing me a little, but at least he was nice about it, like the waiters.




Today, I decided that instead of waiting for the orders to come in and then prepare them, I should do a big batch of the desserts first. Initially, it was pretty successful, customers were getting their orders within minutes, the waiters were all rushing to my side to grab the orders because I was getting the desserts out really quickly and everything was going well, my hot kitchen cook who decided to help me midway was also a bit shocked at how quickly I was completing the orders, that was UNTIL my Chef Trainer decided to come to the restaurant to visit on her off day and switch on anal mode.


My Chef Trainer is a bit strict but she has generally been quite nice to me... Today, she was just pissing me off when she decided to threaten me when she realize I was doing mass baking for orders that weren't even in yet.



"If I catch you baking this in bulk before the customer has even decided to order it, I am going to throw it away and let you go out and explain to the customer why they have to wait so long."



.... well the reason is simple, it's because the Chef Trainer wanted me to bake things fresh for the customers, so the dessert that you could have gotten a minute ago has now been fed to the dustbin as she feels that it isn't fresh enough for you, which means you are now forced to either wait another 40 minutes while I complete all the other existing orders before coming back to yours, or you can just cancel the order.



It's just a freaking pancake, not a bloody souffle, no one is going to care whether it just came out of the oven a minute ago or 20 minutes ago and no one is going to be able to tell the difference at all.... unless they spend their whole life eating freshly baked pancakes.... all they will know is that it's crispy (or hard since it's not "fresh out of the oven")  on the outside and soft on the inside




What I was originally doing was making more orders than required, and usually when the orders, along with the excess, are in the process of baking, more will start coming in, which means when the pancakes are done baking, I will have enough to either fulfill all the orders that came in within that 20 minutes baking time, or be short of one or two, in some cases have maybe have like 1 extra... the most I had was 2 extra but they were served within 10 minutes because that was how much order I was getting.



What my Chef Trainer wanted me to do was bake as the orders come in, so let's say I were to bake one order and if another one comes in, I will make another one separately.... which to the customers might sound "really freshly baked" but in reality it's just horrible time management BECAUSE THERE'S ONLY ME IN THE FREAKING PASTRY KITCHEN! I did tackle the orders per her standards the day before and the waiters were literally getting scolded by the customers for having to wait so long for the free desserts. It's ridiculous because the restaurant was giving them a discount for their bill for having to wait so long for their free dessert.




She is the Chef Trainer so I have to listen to her... but the day they start giving out free chocolate souffle is the day I'm going to quit because that's when I know the management has really become deluded about the fact that they are actually low on Pastry Cook(s).