Week in Review (file under Pain, Burns and Great Success)

Henry David Thoreau once said; “Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.” I don’t think that he ever experienced a severe burn on his hand that made it virtually impossible for him to write. But thankfully, I have a great experience memory and can draw on it even a few days later.

This week was a rough week. There was lots of work to do and very long services. Lunch service each day went from approximately 11:30 am until around 3:30 pm which gave us little more than an hour to get ready for dinner service. We were exceptionally busy this week what with all the people getting into the Christmas spirit.

As I’ve mentioned before, sometimes you find yourself operating on auto pilot, not necessarily thinking about what you are doing. Well again this week I managed to get a terrific burn on my right hand. It occurred when, on autopilot, I reached on top of the salamander and grabbed a pan. The salamander is kept at approximately five hundred degrees and metal pans stored no top of it as you can imagine get impossibly hot. Immediately my hand seared into the pan and while the normal reaction might be to drop it I brought the pan down to the fire and then jumped up and down in unparalleled agony. My hand immediately blistered and all I could think about was the half dozen or so orders that were on my station. I immediately put my hand under hot water for a second while one of my colleagues grabbed the burn spray. Once it was sprayed on I grabbed a glove and put it on to which Chef advised me that it would make the pain worse. I looked at him and said that may be so but I still have orders to get out. This of course is the sanitized version of events as there was quite a bit of cursing for about a minute or so. Plus I started beating myself up right away for not having a rag in my hand and what’s worse thinking that I did.

I got the orders out. Which for me was painful but all part of the job. My response to the pain was to work through it and make sure that my patrons got the same food that they would have if I had not burned my hand. Once service was over I placed my hand in an ice bath to numb it from the pain so that I could continue to work. I was both proud and ashamed at myself. But I did get the job done.

I also worked the front line alone on Friday. It felt really good to be able to do this. It enabled me to work two stations and get food out in a timely manner. It caused me to work on my timing and speed as well as order completion.

I felt good about the week and what I accomplished. I have some homework this week as Chef is doing a retooling of the menu. He’s asked me to come up with some dishes for review along the idea of what I would eventually like to cook. Gladly I responded and have spent quite a bit of time considering it.

Maxwell Maltz once said; “When you see a thing clearly in your mind, your creative "success mechanism" within you takes over and does the job much better than you could do it by conscious effort or "willpower”

Dale Carnegie once said; “Don't be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves.”

How true are those?

Are you dreaming big and inspired?

A la prochaine

SDM