Yesterday, as I’m sure we are all aware, was Mother’s Day. I work at a casual “fine dining” restaurant, let’s just say it’s a LOT like cactus club.

To premise we have a new head chef and GM who were trying to show how good they were, and it completely ended up back firing. We had 380 covers on the books from 11-2 when the most I have ever seen was 300 during a valentines night shift. The restaurant was completely overbooked. They overbooked to the point that reservations were waiting 30 minutes to be sat despite all the tables having a 2 hour maximum seating time.

The GM was running around on expo shouting for things that he needed into the kitchen while using a blow torch to heat up food. Bills were running 70+ minutes and the head chef was just telling us “keep making sets” (he was referring to brunch sets but there are 3 variations so it really doesn’t mean anything). I would be told “how long on x item” I would respond with a time followed by “and what will you need from me next” because the bills in front of me were not lining up with what they were asking for and I wouldn’t get a response. At certain points I’m just making random shit hoping it’s what they need.

The whole kitchen was in shambles, nobody knows what is happening and one of our sous chefs had not slept the previous night so he was starting to loose it, asking me for eggs that are literally right in front of him. in the middle of all of this and about 60 bills in front of us the fryer lights on fire. Like the back has a flame coming up from it.

I immediately tell someone prepping in the back to get the (grease) fire extinguisher, he pops around the corner with it to which one of the sous chef says “no are you crazy” (he thought it was a normal extinguisher) and starts dumping baking soda on it. During all of this the GM and HC are still calling for benedicts. The fire stops for a minute then starts again so they attempt to put a wet cloth on it? I yank it off and tell them it’s going to light on fire too and say “I have a right to refuse unsafe work I’m not cooking eggs next to this thing” and walk over to another section of the line. One of the sous chefs takes over for me on eggs and everyone continues to cook while the fryer is on fire. Finally after 5-10 minutes someone says idgaf about the food and uses the extiguisher which ruins multiple items on the grill next to it. Atp the GM and HC are still asking us for bennys and have still not acknowledged the fire. One of the cooks puts his foot down and throws all the chits into the garbage at which point we finally have a few minutes to reset and stop the fire. We start cooking again since during all of this servers are still ringing in bills. By the end of the day we had taken care of 1/3 of all the food sold.

Honestly I’m just glad I’m not salary anymore because I just got to sit back laugh and try not to die in a fryer explosion. Edit: spelling/grammar