Well, technically Day Two, since I did a trial shift, but anyhoo…
Last Tuesday I did a trial shift for Pizza Mia in Bedford. I wasn’t too worried, since I had done all this before, I just had to learn their menu. Jay (the owner) showed me lunch, then he left and the night guy, Pat came in. Dinner was simple enough, just make pizzas. I guess I did okay, as Pat said he’d like to see me come back.
I turned in my application last Thursday and was hired on the spot. When I came in, Jay said he and Pat had just been talking about me – they hadn’t heard anything from me and were starting to get worried. He asked if I could work Tuesday, since it’s typically a slow day thus perfect for training a new guy; I had a doctor appointment that morning, so Jay said to come in around noon. He had planned on working lunch alone anyway so it didn’t matter if I was a bit late.
I got in around noon yesterday, and Jay has four tickets hanging on the sandwich side and three on the pizza side. I tossed my coat onto a table and asked “where do you want me?” He tossed me onto the pizza line, since he knew I could do it without help (I did okay on grill but I’d have to ask questions about some stuff, whereas the pizza line is pretty self-explanatory.) Spent about half an hour banging out lunch orders, then we jumped into prep. I guess it’s not usually that busy on a Tuesday, plus the Sysco order showed up while Jay was trying to do prep. Not that he couldn’t have handled it alone (the guy has been working there 17 years after all) but I think he appreciated that I was able to hit the ground running. Plus Pizza Mia has something George’s does not – a dedicated counter person. You don’t have to drop what you’re cooking to take an order, which makes it a LOT easier, and when things get a bit busy in the back, the counter person will come back and help out by grabbing salads or taking pies off the oven belt and boxing them up.
Prep is the usual stuff, just more of it. Where we used to fill a small pan or container of chopped onions at George’s, at Pizza Mia we filled bus tubs (if you have ever seen the large plastic tubs they use to clean off tables at a restaurant, that’s a bus tub.) Last Tuesday when I hacked up a bag of onions, Jay had already gone home for the day, so this was the first time he got to observe my knife skills. Again, I think I impressed him. I’ve done a lot of prep in the past two years of my short culinary career, and I learned early on that ya gotta be fast and accurate if you want to last at a job. From there, it was restocking for backup, learning where stuff is stored, and since there wasn’t much else to do, taking apart the stove and scraping food from the burner plates. Dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it… Jay spent most of the afternoon out in the dining area doing small repairs on booth benches, while I cleaned up the kitchen and did the occasional sandwich order. I only made one mistake – an order for a BBQ Chicken Pizza came back, but I grabbed the wrong container and put Buffalo Chicken on it. I caught it right away, so it wasn’t like the customer got it and complained at least. I made the correct one and we used the Buffalo pie as a snack. (Wasn’t bad for a screw-up.)
Last Tuesday, there were three of us who would make pizzas as needed – me, Brandon, and Ray. Brandon is a younger kid who definitely has a knack for making pies but is addicted to his cell phone (kinda like one of the kids I worked with at George’s) and Ray is a construction worker who has never worked a kitchen before. I mentioned to Jay that I felt a little guilty because Ray was really slow and I had to step in and take over the station last week to get us through dinner, but Jay said sometimes that’s necessary. If you have tickets hanging and the guy at the station gets backed up, there’s nothing wrong with jumping in and getting the job done. I get the feeling that Ray won’t be there much longer anyway – after a month working there he still doesn’t “get it,” and Jay is rethinking his policy of hiring anyone with a pulse. Going forward, he’s not going to bring in anyone who doesn’t have some cooking background. Apparently at some point last week, Brandon punched the floor and broke his hand (he was playing a video game and lost.) Jay pulled him from the schedule, since you can’t make pies with an Ace bandage on your hand. Brandon shows up for his shift yesterday and tries to prove he can make pies one-handed, but Jay was having none of it – for one thing, if the kid hurt himself, Jay didn’t want to be liable, not to mention the possibility of cross-contamination from a dirty bandage. Brandon didn’t seem to take this well, leaving in a huff. Shortly after that, someone who was supposed to work dinner with us called in sick, so Jay looks at me and asked how late I was staying. I told him I planned to work until closing if he needed ne, so he asked if I thought we can run dinner, just the two of us? My answer was something like “bring it on!”
Dinner was interesting. Again, we did more in an hour or so than I am used to seeing in an entire week. Part of what made it tricky was we were getting tickets back early in the day that were to be made later. It’s not uncommon for people to call in around lunch and ask for a bunch of pies to be done around 6pm. The trick is to squeeze those in with the other orders that are coming back during dinner. The hardest part of it was the dough. I had two trays of dough that had been sitting out all day in the warm kitchen, so not only had they risen and got poofy, but they were sticky on the bottom and crusty on top. They were impossible for me to work with, and were coming out square. Some of them were heart shaped. None of them came out round, and it was starting to frustrate me. Jay stepped in and starting making the crusts for me so I could put toppings on them and get caught up, but when he saw that it was flustering me a bit he said don’t sweat it – the dough sucked, it wasn’t my fault. He was able to work with it, but then again he’s been doing this a long time. As soon as I switched to a newer tray, I was banging them out just fine. Dinner rush was from around 5:30 until 7-ish.
About 7:30 Jay started to show me closing procedures. Change out containers, clean everything that doesn’t move, then at the end of the night shut it all down and clean the grill, then sweep and mop and yer outta there. Not much different from any other place I have worked. I was clocked out around 9:15, but we stood around and talked until 10. So far, he likes what he sees in me, which is good. He looked at the schedule and realized he had too many people scheduled for Thursday – he figured, okay new guy will need training so team me up with someone else for the night. Turns out I am doing well, so he didn’t need the extra person. That kinda surprised me – he’s giving me, the new guy, the hours over a guy who had been there a while. It goes back to the whole experience thing though – sure, I am new, but I’ve done this before, so I am more valuable to him than one of the kids who can make a pizza but stand around texting their friends between orders. We had a chat about that too – he is ready to hand down an executive order about cell phones on the line. Get caught playing with one while you’re clocked in, you go home. I wish I was able to do that once in a while at George’s.
My next shift is Thursday, and then again on Saturday. I like the place so far – aside from decent steady business that keeps me busy instead of sitting around watching the clock, the food is good and I get along with the owner. Seems like the two of us have some stuff in common, and he talks to me like he’s known me a while instead of just another new guy. I think I’ll do okay there.