The demands of being a chef
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Transcript
- Tararua College:
What is the most demanding part of the job?
- Jay:
For me it would have to be standing on my feet for long hours at a time. That takes a lot of getting used to. And since I’m quite tall, I have to bend down a lot. I get a lot of pain in my neck. But you get used to it over time. That is the most demanding thing I think for me, physically.
- Christina:
Yeah, it can be stressful when it’s really busy and you have to make everything look perfect, no matter if it’s the quietest night or the busiest night, you want to get it always looking really good; consistency is everything. So it can be stressful with heaps of orders coming in, and you’re rushed off your feet. But when you do it, you just keep going and it’s worth it at the end.
- Pauline:
Well my job isn’t as stressful as it has been in the past. I used to work 100-hour weeks. I owned a bakery, so I know all about standing on my feet for very long periods of time. I am now tutoring which is not as stressful. It can be stressful in that I have to demonstrate. Being the teacher you shouldn’t be making mistakes, but we all do, so I always put a disclaimer in before I ever do any demonstrations. But it’s a great job, if you’ve got a love for food. It’s just one of those things. You put up with all those uncomfortable things you are going to go through, but you know the job overrides the discomfort.
- Adam:
I think for me, at the restaurant and wherever I’ve worked before as a chef, the most stressful part is the man-management side. You’ve got to be able to understand. How many of you in that room? Six? You are all different. It is really different, people work differently in stressful environments, and everyone reacts differently. I think that’s quite a hard part of being a chef. It’s the man-management side of it, when you’ve got 100 people wanting their food. You see Gordon Ramsay, where he is slapping everybody and he is swearing at them. That person only reacts to him that way, but certain other people take a little bit of motivation, and little bit of talking to. I think the man-management side of it is the hardest part. Not just the cooking aspect, that is the easy part.