My many weeks of intensive managerial training at L---- restaurants were how one might imagine a sojourn in the military (culinary division). These involved:
Obtaining and upholding the correct uniform. White shirt – not a seam out of place, not a dash of colour or even black writing on the nape of the neck. Blue jeans. Flat black shoes. Hair up, mask on. No jewelry or ornamentation, bra coordinated with the white shirt. Though it may look like a casual uniform to the outside observer – and that is indeed the reasoning behind the move – it is actually a very strictly regimented one, with waiters coming in early, dressed in their own clothes, to iron their white shirt in the tiny, cramped, cluttered staff room that smells of feet. Hooks on the walls hold layers upon layers of employees’ belongings, nothing protected from theft.
They enter the arena of the restaurant floor with strict orders about how not to address customers and remove glasses from tables. I will not delve into the intense heat of the summer accumulating droplets of sweat behind the revolting facecloth they are forced to wear throughout service to help the customers feel safe (from the smiling faces of filthy peasant servants?), nor into the impossibility of proper communication with three-quarters of one’s face covered up.
They run sometimes an entire floor of punters with little to no help from the manager who delegates, does a lot of digital paperwork and deals with complaints. Running a section means getting to every table in time before the little patience bar above customers’ heads reaches critical level, juggling and staggering orders to keep the kitchen running smoothly. It means removing clutter from tables (using a delicately balanced tray) as they run to pick up a food order that includes hot, heavy and precarious dishes to balance simultaneously between hands and forearms.
I had the honour of training under J-----, the company’s “German matron” in the boss’s words, though she be of English descent. She was a gorgeous bleached blonde with a 60s fringe, chin length hair, a button nose and sultry eyes that darted round the floor from underneath mile-long fake eyelashes. Hers was certainly a pristine face to front the business. She told me once that even on her days off she would not feel awake until full make-up had been applied. Her lips were large and handsome, boldly outlined in lipliner and a very precise colour filled in to match the rest of the artwork. But the first thing anybody saw of J----- was her most glorious, shapely and most especially sizeable feature, very clearly displayed in the woman’s choice of classy, tight-fitting vintage jeans.
When J----- contorted her face into theatrical expressions of grief or mirth, she began to look a bit like a drag queen. Vulnerability and despair floated constantly near the surface, which, combined with total competence, gave her great standing in the company as a representative for the waiters who would remain easily manipulable by the bosses. I was utterly shocked to find out that she was thirty-five, with an art degree under her belt and still no idea what to do with herself, and she worked there around sixty hours a week.
The management trio were all of an eerie reptilian ilk. The owner’s version was softest, and most human – or at least, he put it on well enough. He would often wear faded workman’s clothes and boast about the humble grunt work of his lofty role. He would swan into a branch by surprise, sheer authority and grandeur oozing from his every pore, and engage in a breezy chat with lowly employees as the manager on duty soiled himself in the background.
He would often briefly take said manager outside, deliver a dressing down about the lighting levels and the sore victim would return to the floor, cowed, as boss man resumed light banter with the fawning staff. The man was a master of manipulation, effortless calculation in his every move, his every glance, his words both kind and cruel. He was tall, Swiss, wide-set with long grey hair and piercing hazel eyes. His face was oddly nondescript – hard to picture, but instantly recognisable. A slight lisp in his genial English accent added to the illusion of humanity.
The managing director was worst at concealing his reptilian nature. Not only was his approach snappy and often harsh, but his sharp face with its incredibly tight brown skin were immediately reminiscent of the common gecko. Every detail of the tall, svelte, perfectly ironed, ageless man’s skull was visible – down to the gap in his temporal bone. His cold black eyes bulged from sunken sockets, his mouth drew back in a painful smile when necessary, but never when talking to his subordinates. He was creative with his words, and quick to dispel my notions of hierarchy: “no, everybody is equal in this company” - just before roasting the manager on duty for forgetting to make him a coffee in plain sight of everybody in the restaurant.
Hard to backpedal from such a merciless depiction of the man; but I will mention nonetheless that he was far from bad-looking, and his exceptionally authoritative demeanour evoked heavy flirting from the sultry adolescent waitress who, on her way out the door, coyly asked him when she could have her meeting with him. Under my knowing laughter (at the gorgeous girl’s sheer audacity), he reacted without an ounce of awkwardness, keeping the exchange professional while sufficiently acknowledging her advances.
He was the embodiment of the corporate machine, a perfectly kept tool for running every cog in the company down to such vagueries as “conflict management”, “diversity and inclusion”, protocols, policy and procedures. He would adapt his tone – as per every management training programme under the western sun – to whomever he was talking to, in order to get his message across in the most scientifically proven way possible. To me, laid-back pragmatist that I am, he effectively communicated an empathetic reaction to my distaste for checklists and countless, (unpaid) time-consuming online courses, making me fold to his commands like a teaspoon in a tub of ice cream.
I recall the managing director’s family coming in for dinner one day, a tired looking woman sitting across the table as their daughter pranced around on his lap. It was an odd vision, an exhibitionist performance of “classic family man” for all employees to enjoy.
Both the managing director and especially his owner almost hypnotically incite bootlicking behaviour in all those in the vicinity, even customers.
The third and absolutely key piece to the ------- puzzle was the handsome human resources lady. While equally reptilian in appearance to the managing director, she had a natural clumsy charm that gave her that HR edge. She was their secret power, the manipulatrice extraordinaire, the “good cop” - everybody sang her praises for how accommodating and understanding she was. She worded demands and contracts perfectly suited to the business needs while appearing to address employees with genuine compassion. When she made a mistake, such as having me work two, not one, unpaid trial shifts, she apologised emphatically, pretending to beat herself up over the injustice she had caused me – a trick I am no stranger to, but gave her a pass nonetheless.
When I, however, made the mistake of double-booking myself, she sent me a tactfully worded threat of demotion: “perhaps you would like to start with us as a waitress, and finish your management training sometime in future.”
When she or the MD would fail to respond to e-mails, they would keep schtum; should an underpaid manager meanwhile fail to be contactable outside of work hours, may the wrath of the corporate gods smite him.
The deeper I plunge into this strange, award-winning, so-called ethical company, the more misery and stress I discover. Minutes after my earful from the MD about their policy of not putting staff on more than five shifts in a row so they can get adequate rest (so that they don’t trip on a slippery tile because they’re tired, which is part of a risk assessment, which must be recorded, blah-di-blah), I learned from the harassed head waitress that she had had one day off in twelve as equally harassed managers continued to pile work on her petite frame. All seemed satisfied by her sulky reply to their empty question, “how are you?” - “fine”.
The tension is palpable during busy shifts, with waiters sniping at each other behind the scenes while putting on highly convincing displays of warmth to their customers, or “guests” as they are euphemistically called (despite pains taken to ensure rapid table-turning and regular remarks about the size of their wallets).
Clearly these reptilian creatures are highly skilled in hiring intelligent yet obedient staff like myself.
I have not yet mentioned the head chef, who quite literally looks like a combination of Lord Voldemort and an evil Pope Benedict. He, too, is ruthless and evokes dread amongst the staff despite his hearty Liverpudlian origins. I know far less of him aside from: his unrelenting, unsympathetic reaction when I begged to wear my own shoes in the kitchen instead of the mandatory ones that hurt my feet over the fifteen-hour shifts I was made to do for peanuts; word from the other chefs that their work load increases whenever he is on a shift because he is far too important to chip in to the menial tasks. His face is what marked me most, from the very first time I saw him: a large bald head with cold, inset eyes like black holes. There was an almost inhuman aspect to the whole man. He always seemed to slither from room to room, or otherwise be standing unnervingly still.
I can just imagine head chef and boss man out on a market research mission to neighbouring eateries. Had they walked into my pub, I would be utterly fascinated by them, would almost certainly flirt with the owner. As their underling, I have deeper insight but frustratingly little use of my feminine powers. Their ironed shirts emit no musky pheromones.
In the company environment, all messy aspects of human nature are tucked away into the recesses of the most tightly-run ship I’ve ever seen. They hire based on obedience, character and appearance, this much is clear. The innocent teenage waitresses are key to the company’s image. They are spared most mistreatment as their bubbly nature gives the business a veneer of purity, perkiness; an almost virginal appeal.
It is, without a doubt, a fascinating world to study. The kitchen staff seem happier for they are actually living their chosen career and seem to have chances of progression up the ranks. Many of them are ambitious young (and I mean young) fellows who chop fast and fry hard, learning with adorable enthusiasm from the head chef when he mentors them during a lull in service. They may gruff and moan a little, but it is what they love doing. Unlike the front of house. These guys and girls are all pursuing, or at least dreaming of, something completely different, something better, and so desperately unattainable.
Such observations make me wonder whether I was cut out for this. I have fallen too far down the commie hole, seeing all as exploited individuals and the bosses as, well, reptiles. Perhaps I can not boss around tired waitresses who have never a minute for themselves, particularly the ones with children. Or maybe… maybe it is worth seeing if I can learn this skill. Study the reptilian folk, glean some of their alien ways to gain just that little bit more efficiency in managing my own life.
I have not spoken yet of the little starter chef who made my experience in the kitchen such a joyful one. Little A-------, young ginger fellow at the opposite end of the stick from the head aliens discussed above: sensuousness ran through his every sinew. A------- told me what to do in no uncertain terms, and I talked back constantly. Our lighthearted bickering was a joy, it made the air all but vibrate around us. The electric shock that ran through my loins when he touched my back by surprise with the tips of his fingers must have been clocked by the others in the room, if only subconsciously.
My furious flirtations scared him a little, it seems, for I don’t think he was aware of his super power. He was half a head shorter than me, with a big head, bad skin and a beady face. It may not be every day that a girl recognises his electric faculties. We exchanged numbers and very nearly met up, until I chickened out about the following: being a manager and sleeping with a low-level chef; not liking him as much outside of the workplace; his likely age, considering the other two chefs at his level were nineteen.
For what most aroused me was his way of bossing me around: “Come over here, woman, and cut these shallots for me.” “It’s not about the size of the knife, love. You’re just shit at it.” His vulgarity was not as harsh as it looks on paper – it was gentle, even affectionate. He had a low, sultry voice that he did not overuse like so many of the other British lads in the kitchen.
A man of few words, A------- worked hard, smoked cigarettes, and had tattoos all up and down his arms and probably the rest of his little body too. Lord knows it would fill up quickly with tats that size. He had a blue-eyed wolf’s head on the back of his right hand and it stared at me when he showed me how to prep desserts. He would flirt back by posing with his muscular back to me, arms up against the high shelf of the kitchen surface as he talked to the chef. The definition of his shoulders showed through even the thick white cotton of his uniform and the ink on his exposed forearms rippled over well-formed muscles.
Sometimes I would kneel to get something from the fridge and intentionally hover a little longer than needed around his crotch level, just to get another hit of that erotic energy. I noticed him gruffly adjusting his parts a couple of times, a gesture I find oddly sexy, though it probably be considered gross and even sleazy by most. Maybe I am an underachiever, but I don’t think my crotch would lie to us.