Sooo, You Don’t Want To Walk A Mile In Their Shoes, Then?

Many years ago, I was working as a chef and de-facto kitchen manager at a nice French-Italian restaurant in London. I was a part of the interview process for our restaurant’s front of house, as well as the kitchen. One morning, we’re wrapping up the interview of a young waitress.

Me: “Okay, this all looks good, and your references check out, so we’ll see you Monday morning at six.”

Waitress: “Huh?”

Me: “Didn’t [Front Of House Manager] explain our policy on cross-training?”

Waitress: “Oh, that. But I don’t want to cook food, just serve it.”

Me: “That’s fine, if you don’t want to work in the kitchen you don’t have to.”

She gets all smiley again.

Me: “But all front of house staff do their first week in the kitchens, and all members of kitchen staff do a week out front. This helps us all to understand what folk are dealing with.”

Her face fell.

She never came in for her first (or any other) shift. Over the years, I enforced that policy (despite wailing from all departments at first). It remained the smoothest and least resentful relationship between front of house and back that I can recall in any restaurant.