6-10-04

This month I am back at the contract caterers but am no longer cooking for seventy, I have been ‘promoted’ and am now in their main cafeteria cooking for 500 who are a captive audience in this well-known and popular attraction. They now have a chef, a French gentleman with the patience of a saint—this virtue alone will probably come in more handy than all of his cooking skills, management skills and qualifications combined in this job, the manager is bad-mannered and talks to him in such a way that, if I were the chef, he wouldn’t have a head by now. I am pleased I didn’t accept his lousy job offer.
He has moved Pido out of here and into the small cafeteria where I was on my last visit. This should please Pido because it is way easier than what he was doing before, but he is a proud man and it has hurt his feelings because he felt he was doing a good job and he has been moved out to make way for the Frenchman’s new menu that he is not considered capable of producing. What a zoo. The new menu didn’t work so my Zimbabwean brothers old menu has been reinstated temporarily until yet another new menu can be cobbled together. The chef offered the sous chefs job to me today. I will think it over because the chef seems to be a reasonable fellow and I wouldn’t have to deal with the tosser of a manager.
We discussed wages, hours, conditions and the deal has been done and hands have been shaken. I am to be the sous chef. Still less money than I presently earn but fairly consistent hours and some fringe benefits that I find attractive.
I shall return tomorrow to sign the contract, seal the deal and cook for “up to 750 because it is going to be fine weather”. Shit.