The Paper chef

see: 'slacker'

I've worked for several of these types of people. They are usually very book smart and know a lot about the fundamentals of cooking. They generally know about how to do food cost, menu planning, labor percentages and all of the actual number work that goes on with running a restaurant properly. They can keep their food cost between 32-34% but they really can't cook much of anything. These are people that worked on a line for a bit and then 'graduated' to doing the administration work at a large chain like earls or a big huge hotel.

Case in point, Iworked for a guy named Wayne. he was a very talented and dedicated cook. he was the chef of a large restaurant in a nice park in Winnipeg. saying this, you would think that this guy could cook pretty well. guess again, because he was the slowest prep cook in the world, extremely forgetful and probably the worst person to work on the line with that i have ever encountered. I have never had to do so much extra work while working with Wayne. I would literally come in to work for 11, but show up at 10:15 because I knew that there was a bunch of stuff to do. the orders would be coming in right when i got there, and sometimes would already be there for me to organize and put away. Pizza cheese would have to be sorted and brought up front, the Meat fridge sorted and organized because the night guys could never figure out how to use the plastic wrap properly to wrap up ends of meat; and the list goes on for days really. Generally, I was the opening cook. This meant that I was responsible for getting stocks off, doing random prep for lunch, making specials with the assistance of the owner or whoever was around at the time. On top of all of that, i was apparently in charge of the front pizza line. making sure it was ready for lunch. making sure everything was topped off, stocked up and cleaned for the owner, who could then just waltz in and cook pizzas and generally shmooze his way through life.

There were several occasions where i would make a list of what i did for the front as well as my huge list of shit that i did in the back. quite often i ended up doing all of the prep for the entire restaurant myself, because there were some slow as fuck cooks working there at the time. (read above regarding wayne)

essentially, wayne got to fuck around and get paid twenty odd dollars an hour while I basically did his job AND mine at the same time, all for about 10 dollars an hour.

Go figure right? makes perfect sense to me....