3 ms·

"Look at the crews of any really high-end restaurants and you’ll see a group of mostly whippet-thin, under-rested young pups with dark circles under their eyes:

"Look at the crews of any really high-end restaurants and you’ll see a group of mostly whippet-thin, under-rested young pups with dark circles under their eyes: they look like escapees from a Japanese prison camp—and are expected to perform like the Green Berets." At some point in my life, working in a bakery, i - a 19 yr old and very fit back then - still had very hard time to keep the pace with and not fell behind the middle-aged women who'd been working there for years (it was a temporary summer job for me, and in general no man had been able to work there for more than a couple of month in a row)

electromagnetic 16y ago
I think his references to weight are a bit vague. What I get from the piece is that when he says 'fat' he literally means it, not necessarily overweight but with a ludicrous body-fat percentage. I grew up in England, I visited a lot of bakeries and nearly all of them had several large kids in the back working. Not fat but a sort of padded-muscular. Similarly this is what I've seen in most restaurants since I moved to Canada. Perhaps his comments hold true to, like he said, really high-end restaurants, but in my experience they don't serve food they're serving a garnish on an inedible ceramic surface. When you're lifting dishes into an oven that only weigh a fraction of a pound, of course you're going to be whippet-thin, you could be the anorexic king and still be able to lift those plates with grace. If anyone's watched any of Gordon Ramsey's shows, you see him truly move with things a lot of the lean-contestants struggle like hell with. Why? Because he's 210lbs, he's well built. He's literally ran around the kitchen doing everyone's job when it's an emergency. He also serves dishes that the plate doesn't weigh more than the food.
- maxawaytoolong 16y ago
  I used to work as both a line cook and a pantry "chef." The pantry person is the guy who puts the scoop of ice cream on the baker's pies. Thus, I am familiar with bakers. The bakers usually start out small but end up ENORMOUS.
  - electromagnetic 16y ago
    I wonder if this is a case of building endurance. If your work level doesn't increase dramatically (IE you have to carry say 5 bags of flour, 3 bags of sugar, etc. several times a day every day from day 1 to day 3651) you're eventually going to build the right combination of muscle to minimize the expenditure of energy. I know there's a term in exercise for this, but I work in construction so I get about 8 hours of vigorous exercise a day, so I've never been interested in going to a gym and doing more repetitive tasks than my day job and actually cost me money.
    - maxawaytoolong 16y ago
      I would think it's more a case of eating 8000 calories worth of cakes and pies every day...
  - miked 16y ago
    The bakers usually start out small but end up ENORMOUS. Another data point for discussions of low-carb diets.
maxawaytoolong 16y ago
Look at the crews of any really high-end restaurants and you’ll see a group of mostly whippet-thin, under-rested young pups with dark circles under their eyes. That's because they work 10-16 hours a day, during the times when most people...eat. That, and all the cocaine.
- evilduck 16y ago
  I was a dishwasher for about a year in highschool. I never did drugs, but I threw away leftover food for 10-12 hour shifts (usually one to three 55gal trash cans of waste food). Working in a restaurant was the most unappetizing thing ever, even in the slow periods, I just never really got hungry,
  - steveplace 16y ago
    Wait, you didn't eat the leftovers?
    - Qz 16y ago
      In many places, there's too much left over for the staff to eat (even if they wanted to), and it can't be donated to the hungry either because of sanitation regulations. The amount of food that gets thrown out every day is enormous.

electromagnetic 16y ago

I think his references to weight are a bit vague. What I get from the piece is that when he says 'fat' he literally means it, not necessarily overweight but with a ludicrous body-fat percentage. I grew up in England, I visited a lot of bakeries and nearly all of them had several large kids in the back working. Not fat but a sort of padded-muscular. Similarly this is what I've seen in most restaurants since I moved to Canada. Perhaps his comments hold true to, like he said, really high-end restaurants, but in my experience they don't serve food they're serving a garnish on an inedible ceramic surface. When you're lifting dishes into an oven that only weigh a fraction of a pound, of course you're going to be whippet-thin, you could be the anorexic king and still be able to lift those plates with grace. If anyone's watched any of Gordon Ramsey's shows, you see him truly move with things a lot of the lean-contestants struggle like hell with. Why? Because he's 210lbs, he's well built. He's literally ran around the kitchen doing everyone's job when it's an emergency. He also serves dishes that the plate doesn't weigh more than the food.

maxawaytoolong 16y ago
I used to work as both a line cook and a pantry "chef." The pantry person is the guy who puts the scoop of ice cream on the baker's pies. Thus, I am familiar with bakers. The bakers usually start out small but end up ENORMOUS.
- electromagnetic 16y ago
  I wonder if this is a case of building endurance. If your work level doesn't increase dramatically (IE you have to carry say 5 bags of flour, 3 bags of sugar, etc. several times a day every day from day 1 to day 3651) you're eventually going to build the right combination of muscle to minimize the expenditure of energy. I know there's a term in exercise for this, but I work in construction so I get about 8 hours of vigorous exercise a day, so I've never been interested in going to a gym and doing more repetitive tasks than my day job and actually cost me money.
  - maxawaytoolong 16y ago
    I would think it's more a case of eating 8000 calories worth of cakes and pies every day...
- miked 16y ago
  The bakers usually start out small but end up ENORMOUS. Another data point for discussions of low-carb diets.

maxawaytoolong 16y ago

Look at the crews of any really high-end restaurants and you’ll see a group of mostly whippet-thin, under-rested young pups with dark circles under their eyes. That's because they work 10-16 hours a day, during the times when most people...eat. That, and all the cocaine.

evilduck 16y ago
I was a dishwasher for about a year in highschool. I never did drugs, but I threw away leftover food for 10-12 hour shifts (usually one to three 55gal trash cans of waste food). Working in a restaurant was the most unappetizing thing ever, even in the slow periods, I just never really got hungry,
- steveplace 16y ago
  Wait, you didn't eat the leftovers?
  - Qz 16y ago
    In many places, there's too much left over for the staff to eat (even if they wanted to), and it can't be donated to the hungry either because of sanitation regulations. The amount of food that gets thrown out every day is enormous.