Have you ever worked in a restaurant and have you ever witnessed the 5 second rule, or other cooking disasters?

Similar questions: worked restaurant witnessed rule cooking disasters.

Holiday Inn I worked at the Holiday in in Dumfries, VA when I was 16 or so. They had a hot drawer full of baked potatoes that were kept hot all day. Often they were dropped on the floor and the cook would pick them up and put them right back on the plates he was preparing.

I called him on it and his reasoning was, "People don't eat the skin anyway! " I beg to differ with him... I washed the dishes the buss boys brought in and people ate the skins often. Yeeeetch.

Sources: Personal Observation .

I've held almost every job in restaurants, from waiter to chef, and the only exercise of the "5 second" rule I’ve ever seen was in a fast food joint, when I was a highschool kid. I have seen some cooking disasters, though: As a waiter in Cleveland I once took an a la carte’ veal parmesan to a table which had ordered the eggplant parmesan apetizer (they were served in oval dishes which were similar, but different sizes). I guess I just suffered momentary brain lock.

Wow, that was 40 years ago and I can still hear the head waiter screaming at me! In that same restaurant the chef once let an intern (yes, there are interns in some fine kitchens - usually from a cooking school) season turkeys that were being prepared - maybe 8 or 10. Somehow he doubled the sage.

The taste was. . Well, interesting.

Waiters and kitchen workers ate turkey for a week and the intern had a hard time living down his error. As a chef, once, in a trendy Houston Eatery I was making cream of pepper soup. This was a pretty high end place - we made our own stocks, for example - and I had cooked the peppers (green and red, and some poblanos, along with a few smoked and dried Anaheim peppers) with chopped carrots and a few turnips in our fine stock.

The idea is to cook the vegetables until they’re very soft and then puree them while the stock reduces. Then add the puree back to the stock, cook a few minutes, and finish with heavy cream and butter. Ummmm Good!

Unfortunately, the kitchen helper who was working with me didn’t understand the process (he wasn’t paying attention at all! ), and after we strained the stock of the peppers and vegetables he poured them down the disposal. I didn’t quite fire him, but I did take him off the schedule for three days, the jerk.

For soup that day I used the stock, and instead of the pepper puree I used some steamed butternut squash we had made for the next day, to stuff ravioli. The soup was actually good. I was a bartender in a bar/restaurant in Cleveland once.

Busy, busy lunches. This goes back to the seventies, when there was a lot more recreational drug use than there is now. We had a fry chef who came to work "tripping" once in while (meaning that he was under the influence of LSD).

One busy friday he dropped his tongs in the fry vat and unthinkingly reached in the bubbling oil to retrieve them. I think they heard his screams in Buffalo. He kept his arm, but lost a lot of skin.

Lost his job, too. Thing is, they didn’t change out the fryer grease until after the rush. Does this make everyone who ordered fries canibals?

I don’t know, maybe. I heard more than once that the fries were "really good today". Shudder Sources: Personal Experience falon's Recommendations The Restaurant Managers Handbook: How to Set Up, Operate, and Manage a Financially Successful Food Service Operation Amazon List Price: $79.95 Used from: $46.84 Average Customer Rating: 5.0 out of 5 (based on 28 reviews) Opening a Restaurant or Other Food Business Starter Kit: How to Prepare a Restaurant Business Plan and Feasibility Study Amazon List Price: $39.95 Used from: $27.75 Average Customer Rating: 5.0 out of 5 (based on 8 reviews) I love restaurants, but not enough to open one (you really do have to marry your restaurant to succeed) Still, if one wants to open a restaurant, these will help.

You don't even want to know the stuff that I've seen. I mean that literally. It would make you sick.

People not washing their hands is the least of it. Stuff is dropped on the floor all the time. And there's no sneeze guard on the saute station.My favorite story comes from working as a fry cook.

The fryer had a warming oven next to it with a timer. When a batch of fried foods came out, you hit the timer. When the timer went off, you..... hit the timer again.

Repeat, ad infinitum. I did once see a batch of fried chicken nuggets thrown out, but only after the manager had actually tasted one. I can’t actually confirm what Anthony Bourdain said in Kitchen Confidential.

I have to paraphrase, it was very close to, "We use a lot of knives in the kitchen. People get cut. I’m not going to say any more about it.

" People do get cut in the kitchen, but I’ve never seen anybody just ignore it, even in the middle of a dinner rush, probably because you shouldn’t be using knives during dinner rush anyway. (You’re supposed to have all of your prep work done, and if you're not you're in deep trouble no matter what.) Despite the horrors I’ve seen, I never actually knew anybody to knowingly send food out with blood on it. After all, that would be gross.

PamPerdue's Recommendations Don't Try This At Home: Culinary Catastrophes from the World's Greatest Chefs Amazon List Price: $24.95 Used from: $4.00 Average Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 24 reviews) Don't listen to my stories. These are much funnier.

More disasters than I could count I was in food service in the school system for 6 years. When I was a cook, one of my supervisors planned a roast turkey Thanksgiving feast for a small school’s students, their parents, and the teaching staff. My supervisor forbid me to come in extra early that morning to fix the meal.

She insisted that I cook the turkeys whole the day before, and bring them back up to temp the day of the party. I couldn’t believe it! She even told the building engineer not to allow me access to the kitchen before my regular time.

I tried going over her head, but the other supervisors were brain-dead, too. So, I did as I was told. I had my work area as close to sterile as it could possibly be, and I washed everything, including my arms and hands, in bleach.

Thankfully, no one got ill. I was really sweating about it, though. Especially since we served whole turkeys.

The school was for special needs kids. I still feel guilty that I went along with the hair-brained idea. I guess I could have called the health dept, but she probably would have turned things around and gotten me fired.

I’ve seen other nasty stuff in kitchens. I was placing government chicken patties on the baking sheet one time, and one had a talon sticking out of the side. YUCK!

I’ve seen the 30 second rule, where the hamburger hits the floor, the cook picks it back up and says that the dirt will cook off. UGH! One time my assistant was slicing potatoes according to the directions of our supervisor featured in my first story.

The supervisor had my assistant using a meat slicer. Potatoes are very slippery, of course, and my assistant ended up cutting her finger very badly. I was thinking fast this time... I threw away the potatoes before the supervisor could think to have me rinse them and still use them.

We won’t even mention how many cooks are dripping sweat into the food in those hot kitchens. Anyone want to go grab a bite to eat? .

Yes, definitely the 5 seconds rule. Please be careful about ordering hamburgers at Disneyland. Their frozen and slippery little buggers.

I never spit in anyone's food or anything that horrible, but I know when food dropped on the floor and we couldn't re-coup it we used the 5 second rule.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.