Culture & Chemistry

I took some time the other day to calculate how much time I was spending at the restaurant, and like most people who run restaurants, came to the disturbing conclusion that it was a lot of frickin' time. When I'm cranking out a full week during the busy summer season, my wages (read: allowance from my mom) plummet in hourly value.

It's just the nature of the beast. Restaurants require obsessive pruning and preening. It's often the restaurants that don't have a dedicated owner there everyday that seem to lack focus and discipline. We're all guilty of it. At some point in our careers the boss has gone out of town and things seemed to breathe easier, be a bit more slack. It's human nature. Unless there is serious, individual focus we need drill sergeants in our lives from time to time.



But if you love to instruct, to guide, to refine, then it isn't a chore to be at a restaurant working so many hours. You get a chance to really engage your passions and your senses everyday as a trade-off for not getting weekends or holidays. You get real-time results, there's little idle time, you get to work with your hands. You have the opportunity to be working and interacting with a lot of dynamic people in pressured situations. If you thrive on that teamwork, that togetherness through adversity, then you get real and exciting experiences everyday that many other industries don't.



But that's only if things are going well with the right people. Rough edges, breakdowns in team chemistry will rub your staff raw. Bitter rivalries and petty disagreements will soon become festering sores, and that adrenaline-fueled team effort through dinner rush will serve more as a pressure cooker than an energy source; compressing people's emotions to the point of bursting.



Having good chemistry is rarely an accident and is seldom an easy thing to create. Crafting a good restaurant team is probably only outdone in difficulty by crafting a good basketball team. You're constantly weighing people's personalities, their egos, what they bring to the table with their skills and how that compensates for any personal shortcomings they may have. In short, their "locker room presence." I think what makes it even harder is what I first mentioned; we spend so much time together. Don't get me wrong, professional athletes have to spend plenty of time together; on the tour bus, in practice, photo-ops, and it usually helps your on-court performance if you like one another. But there's always the asylum of the off-season, your millions of dollars and buxom wenches to whisk yourself away to if the team is becoming a bit ... much. There are no such luxuries in the restaurant. There's no where to run. In New York City there's often barely any space to get even a comfortable personal distance from one another. Most city kitchens consist of a tight hallway stacked with burners and appliances. As Bourdain puts it, "kitchens perform best like tight, touring rock bands and implode just as easily."



It's not all that bad for me. No one really grinds my gears and most of them view me as a "mini-boss" of sorts, so their relationship with me is quite different from their relationships with one another. Also, I'm not forced to quality control them like my mother is, so I don't have to call them out on their faults as much. In fact, I am the guy everybody loves because I am the auxiliary fireman. I put out fires, I help in whatever department needs the most help. So I spend most of my weekends saving one person or anothers' ass, and it's usually hard to resent someone after that. And I don't dislike anyone on our staff it's just that ... I would never really call any of them my friend. They are all immigrants from China, they're all well in to their 30s and 40s with families, English is not their first language. There's not a terrible amount for us to relate to with one another. I try to maintain a polite and respectful working relationship with all of them, but once we're out of the restaurant, that's it. I might not even say hello to them in the street.



For them, it's quite different. Almost all of our employees live in Flushing and they meet at Main Street to take our company bus every morning. They cram in to this 15-passenger van, they take turns buying each other coffee, and they swelter as the poor machine putt-putts its way to Manhasset without any air conditioning. Already the summer heat has caused three arguments that neared blows as short-tempered cooks argued about who should have what seat. They leave Flushing around 10:30, they get to the restaurant around 11 AM. They work in close quarters together all day, everyday, for 12-13 hours a day, and then they take the bus home together. They each take one day off a week, so during any sort of busy season for us ... you're looking at spending 60-70 hours in direct and close contact with your coworkers, and always depending on one another to perform and get through service. That's a lot to ask of any group of people, and creating a smooth team environment is a tall enough mountain to climb.



I've spent a lot of time analyzing it. The waiters think I don't care much, but I actually watch them very carefully. I don't go running to my mom when they make mistakes, I just silently fix them and amazingly enough they get the hint pretty quickly. It isn't the most efficient way to command, I don't plan on doing it in such a manner later in my career. But for now, as I awkwardly straddle the line between employer and coworker, it seems the most appropriate means of refining the performance of the team. So I watch them. A lot. In a hopefully non-creepy way, and as a consequence I have come to evaluate their personalities. I like to think I am able to read people with some adequacy. I may not be able to divine one's personal intentions, but I can sense when people are frustrated, when they're nearing their breaking point, when they're content, and when they're upset. It's actually a rather simple combination of being an emotionally sensitive person and giving a lot of attention to detail. As it turns out, very few people are truly inscrutable.



Sam, the unofficial "waiter captain," has been working with my mom for about 9 years. He advanced through the ranks from a lowly busboy to now helping my mom run the restaurant when she's not there. He usually takes the helm on the big VIP tables because he understands my mom's standards better than anyone else. He knows to time dishes so they all come out hot, to not let them sit in the window for more than a minute. He knows to keep plates wiped clean, to serve dishes to the right people without having to ask who had what. And he's good at it. But that's only when he's doing a VIP table with a fat tip awaiting him at the end. When he's forced to work Section 3, which is mainly comprised of two-top banquettes that get sat in by elderly women couples droning on about crocheting, or whatever the fuck old bitches be yappin' about, and the turnover and tips are low ... he simply stops caring. He gets a nasty look on his face, is short-tempered, seemingly forgets all of his good serving habits, and stands in the corner playing poker on his iPhone only offering occasional glances to see when he can get these women out the door. All customers are not created equal in his mind, and they're not in reality, but you must try to treat them as such. You can't pick and choose who comes through your door. It's a fault of his, but nobody's perfect. You take the good with the bad and he's simply too important to the team at this point to let him go. The other waiters don't love him, exactly because of his poor attitude, but you just hope it goes smoothly every night.

William, the unofficial "second-in-command" is probably my favorite. He started working with my mom just before I went to college and I was kind of surprised to still find him here when I came back. He is by far the most genuine of all the front staff. He is incredibly goofy and even-tempered. He has a slight stutter and when combined with his tendency to talk excitedly, often leads to words tumbling out of his mouth in a clumsy, fall-down-the-stairs kind of manner. Most of the waiters call him "Lao Tou," which kind of means "Old Man." He's not significantly older than anyone, but he is often bumbling around as if he doesn't know where he's going. No matter how busy it gets though, he never loses composure. Whereas I will get furious sometimes, throw teapots at walls and punch counter tops, he is always cool as a cucumber. But I think he can be a bit inconsistent with his serving and thus people don't request him as a waiter too often as a result. Still, most everybody likes him and having that guy in your team who holds things together a bit solely by the virtue of being likable is important. He has a goofy sense of humor and it lightens things up when shit goes bad. Once a customer left behind her baby daughter's sippy cup. My mom told William to put it in the office with a post-it note in case she came back to get it. He excitedly waved it front of Owen's face, a waiter who happens to be very short with a young appearance, exclaiming "The boss has a new cup for you!" as if it were the funniest shit anyone had ever thought of. He laughed so hard to himself I couldn't help but smile as they messed with one another.


Alan is also another long-serving waiter of my mother’s. You can get a general idea for a waiter’s competency by how little they get yelled at. That’s the most effective means of evaluation at a restaurant, how much are you not fucking up. Well, Alan seldomly gets yelled at but I can see in his work that he’s tired. He is a bit too... for lack of a better word, fertile, as his wife keeps popping out daughters. But supporting all those mouths and educations (I think he’s up to four, plus one in the oven) is taking its toll. With every step, every dish cleared and every Peking Duck pancake wrapped, his movements say “Fuck my life.” He just doesn’t really care anymore, and though he performs adequately enough, he is soul-weary; just going through the motions because duty and obligation require him to. He’s a nice guy, a lot of customers really like him, but in his slouch and his soft voice there is a distinct lack of inspiration. You don't need to believe in inspired service to be a waiter at our restaurant, but if you want to be the best you most certainly do. In the future he will perhaps be an effective measuring stick of “burn out,” that point every human can reach when their career and life goals seem exhausting and not worthwhile.

Luo Shi-fu is probably the employee I know best. Months of standing next to him every morning, rolling out dumplings and chopping scallions will teach you quite a bit about a person. He is genuinely one of the kindest souls I’ve ever met. He’s an all-star player that any kitchen would be happy to have; bright attitude, infinite patience, expansive skill-set and tireless work ethic. He started out as a dishwasher when he was 18, and a Cantonese chef saw the promise in him and trained him to be a dim sum chef. He can work the hot line, he can carve beautifully, has extremely deft hands, and just that … general kitchen mastery. When you’ve worked with food for so long and so intensely you just know things. You know when a cut of steak is medium-rare, you figure out how foie gras works even though you’ve never seen it in your life. And he is aware of his own talents and yet humble all the same. But I can sense resentment and frustration. He has left my mother a few times in the past to try to open up his own place. He tried doing cheap take-out joints out on the ass-end of Long Island. He tried opening up a restaurant with his brother-in-law in upstate New York. He’s tried being an executive chef at some huge dim sum houses in Chinatown. None of it ever worked out. My mom takes great care of him, she recognizes his importance to the restaurant and to her kitchen. He is well-compensated and well-treated. But he wants to strike out on his own. He lacks the funding and restaurant know-how to do so though. It takes more than just being able to cook to succeed in this business, and he knows that, but all the same he isn’t able to change it. His anger will flash ever so rarely, and it is terrifying to behold, to see someone so gentle even have a flicker of rage. But it’s usually only reserved for one person… the head chef.

Ah Gau is my mother’s longest standing employee. He has worked as her head chef for 15 years. The peculiarity of it is that she absolutely can’t stand him. His shoddy work ethic, complete lack of organization, inability to manage people or control the quality of the dishes that leave his kitchen frustrate her to no end. He is less of a chef and more of a cook. He rarely if ever teaches, corrects or inspects his own cooks. Whereas most chefs I have worked with stand dutifully by the window, scrutinizing every dish that is coming and going, he will sit on a bucket at any idle chance until called upon by my mother to cook something. He is yelled at more than anyone else in the restaurant. If he doesn’t already, I’m sure his inevitable retirement will be haunted by my mother’s shrill cries of “Ah Gau! Ni zai na li!? (Ah Gau! Where the fuck are you?!)” Food cost is estimated to go up by a few percentage points when he is at the helm because he is sloppy and wasteful. Cooks come and go because no one can seem to get along with him. So the question must be asked, why the fuck is he still here? Well, he is an exceptional cook. Though Luo Shi-fu controls all of the dim sum, everything else that comes out of our kitchen is influenced by him. He has a razor sharp palate and a nigh-mystical ability to prepare some wonderful food. He is always called upon to personally cook VIP tables because he just knows. He knows how to make something delicious. And there's something to be said for familiarity. Like many relationships teetering on the brink of failure, people chicken out of taking that plunge and saying goodbye because you don't know if you'll find something better. They've become comfortable right now, and though it's not perfect they fear that change might not bring improvement. Do I like him? I actually really do, he’s always very kind to me. He likes to speak kitchen Spanish with me (though his is nearly unintelligible coupled with his thick Hong Kong accent). He is by all respects, a fairly agreeable person. But like Alan, his life has not gone the way he has planned. You can tell he is defeated on the inside. My mother claims his wife is bat-shit, extra-strength crazy and has effectively stubbed out the embers of his soul on her heel. But a man’s life at home must do exactly that … stay there. We all have our personal demons. Though these demons as materialized by menacing women seems to be a reoccurring theme at our restaurant.

So that's just a few of the key players, and yet it seems no more a powder keg than any other place of employ. But something about our company culture makes the gears grate against one another. I think it has something to do with us being a Chinese restaurant and it having a general trickle-down effect from the head honcho; Mom. As to the former, I mainly highlight this in contrast to the predominantly Hispanic kitchens I've worked in. It would be an egregious and ignorant generalization to say something like "all Mexican people get along," but I feel there's more a sense of camaraderie amongst them than with Chinese people. They got here via similar routes and a lot of them work the same path from dishwasher to cook, to maybe one day a chef. That would be a huge success for a Mexican immigrant, in my opinion. My old sous-chef, Chuy was pullin' down good cash, more than enough to support his family of four. He owned a house, a car, and he was able to bring his kids up in a good school district. You gotta have respect for that, someone who came over and started washing dishes at a corrupt racetrack when he was 17, not speaking any English. The lower-tier cooks knew not to fuck with him.

But Chinese cooks and restaurant employees come from all sorts of walks of life. Our expediter, Chen Shi-fu, was a teacher in China. William and Sam used to be cubicle rats. Owen used to be some kind of stocks trader in Fuzhou, whatever that means. Annie used to work as a receptionist. This diverse compilation of careers and skills, paired with the fact that many Chinese people speak a vast array of dialects incomprehensible to one another, seems to serve as a means of dividing us. They may have had better careers in China, they may have had better lives, very few of them seem to enjoy restaurant work. That is no fault of their own, it isn't for everybody. But when you're forced to do something, with people who share more than a little animosity between them, that makes for unhappy and strained situations. People just can't get along at our restaurant, they're always arguing, and I think it has plenty to do with the fact that they either don't want to be there, or are tired of being there.

A restaurant's personality will be a reflection of the owner's personality. Not just the face we show customers, but the face we show one another, day in and day out as coworkers. I think this is another source of tension in that our company culture doesn't foster any sense of togetherness or teamwork. I draw so many parallels between restaurants and sports because I think there is a lot of teamwork required to perform well. After reading Tony Hsieh's Delivering Happiness, seeing the work environment as a "tribe" seems to allow people to do amazing work. When people show up everyday to not just coworkers, but friends, who are passionate about their work, they will naturally work together to innovate and inspire. You must protect the tribe, promote its growth and ensure it is a healthy entity, inside and out. A lot of restaurants don't do that because restaurant work is seen as a pursuit of necessity rather than as a pursuit of fulfillment. People do this work because they have to, not because they want to, and as a result you get careless, uninspired results. To be sure, the best restaurants are not like this, but we are not one of the "best" restaurants. We're a pretty good restaurant held together by the vision of one person, who cracks whips rather than melds people. All employees in my mother's eyes are replaceable. Do what I say, or get the fuck out is the attitude. She thinks all of her employees are out to ruin her at any chance they get. To be fair, that is what the old school restaurant attitude is; this "fuck you" kind of attitude where you rule by fear. And she's had plenty of employees screw her over in her 30-odd-year career; people splitting and stealing her menu ideas and dishes, people forging papers and getting her in trouble with immigration, people stealing customer's credit card info and smearing her name with fraud, etc. So I think it will be difficult to change her perceptions. But I plan on doing it much differently...

It might be idealistic, but if I am going to work in a kitchen, a restaurant with a ton of people I want them to be people I get along with. People I'd get a beer with, people I like to hang out with. Not to say that we would be friends first, coworkers second, but I just think liking one another is really important. I've worked in places where there was just those few guys who made my life hell and I had zero respect for. It was awful, I feared walking in the door every morning. People often write of the city kitchen crew as a pirate crew; a motley band of rogues and brigands who didn't really fit neatly in other niches of society, but paired together like port and cheese. An overly romantic interpretation perhaps, but the point remains. Have I ever wanted to go out and hang with my coworkers? Rarely if ever. Have we ever gotten together over the holidays, or discussed means of improving the restaurant together? Certainly not. I think the team atmosphere is important, and it may be my life's work to refine it but here I am saying that it is my white whale.

I think I can do it. I like to consider myself a likable person, more because I have this incessant desire to be liked than because of any inherent charm or charisma. And it can be a bit neurotic if I ever encounter someone who doesn't really vibe with me; What the fuck do you mean you don't like me?! Fucking like me, damn it! I'm fucking likable, asshole! But what it all really boils down to is empathy. Having respect and awareness for one another's feelings, and creating an environment where they can thrive and feel comfortable, rather than live in constant fear or apprehension of each other, for their job, whatever it may be.

Like I said, it could be a bit idealistic now. Such an idyllic place may not exist. But when faced with the alternative...

"Ta men you zai cao le... zou kai, zou kai... (They're arguing again. Get out of here...)"

I look to see what he means. Our restaurant is generally a sausage fest, only four women work here; my mother, a manager, a waitress and the packing girl who packs all the take-out orders. Jenny, the packing girl and Annie, the waitress fucking despise one another. I have no idea why, my mom mentions something about an argument over what Miso Black Cod was a long time ago .. but regardless when they're near each other, the hormonal tension and resentment is so palpable I fear I might menstruate when standing between them.

Jenny's station is by the kitchen window so she can grab take-outs quickly. There's a steam table full of soup and sauces in front of her. Not so carelessly she drops the ladle in the soup with a sploosh, getting egg drop soup all over Annie's apron as she reaches up to garnish a dish with peanuts. There are death stares shared. Claws flash out, plates are slammed down and passive-aggression is building at an alarming rate. We are at 12,000 psi of female-engendered bitterness and every man in the room knows to shut the fuck up.

"Ni gan shi ma?! (The fuck's wrong with you?!)" says Annie.
"Ni de lian xiang ge hou zi. (Your face looks like a fucking monkey's!)" curses Jenny.
"Ah, ni zen me piao liang ma? (Oh, and you're so fucking pretty?)"
(cue bad kung-fu movie-esque Chinese yelling that I don't understand, and we are an inch away from someone getting slapped and getting their hair yanked in to a steaming bowl of soup)

Everyone else is silent. William pulls a walks-in-to-kitchen-immediately-walks-out-of-kitchen kind of deal. Only my mother's battlefield voice is sufficient to stop them from arguing. I run outside to Dorothy, who is probably the most sane female in the house. I tell her I always run the fuck away when women start arguing. Michael, the sushi chef is chuckling about it. He, like a neanderthal-ish male, finds it oddly sexual when women fight. I don't know how this always happens but we always find ourselves a pervy bastard of a sushi chef. He changes the subject and observes that I have a few pimples running around my temple. He always takes note of when I break out, oddly enough, saying that I should have more sex as that will alleviate any acne. Thank you, Michael, you're not the only person who thinks I should be having more sex. All the boys make sure to stay out of the girls' wake, no one wants to get burned. Like a pro, Annie immediately puts on a happy face for the customers, but she has threatened to quit if Jenny remains. There are dark looks on their faces for the rest of the night. We stay out of their path of destruction.

What can you do? At the restaurant you arguably see your coworkers more than your family, and you are at least obligated to like your family. Shit gets bad from time to time. Though the bus usually runs smoothly, the wheels fall off here and there. You patch the wounds, you sail the ship you've got. I think the only way to really fix things would be a complete overhaul, but we're past the point of no return. Hence even more important that I start things off on the right foot, be extremely rigorous in your hiring and firing of people. They just gotta pass the douche bag test, simplest of all, right?

Ask yourself...

"Is he being that guy? You know... that guy. Does he have potential to be that guy. Don't be that guy."
"He is definitely that guy."
"Okay, let's not hire that guy."

Yep, I'm pretty sure all major decisions will be played out as such in my brain from now on. Northwestern did a pretty good job of honing my douche-radar, recognizing "that guy" has gotten me pretty far in life avoiding unsavory people. And so it will be...

Everyday I'm shufflin', have a nice weekend.

EP6