Darkness. Freezing cold. Warm bed and thick eiderdown. A minute passes. Another one. Peek at bedside clock. Shock! Horror! I’m going to be late! Stress engine starts running. Scramble from pyjamas into street clothes. Thinking, cursing. Alarm wasn’t set! One hour and seventeen-minute commute to work. Seven am start! Chunky parka jacket and beanie – on. Bag pre-packed with knife wallet, neckerchief and hat – grab. Suit bag containing chef’s jacket and pants – grab.
Outside is darkness. Cold. Bus stop down the road. Run, baby, run. Whoaaa! Icy sidewalk! Slip, slide, correct. Run faster. Pre-dawn. Icey-pole nose. Clouds of breath. Bus headlights.
Cold bus, cold seat. Self-flagellation. How could I? So careless. Angry Chef. Angry work-mates. I’m going to be late! Prep list scrolls past my eyes. Yesterday busy. Lots of prep. Bulk sauces to made. Weekly fish order arrives today. Box after box. Lots of fish. Cleaning and portioning. Wrong day to be late.
Nearly at railway station. Old lady gets on. She has trouble with correct change. Nearly deaf too. Next train into central London in four minutes. Miss it and I’ll be more than late.
Precious seconds pass. I nearly squawk like chicken. Old lady sits down. Check my watch. Stress engine kicks up another gear. At station. Exit bus. Racing onto platform. Guard’s whistle! Yell in anguish. Almighty burst of speed. Big guts-effort leap. Tumble into carriage.Breathless and triumphant. Look around. English commuters. Blank faces. Tiny grimaces. Train rocks and clatters. Dawn lights up icy sky. Stress engine roaring inside. Payphones at Waterloo. Ring work or not? No. Best keep moving.
Ten-minute walk from the station. I make it in five. Come in kitchen door. Sucking in air. Crew member exiting back cold-room. I flinch inside. Ready for a rebuke. He sees me. “Hiya! Bloody cold isn’t it? Nice and warm in the kitchen though.”
Scoot into staff-room. Two more illicit minutes changing. Go into kitchen. Stress engine in top gear. Find Head Chef. Apologise bigtime. He looks at clock. Eleven minutes past seven. Head Chef shrugs. “OK, you want to start on some sauces?”
The self-torment and unwarranted woe that I put myself through is far from unique. No-one likes being late for work, unless they don’t care and are looking to get sacked, but allegrophobia – the chronic fear of being late – seems to be especially prevalent in the profession of cooking. It’s irrational and absurd, but then, what sort of madness is? Let’s abandon logic and examine this mania.
I feel it as an extension of the race against time that is kitchen work. A cook’s life is all about the accelerating momentum of getting the prep all present and correct before the rush begins. Their days are filled with the unrelenting business of cooking fast and putting meals up in concert with others. Time is of the essence and that includes getting to work. As soon as I wake up – the clock has started ticking. It’s a sort of professional brainwashing – a result of an all-consuming need for speed.
This neurosis is about your work-mates too.
Being late creates unease. It’s a symptom of unreliability, and a good kitchen runs on reliability. Every task, every finished plate of food must turn out precisely as it should be and at the right moment. A good service is a fusion of a several people all focused on this, so if a work-mate is a tardy bugger then will they be late with meals from their section too? Will they divert the whole delicate stream of service into a miasma of frustration and complaint?
Beyond this disquiet, being unpunctual can also engender profound disrespect from workmates, usually unspoken, but don’t count on it. They are heads down, bums up working – so where the bloody hell are you? Expectations can be amplified in kitchens with mole-hills rapidly assuming Himalayan dimensions.
In some kitchens head chefs will blow a gasket and steam away throughout the shift over such slackness. In other kitchens it’s expected that you always start early, and that’s cool by me. Being in the kitchen ten or fifteen minutes before official kick-off is no real sacrifice on a 12- or 14-hour shift. An hour or so a week of unpaid work is well-worth the goodwill it will garner from Head-Chefs and owners. It may well put you in good stead for some time off further down the line.
So, feeling like a real bunny, a conscientious cook will stress over all this as they make that I-shall-be-late journey into work. But what really gnaws at their gut is that every missed minute might mean their own vital prep will not be ready for when a steam-roller of a service knocks down the kitchen doors.
This almost animal urge for punctuality is strong. I once spent over two hundred dollars on a taxi fare to get me to home in time to change into my whites and checks. My work place was a hundred and ninety kms away from where I was standing, just, outside a nightclub. I’d missed my lift but even in my drunken state I knew I wasn’t going to miss my shift. I’ve run through grid-locked traffic and been chased by security guards through corporate foyers; missed out on the coolest after-parties and backstage hoe-downs – all from the fear of being late to work.
This sort of psychosis has more than a few grains of truth to it. It’s a microsmic take on bigger things. Things like responsibility, duty and, ultimately, respect. Unforced errors can chip away at the group ethos and undermine the tight-knit team spirit that every kitchen needs.
Being late is, of course, sometimes unavoidable but no more than every few months thanks. Anymore than that and it’s taking the piss. It’s a little sin, but a sin nonetheless and possibly the first signs of callous black soul, uncaring of their crew and ready to commit more serious transgressions. Like not showing up for a shift for a reason other than death, jail or hospitalisation. That's another level of evil entirely!