by Stephen Cuomo

Created on: January 28, 2009

I really hate my job; I work in a restaurant chain which is owned by CARA. If you live in Canada, you will know of restaurants such as Harvey's, Kelsey's, Montana's... etc. I work at Kelsey's The worst part about the job is that you never know when your shift will end. I am a line cook and a food prepper. I portion and weigh out the food to make the line guy's job easier. I stand in the same spot all day, looking at a scale. Fries do not need to be portioned. 8 oz of fries will not fill up every plate. The last thing these greedy customers want to see is a white space on their plate with no fries. The last thing I want to do on a friday afternoon is weigh out 30 pounds of french fries to 8 oz, put them in a little bag, then back in the box. Another thing about fries which I absolutely hate is that they go on a big tray which holds cooked fries anyways. How will they be weighed now? My job is meaningless.

Restaurants sometimes have a system called "On Call". I am on an on/call on certain days, which means that when my boss calls me, I am obligated to drop what I'm doing and go in for work. What the heck is this on/call stuff? No other job I have ever had (and I have had many as I usually hate my jobs and quit, but the economy is crashing, and God forbid anyone wants to hire a fully competent teenager with a blog) requires you to sit on your butt all day, waiting for someone to call you and let you know if you're working on that day. They call this being ON CALL. Why don't you just say I'm not working and make it simpler, and more convient for me? This would be greatly appreciated, and every employee who's ever had to be called in for an on-call mid having fun would agree with me.

The other day I cleaned my prep area, after a long, boringly stressful day of cutting and weighing food items, which sometimes stink. If you work anywhere else and think you're job is boring... atleast you don't work infront of the same stinky shiny surface weighing food (which sometimes and more often than not, indistinguishable) all day; don't get me started on calamiris. Anyways, right before I'm ready to leave, eat my quesadilla (the only real perk of the job is free food) I have to weigh out roast beef. Great. Then, romaine lettuce. Then I clean real fast, change and get the heck out of there, before I get guilt tripped into working some more.

We also have an online training system called "My Cara University". Your boss will give you a user name and a password, tell you to log on and do all the available courses. You get paid for them of course, but they are so darn boring that you don't even care about the $8.75 you make off of it. What you learn on the website actually has very little to do with working in a restaurant. Also, if you fail, the website will automatically email your manager, who will then call you to ask you why you failed. It just makes you feel even worse. Man I hate my job.

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