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AmERikkKa hElpS peOplE
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this post was submitted on 28 May 2026
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Chapotraphouse
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My previous job was pretty good with food waste, usually less than 30 pounds of errors and rejects and kitchen scraps combined throughout the day. Except for dough, where on an average day we'd throw out 50 pounds of it around closing time.
random question but were you ALLOWED to take food home? like I know everybody does it but my dickhead boss is like "no food service job anywhere will ever let you take home food" and it's like, that can't be fucking true, there has to be so many places where the owners realize it's literally extra compensation that comes from the trash can into their employees' pockets, and that helps keep their business going
I am literally gonna die mad over this shit because I tried so hard to explain how it benefits the business, it makes the workers happier and healthier, it makes the cooks (ME AT LEAST, THE OTHERS SUCK) more motivated to make good food because wow, I'm gonna take some of that shit home! etc etc
i explained how a single container of food is like, basically $20 to us, because of the value of the food and also the value in not having to prepare another meal at home
but no doesn't fucking matter. it was really great having a new 30 minute commute AND no more "you never have to cook dinner at home again" saving me time
Every so often the owner would come in and say "no more house pies [making one pizza per shift to share amongst the employees]", every so often they'd crack down on saving mistakes that had been cooked already and say that we had to throw them away. I would often dig them out of the trash when the managers were busy, or slip a menu item into a box, a bag, or even a paper towel and tuck it away. This was pretty common. Also I would often team up with a comrade who worked there and we'd take all the fully cooled leftover lunch slices to our social center.
Other people would be more brazen and literally go in to cook a bunch of food for themselves before their shift or before break.
Part of what made that job so easy to continue with was that it was a 6-minute jog from my apartment. It's a well established restaurant and losing a little bit of prepped ingredients here and there, even if done by all employees, wouldn't even touch their bottom line.
Oh okay so they were tools about it too. Idk what's wrong with people. If there's shit getting thrown away that people want, and you don't let them have it, you're an asshole. If you think that encourages people to make more waste and you can't like, tell the difference between normal waste and people doing that, you're oblivious
yeah I definitely make my own lunch if I don't want what I've got going on on the vegan station. But that's not to take home, just because I'm sick of the other cooks' food and also if i can't take shit home i'm gonna make my employer pay for it
i'm too lazy and dainty for such things so i drove but yeah it used to be a 2 minute drive from where we lived and half of that was waiting for two lights to change
god I fucking miss it. Having a house with a yard and a driveway that gets enough sun to grow tomatoes is nice but idk, even though the driving is only an hour a day it really feels like I suddenly have no free time after work. I DO, it just doesn't feel like it
That's it, they are oblivious. They are disconnected from the actual day-to-day labor in such a way they don't actually know the 'average' amount of waste to expect. They have MBA brain and are trying to use abstract formulas and concepts to create 'lean' sigma chains or whatever the fuck, they are thinking idealistically not materialistically. At least that's how the managers and bosses have been at restaurants I worked at. Anybody above 'chef' doesn't know shit about cooking, they visit the site maybe a couple of times per year on surprise inspections, and General Managers/Principals don't know anything either but think they do. Corporate sets the policy.
damn i wish the chefs where I'm at knew shit about cooking
the last time i called out sick the executive chef made collard greens for the vegan station without any salt..... in fact i seem to be the only person who knows you don't have to boil collard greens for over an hour to make them edible, actually
He saved them. I found them in the fridge the next day and thought this dude i hate made them but then found out no, the HEAD CHEF forgot salt
Or maybe he left it out on purpose because "there's salt at the table" (that goes back to not knowing shit about cooking though, all these fuckers say it and i get saying it as a JOKE if you FORGOT but salt affects the cooking process and should definitely be added multiple times throughout the cooking process!
either way i hate shit like that because students are going to eat it thinking I made it and it's going to taste like dogshit and they're not gonna eat my vegan slop in the future
Damn. I worked in a bit more of a formalized kitchen it sounds like where the chefs were on the line during peak hours, screaming obscenities, all the cliches. They were assholes but did know how to cook.
The only way to know a business is to know the culture, the supply chains and customer interactions, and the day-to-day functionality of it. And that requires actually working on the ground level. You need to be able to model it somewhat, but usually a high school level of education is enough.
The posh heads can come in with their KPIs and their agendas, but they will never understand the business as well as a perceptive grunt who paid attention in a few math, English, biology, psychology, and economics classes. Or just a perceptive grunt who reads books.
Any capitalist business that doesn't have a good idea of the reality on the ground (which is most of them) is going to have a huge exploitable weakness.
Yeah I mean we do our best (or at least I do) but there's just going to be a lot of food waste no matter what here since it's a college dining hall with buffet style serving that's also all you can eat. So we never know how many people are coming or what they're gonna eat exactly and it's not good enough to just prep X/X/X pounds of the main entrees and if one runs out, tough, we're supposed to replenish it or at least replace it with something. And with some of these dishes i.e. meatloaf, lasagna, braised beef strips etc., it's just not happening during service
well that's what i would say but no i've seen these people quickly fry some shitty sysco beef strips and serve it as a braised dish and it's like gee i wonder why these are tough and bland and just shit
anyway yeah. I dunno maybe I'm an asshole but I think this is entirely fine as long as we're doing our best to overprepare by just a little, and then serve that the following days as leftovers (we'll usually have the main line with two entrees, a starch, two vegetables, and a vegan entree, and then space over on the other side for maybe another 4 dishes if needed, unless it's being used for nachos and stuff)
but I get shit from the sous chef for "always making too much" (like, if you're reading this, dawg, you know i'm doing my best, I basically make enough food to feed 40 people, I'd be happy to make enough to feed 20 if I can tell people "mmmm sorryyyyyy, no more black bean burritos, ran out...." but instead since they take almost an hour and a half to reheat in the steamer like no I'm going to make enough for 45 people, keep 30 hot and probably serve the other 15 the next day. I'm not over prepping I literally almost always have the entirety of all my dishes eaten by the end of the following day when I put them out as leftovers) so like I dunno maybe I am just a bad chef who encourages food waste
either way, the stuff that's out on the line when we close just gets dumped in the trash and there's always plenty