# The SBHonline Community Daily > Restaurants Wine & Food Off The Island >  >  29 Signs Youve Worked In A Restaurant Kitchen

## JEK

*29 Signs Youve Worked In A Restaurant Kitchen*

*When someone is in your way, you fight the urge to say, BEHIND! And using a dull knife just makes you want to cry.posted on July 30, 2013 at 5:02pm EDT*
*hristine ByrneBuzzFeed Staff
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*1. Youre super OCD about kitchen organization.*


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*Must. Label. Everything!*
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*2. You always have a sharpie on you.*


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*Again, you just have to label everything.*
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*3. You hate going out to dinner with non-cook friends who think they know everything about food.*


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*4. You relate to this:*


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*5. You eat and drink out of quart containers, even if there are plates and cups available.*


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*So versatile. So wonderful.*


*6. You know the difference between a chefs knife, a boning knife, a filet knife, a petty knife, and a paring knife.*


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*7. You can dice an onion in under twenty seconds.*


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*8. You know how to kill time without the internet.*


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*9. When you eat at a really great restaurant, you are so in awe because you know how much work went into it.*


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*10. And when you go to a bad restaurant, you are insanely critical.*


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*11. To you, a family meal has nothing to do with parents and siblings.*


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*THIS is family meal.*
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*12. Youre good at cooking food AND playing with it.*


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*13. Youll never stop thinking its funny to draw penises on things.*


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*14. You cook with SO. MUCH. BUTTER.*


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*PSSSST: Thats why restaurant food always tastes so good.*
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*15. You are completely anti-brunch.*

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*16. You know the magic that is supercharged restaurant equipment*

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*From left: Commercial Meat Grinder, $799; Manual Deli Slicer, $478.99; 20-Qt Hobart Stand-Mixer, $5,033.*


*17. And so this really pisses you off.*


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*Just no.*
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*18. Your favorite kind of shopping doesnt involve long lines or gross changing rooms.*


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*KNIVES!!!!!!!!!*
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*19. You know how to make it through a fourteen hour shift without a single break.*


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*20. You set off the smoke alarm every time you cook at home.*


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*That little exhaust fan is no match for your professional searing skills.*
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*21. You will always be shocked, skeptical, and a little bit paranoid when you receive a compliment from your boss.*


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*22. Youre used to working on birthdays and holidays.*


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*Not that youll ever be okay with it.*
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*23. When someone is in your way, you scream, BEHIND YOU and expect them to move immediately.*


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*24. You use phone alarms for everything.*


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*25. You get annoyed by TV characters who are supposedly chefs.*


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*A big, clean apartment, tons of non-work friends, and endless free time to hang out with them? Uh, no.*

*26. When youre cooking with friends and they start cutting vegetables with dull knives, you die a little inside.*


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*27. The sound of a printer triggers PTSD.*


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*The evil, evil ticket machine.*
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*28. You have (or youve seriously considered) a chefs knife or whisk tattooed on your person.*

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*29. Your life will always revolve around food and cooking, and you dont understand how anyone could feel otherwise.*


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## MIke R

a lot of those are  bang on..

glad I did it...glad I am not doing it anymore....
that sums it up

and its where Kara is at as well

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## MIke R

its funny.... Wendi and I still to this day say "behind you" in the kitchen...

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## andynap

Other than my wife and Mike I wonder who else has worked a restaurant kitchen? I showed this to her and most are dead on but there were no Tats in her day and she brought her own knives. I used to pick her up after work and she smelled like whatever was on the menu that day. Had to keep the car windows down. Oh yeah- she says behind you too.
We spent a weekend at the Inn some years ago but never toured the kitchen.

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## amyb

Kathy-I am tingling with culinary anticipation. I am so looking forward to our stay there.

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## Petri

The food industry isn't the only one.

A friend works for one of the largest forest industry equipment manufacturers and one can frequently find him checking out the paper type and quality than the actual content of a magazine.  He's probably more interesting in the Apple packaging than the product itself :)

After 10 years of building the internet, one of the first things I still do is the check the performance, connectivity and how everything is done..  It's amazing how often people just do things The Wrong Way :)

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## Goooner

I never worked in a restaurant kitchen either, but there is a restaurant with a bakery (with large windows to the street) next door to my place.

Walking by you really get a sense of the organization involved to get the breads and pastries done every morning.

And somehow they taste just a bit better when you've walked by at 5:00 a.m. with the dog, seeing all the effort, and then get to enjoy them a few hours later when stopping by on the way to the office.

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## MIke R

> Other than my wife and Mike I wonder who else has worked a restaurant kitchen? I showed this to her and most are dead on but there were no Tats in her day and she brought her own knives. I used to pick her up after work and she smelled like whatever was on the menu that day. Had to keep the car windows down. Oh yeah- she says behind you too.
> We spent a weekend at the Inn some years ago but never toured the kitchen.



tough business..it put a terrible strain on Wendi and I's relationship sharing the kitchen..so we began split shifts....she would come in at 4 A.M. and do her baking of scones, muffins, lemon bars, coffee cakes etc...and I would come in at 730 and do my hand rolled meatballs in gravy ( 75 a day - everyday ) and grill off my marinated chicken breasts ( 10 pounds - every day ) and this kept us  out of each others way  pretty much...when our catering portion took off we really enjoyed coming in at midnight and cooking and baking all night for next morning brunch gigs, without the pressure of being opened, just Wendi and I, good music, some wine, and stress free cooking and baking without the drama...that was much easier to do...but man oh man its a tough business

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## andynap

Phyl got in at 7 and started to prepare for the lunch. After lunch she prepped for the dinner chef. She never left the restaurant and I would deposit her checks for her. She was beat after 2 years. The restaurant is still around and we had an SBH dinner there last year.

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## Bart -my real name-

> Kathy-I am tingling with culinary anticipation. I am so looking forward to our stay there.



Amy -   If the Chef's Table (in the kitchen) is available, you should sit there.  It ain't cheap, but most of my memories of my last meal there center around the Chef's Table expirence and not the actual food.  Don't get me wrong, I have some amazing food memories, but sitting in the kitchen and all that happens before, during and after dinner really sticks out.

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## JEK

I got this from Kate's pastry chef friend/instructor/mentor/boss. Everyone brings their own knives in his shop.

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## andynap

> I got this from Kate's pastry chef friend/instructor/mentor/boss. Everyone brings their own knives in his shop.



We do have a nice set of knives at home left over from Phyl's days as a chef.

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## Bart -my real name-

> I got this from Kate's pastry chef friend/instructor/mentor/boss. Everyone brings their own knives in his shop.



If you ever watch Top Chef, that's their send off to the loser..............."Pack *your* knives and go"

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## MIke R

You can shave your face with my kitchen knives .....but that's more the fisherman In Me than the ex cook

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## Voosh

That list is spot on. The endless staff pranks were a staple in the places I worked (asking a newbie for the _bacon stretcher_, an ice cube in the deep fryer, stuffing the cash register with monopoly money, carving veggies into obscene shapes, finding new uses for food coloring, dressing up a side of beef like Freddy Krueger with knife in hand just inside the walk-in cooler... - all without messing up orders or pissing off customers  :Devilish: .) One thing Kathy and I did inherit from working in busy kitchens is our ability to work in sync in a tight cooking space (like on a boat.)

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## Grey

Never worked in a restaurant kitchen but I did work in the back of a bakery one summer cleaning pots and pans, washing the floor and scrubbing the doughnut fryer.  The start time of 4am was brutal.  And no matter how hot a shower I took, I swear I couldn't get that doughnut smell out of my hair.

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## MIke R

Lemon is the trick ...... I learned that lesson as a young mate on a fishing boat who didn't want to smell like rotten bait after work ......to this day when I step off the boat if I am going directly into town  for drinks and eats, I always have a lemon on board to wipe my hands and arms with the juice of before I go

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## Grey

> Lemon is the trick ...... I learned that lesson as a young mate on a fishing boat who didn't want to smell like rotten bait after work ......to this day when I step off the boat if I am going directly into town for drinks and eats, I always have a lemon on board to wipe my hands and arms with the juice of before I go



Great tip! Thanks.

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## PIRATE40

20 Years in a 965 seat food factory-50 waitstaff-7 bars-9 dining rooms.....Never again, and if I am in a hurry to get by some one, I still yell "HOT STUFF!"...And it drives me nuts when a cabinet door is left open..I still immediately raise both hands in the air if I am dropping a sharp knife (Mine are razor sharp, like Mike's)...

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## PIRATE40

> That list is spot on. The endless staff pranks were a staple in the places I worked (asking a newbie for the _bacon stretcher_, an ice cube in the deep fryer, stuffing the cash register with monopoly money, carving veggies into obscene shapes, finding new uses for food coloring, dressing up a side of beef like Freddy Krueger with knife in hand just inside the walk-in cooler... - all without messing up orders or pissing off customers .) One thing Kathy and I did inherit from working in busy kitchens is our ability to work in sync in a tight cooking space (like on a boat.)



We used to batter up those thick rubber bands and fry them....looked just like onion rings---put them out for the waitresses......

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