From 4: 00 to 2: 00 —— Working experience in Chinese and English restaurants

At four o'clock in the afternoon, you leave home to work in a fast food restaurant. It takes 15 minutes to walk to the station in the city center. If on time, the bus should arrive at 4: 20, but it is rarely on time. Waiting for the bus is always not a pleasant thing, especially in such a windy and rainy winter in Britain. Although it is completely dark, there are few people in the street, which seems to remind you that you should sit at a warm home and watch TV on such a day, and it makes you sad to think about it.

There are several people standing at the station. You looked at them warily. I remember once on such a night, in such a place, you were followed by several black people, with cold hands and feet and cold back. Although nothing happened, that experience left a lingering shadow in your heart. As a stranger in a foreign country, you must be extra careful. You can't learn here.

Here comes the bus, a spacious and bright double-decker bus. Although you used to enjoy sitting in the front row of the top floor overlooking all beings, after being teased by a group of naughty foreign teenagers, you don't want to sit on it anymore. It's safer down here. At least there is a driver who can ask for advice in an emergency. Most of the people sitting on the bottom floor are educated old people.

Twenty minutes later, you arrive at your place of work, a small Chinese fast food restaurant, which is a couple's shop run by overseas Chinese Huang Lao and his wife for more than 20 years. Now you have been working here for nearly a year, and if nothing happens, you will continue to work here for two years. "For three years, I have never worked in any company or enterprise for three years, even as a supervisor or manager." You can't help thinking. Although this job is not decent and the income is average, it can really bring you many substantial benefits, such as getting decent Chinese food for free, cheap rice, oil and salt, and more importantly, working at night can free up daytime time for study and class. And the boss and his wife are kind-hearted and take care of you. You can't find a reason to leave easily.

Now, you take off your coat, put on your apron and start to do the first thing-beat eggs. This may be an introduction to everyone who works in a restaurant. Who can't beat eggs? However, it is not easy to beat dozens of eggs without dropping a little eggshell. However, after a year of training, this little thing has not stumped you. After the fight, you pack up the empty lunch boxes and cups, say hello to the proprietress and open the door. It's not usually five o'clock.

Although your main job is to take orders, answer the phone and check out meals, you have to help with other kitchen work when no guests come. Even if you have nothing to do, you have to find something to do. Otherwise, no matter how much leisure you have, your existence value will be lost. You are not ignorant of this truth. So, after you simply clean up the counter, you will still go back to the kitchen. It's time to pack shrimp slices. Chinese fast food here sells fresh fried shrimp slices. The proprietress puts the fried shrimp slices in a cardboard box, and then you pack them in a small plastic bag. A box of shrimp slices can generally be divided into 12 packages. It usually takes you about half an hour to wrap three boxes of shrimp slices. Of course, it means that as soon as there are no customers, you should put down your work and go out to meet them. You hate guests coming at this time, because it always makes you feel in a hurry. When you stand in a position where you can see the street through the glass door through the small dining window, whenever you stand in this position and look at the outside world while wrapping shrimp slices, you can't help but think: When can I walk leisurely on the land of my own country like them, get off work, easily walk past the snack bar near my home, go in and buy some snacks I like, and then take them home to taste with my relatives? Such a humble ideal is actually an ordinary day I used to experience every day. I never felt anything special, but I miss it today. It's usually like this, and you don't know how to cherish it until you lose it. Your wandering thoughts are always awakened by the doorbell of Ding Dong. Put down your work, you open the curtains and show a kind smile to meet today's first customer.

99.9% of the people who come to buy Chinese takeout food are local residents (born and raised in Britain). You have only met one China person for such a long time, and 60%~70% of them are regular customers who must come once a week. And these are the people you are most afraid of, because the older the customer is, the more experienced he is, and if he is careless, he will blow his beard and stare. If you dare to place the wrong order and give the wrong meal, they will never stop there. From calling to complaining, it will cause you to scold your boss, from demanding compensation, so that your day's work will be wasted, and from then on, it will simply disappear for about a year. You can't believe how narrow-minded these so-called gentlemen and ladies are, but the facts make you feel really helpless again and again. For telephone orders, telling the order number or asking the other party's name is foolproof, but for these old customers, it is another matter. Their voice is their name, and their command is their number. If you don't know the rules, ask their names or tell them the order number, then you are waiting to be dropped by these old guys. No matter how hard their names are to remember, no matter how ordinary their looks are, as long as they are old customers, you can call out their names as soon as you hear the phone, and you will know the warm greetings as soon as you see him. When he says "old rules", you can calmly write down the names of the meals he must order every time, and finally deliver them to him accurately. This effort is a profound lesson of how long it has been honed and how many times it has been scolded.

After 5: 30, the shrimp slices are wrapped and everything is ready. If there are no customers, you should first give everyone a cup of milk tea and eat a snack to pad your stomach, because dinner will not be available until nine o'clock.

When it gets dark early in winter, customers come early and are busy at six o'clock. The doorbell rang and customers came in one after another. Often you stand at the front desk and receive a troublesome customer, asking questions and picking things, followed by a bunch of impatient customers or chattering, which makes you upset, or looks at you eagerly, which makes your heart tremble. It happened that the phone rang again at this moment, and the proprietress patted the gavel by the window to tell you that there was a prepared fast food waiting for you to bring to the long-awaited guests. . . . . . Receiving orders, collecting money, changing money, answering phones, writing bills, delivering bills and delivering meals. . . . . . You're spinning around the counter and kitchen like a whipped top. What can we do? Fast food restaurants pay attention to a quick word, and customers don't care how many people are waiting in front, let alone understand how troublesome it is to cook his meal. What you don't understand most is: Why do many gentlemen who seem to be slow to heat have no patience as soon as they enter China fast food restaurants? No matter how big the order is, if they can't serve the food within fifteen minutes, it will be considered as the dereliction of duty of the fast food restaurant. Therefore, everyone who has worked in a fast food restaurant has practiced a "crash skill", and his hands, feet and brains must turn quickly. 100 The quantity and price of many meals must be kept in mind, otherwise the speed of reading the menu after listening to the food will definitely be greatly reduced. After the order is written, you should quote the price immediately. You can't have time to press the calculator, so mental arithmetic should be fast, not only fast, but also accurate. Otherwise, it is easy for a person to talk too much if he is not careful, and he will have to pay for it himself if he is less. Paying the bill is still a trivial matter, and the biggest fear is to write the wrong bill, even if it's not your fault. You know, customers are God, and God is always right. Even if it is wrong, it will be scolded. For money, you have no choice but to put up with these unfair treatments. Sometimes it is obvious that the guest ordered the wrong food and called the chicken curry beef, only to tell you to go back and call you dog blood. You clearly remember that you were still surprised at that time, why people who usually eat chicken turned into beef. When you were not at ease, you repeated that the other party dared to place an order without any objection. The most regrettable thing is that you didn't install a tape recorder on the phone, so now you are dead men tell no tales, you have become a mute and have to pay a very sorry smile. Say sorry to the customer first.

As soon as the busiest time is over, after you finish writing the list, take it into the kitchen to prepare meals, cook, hold juice and cover meals with the boss and his wife. . . . . . The boxes used in fast food restaurants here are not white plastic foam boxes in China, but tin foil boxes. This box is very environmentally friendly, naturally it will not cause any harm to the environment, but it will do great harm to your hands. I remember at the beginning, your thumb and forefinger were stabbed and scarred because you often pressed these boxes, but now it won't. You always say to people with a smile: they are thick-skinned, so am I. .

After seven o'clock, the number of customers began to decrease, so you asked the boss, should we peel the shrimp or cut the onions first today? Peeling shrimp is an easy job. It takes half an hour to shell, gut and clean two kilograms of shrimp, but it is a hard task in winter, because frozen shrimp can only be melted with cold water, otherwise it will go bad easily. If you soak your hands in ice water for half an hour, you will often lose consciousness in less than ten minutes. The only thing you can do is to speed up and expect customers to arrive at this time, so that you can take this opportunity to warm up.

After peeling the shrimp, it's time to cut the onion. Onions, like garlic in China restaurants, are an essential ingredient in every dish, so it goes without saying that a fast food restaurant in China consumes forty or fifty giant onions a week. When you get an onion, peel it first, then pinch the head and remove the tail, cut it in half longitudinally, and then cut it into corners or shreds. Horn is used to cook curry meal, and silk is used to cook fried noodles. Finally, chop the leftover bits and pieces and use them as raw materials for cooking curry juice, and you're done. This job is not difficult at all, and soon you will practice fast and exquisite knife skills like a master. "Nothing else, just that your hands are familiar with your ears." However, if a horse stumbles, people will make mistakes. Whether you are a lame "three chefs" or a chef who has been playing with knives for twenty or thirty years, you can't avoid the experience of cutting your fingers. As long as it's not too serious, everyone will get used to sticking a band-aid and continue to work. But once, you accidentally cut deeply and your left index finger bled profusely. Before getting dressed, a group of guests came in, and the boss and his wife were very busy. You grit your teeth, put your hand in the pocket of your apron, and receive the guests with a smile as usual. When you returned to the kitchen, the whole hem of your apron was red with blood, and your whole hand was covered with blood. It was really shocking, and both the boss and his wife were frightened. You also try to comfort them with a smile. The so-called strong are all forced out in this way.

When all this work is finished, it's time for you to eat. Dinner in restaurants is usually served after nine o'clock, because according to common sense, customers are the least, but there are often exceptions. The boss's favorite sentence is: business to eat, no business to eat. She doesn't mean that you won't cook without business, but if there are no customers in good business hours, then customers will come one after another when it's your turn to eat, so that you can't eat a good meal. The most pitiful time, you ate a meal for two hours. Every time you just sat down and brought the meal to your mouth, the doorbell rang.

After having a rest after dinner, you should go out and clean up, clean the counter, clean the chair, clean the stool and go up and down in the kitchen. It has already passed 1 1. Customers have started to increase again. Most of them are night guests coming out of the bar, full of alcohol, with big tongues and vague words. At this time, you should be extra careful. You need to know who likes to make trouble, who likes to find fault and who is crazy. After seeing these guests off, you can finally relax, sit for a while and wait for closing at half past twelve.

After closing the door, you are busy again. This is the job of the last cleaner. You are responsible for sweeping the floor, from the front hall to the kitchen. After all the cleaning, the boss and his wife also did other washing, scrubbing and bookkeeping. Then, with the same tired yawn, everyone turned off the lights, locked the door, walked out of the fast food restaurant and got on the boss's car. The boss and his wife will take you home first.

When you get home, you run home quickly from the parking lot. You always look up at the bright or dark glow in the sky, thinking that the hard day has finally passed and a new day is coming, full of joy and hope. In Britain, this time is usually two in the morning.