On December 1, 2023, I started a new job. I had been unemployed for almost four years by then. It had nothing to do with my degree, but I didn’t care. It’s in a kitchen at a Latin restaurant. I have Latino parents, so I reached out to this place when I saw that they were hiring, saying I had never worked in a restaurant before, but that I had a lot of experience cooking Latin food and that I knew/could speak a decent amount of Spanish. She emailed back saying they would love to add somebody who knows and understands Latin culture to the family, and to come in for an interview. All of those emails were in Spanish. Just to be sure, I would put them through translate to make sure I was saying things properly LOL. Otherwise, I wrote and read everything myself, including the interview date and time, so I was understanding everything. We had a good little chat, even in the beginning of the interview we spoke Spanish and she told me my Spanish was good. The interview was in English, but I was still glad I managed to communicate in Spanish with her and that she even complimented mine!
Truthfully, I have been cooking Latin food for most of my life, especially with my dad who loves to cook. Everything I have learned was from him, and he always wanted to be a professional chef his entire life. So stuff like chopping techniques, family secrets, recipes etc all of that is from him. It’s all very Latino and my main boss knew that, so she was happy that even without experience, I knew this sort of stuff. She kept saying “so you love cooking Latin food…” she said she’d have me come in to do prep work like food chopping, dishes, basically a kitchen scrub and I was totally cool with that. I told her that at most, since I had no experience working with food other than cooking at home, my biggest weakness was probably going to be that I was slow, but of course I would improve with time and practice.
I was NERVOUS. I have been unemployed for so long, so used to doing interviews and not hearing back, and then I just got this job during the interview same day! I had no professional experience but that was okay. I was so excited, but my partner, parents and I all thought this would be good. Not only do I finally have a job, it is in a field that I actually enjoy doing. I was practicing my Spanish all week, not sure of how much I’d be speaking in either language. I was cooking with my dad over the phone in Spanish, and particularly going over food/kitchen vocabulary. I had no idea what to expect English/Spanish wise, and that combined with being my first day, I was really nervous and focusing more on the language aspect than cooking.
December 1 was my first day. I went in and there was just one woman there, and it was not the boss/the woman who interviewed and hired me. So we introduced ourselves, and she said she had been told someone new was coming in. She asked me if I had ever worked in a professional kitchen before, and I told her no. She asked if I could speak Spanish, and that’s where I went off (in Spanish) saying yes I can speak Spanish and that’s where my cooking knowledge comes from, so even though I’ve never worked professionally like this, I hoped that some of my background knowledge would help me out. She immediately said that she didn’t speak Spanish, so she had no idea what I just said. I was surprised, because almost every other employee I had met or seen (even before I worked there) was some sort of Latino, and when they had originally said they were hiring, they said knowing Spanish was a great asset and they preferred it. But whatever. The woman said she was from another country, and she had a very heavy accent from there.
As I have said, I am the child of immigrants. I am used to heavy accents. My dad never took an English class in his entire life. But, I guess that’s all Latin accents. I had a lot of difficulty understanding her accent. Of course, I’m not used to it yet, it was a literal four-hour shift on my very first day. I know communication and accents can take some time.
The other woman who interviewed me came in shortly after I did, and the three of us talked quickly in the kitchen. What does the chef need me to do? She said that we were out of guacamole. We sell it both in the restaurant and a little marketplace shop beside it that sells Latin cooking ingredients. There is a fridge in that store where we make and then stock stuff like guac and salsa. I said that I could do guac – what a great way to start off my first shift! It’s cooking/making something but nothing overly difficult, I’ve done it a million times before, I don’t have to use any sort of fancy or intimidating cooking devices, just make guac! So the chef woman gave me a box of avocadoes. She said there’s one row left of avocadoes in the box, and to use them all. She gave me a knife about the size of my forearm for it. I was shocked at the knife, but she had clearly set it up for me, so I got started.
I’m a lefty, so the first instance she had to move I got a “GET OUT OF MY WAY” from her, and then she started giving me a speech about how it’s a kitchen, we need proper space for one another especially with knives and hot dishes. She told me where to stand that was better, but then started telling me how I was standing wrong, and I was ruining the flow of the kitchen. All I did was go to the other side of the counter so that I was out of her way lol. Regardless, I kept going with the avocadoes. It was a little difficult, because I genuinely have never used a knife so large to cut avocadoes before, it was my first day and first job in four years, and my hands were a little shaky, so I was being slow on purpose, especially with how gigantic the knife was. I didn’t even keep the avocado in my hand when I was cutting it, because I was positive I’d slip up with a knife that large. The boss came in at one point and first thing she said was “you’re a lefty… wow [chef] you gave her a gigantic knife for avocadoes!” The woman gave me one the next size down lol. I kept going, but the woman kept asking “are you done yet? You need to hurry up” sort of thing. But again, I was not ready to speed through that with a knife that big. The avocado knife I use at home is very sharp, but small – smaller than a butter knife. I finished and then she gave me a masher to mash all the avocadoes.
I mashed them all up. She got a bowl of chopped up onions and tomatoes and tossed them in, saying that she didn’t have time to wait for me and my slowness. She asked me how many avocadoes I had put in. I told her that I had done all of them. “You mean you didn’t count them?” she asked me, completely shocked. I told her, “no I didn’t count them, you both just told me to do all of them, so I did all of them.” She was FURIOUS. “How else will I know how many limes to put in now?! Or salt?!” I was high key wondering if she was joking, especially because it’s kind of a running joke in Latin food that there are never recipes, you measure by taste and stuff like that. My dad always taught me by giving me a spoonful and then asking, “what does it need?” you just go by what it tastes like and how many people you’re cooking for. I asked her if there was anything on the box that might have said how many there were, but she said no… i.e., the box saying it’s a box of 48 avocadoes, so divide it up and figure out how many were in each row. But she told me we couldn’t do that and she was rushing me so much I genuinely didn’t have the time to even look for a number. So I put in some limes and she poured in the salt, tasted it and it was fine. I said that I didn’t know I was supposed to count the avocadoes, and if I had known to, I would have.
The next disaster was the rice. She had a huge pot going all morning, and then moved them into buckets. From there, she told me to scrape out the bottom of the pots, save what I could, and to throw out anything that was burnt or black. She gave me a clear, cylindrical plastic jar, and said throw it all out in there and then put it in the garbage. There was some red salsa in the bottom of the jar, along with ONE circular cut of carrot. I did what she told me and then threw it all out. She asked where it went, and I said the garbage. She lost it on me all over again: “what do you mean you threw it out?!” I said back, “did you not tell me to throw it into the garbage when I was done?” “YOU THREW IT INTO THE GARBAGE!!!??!?!?!?!” She took an empty bowl and tossed it Frisby style into the sink, and then said to me, “get out of here. I don’t need you. You’re slowing me down. I thought you knew what you were doing.” I just went around the corner of the kitchen and washed/organized some plates. I still honestly don’t know what I did wrong… I KNOW she told me to throw it in the garbage. My best guess is that she meant I should have DUMPED what was in the container into the garbage, and she wanted the container back.
There was almost a dresser drawer looking thing in the corner. One was a metal drawer, and the next three were white plastic. She called me over and said, “look… one, two, three. Go into the third drawer.” Every time she said “one, two, three” she would point from top to bottom of the drawer. Every time I went to what I thought was the “third”, she’d say “no. Try again.” But she just kept pointing, saying “one, two, three” and every time I would open what I thought was the third drawer, she would say no. I finally figured out she was not including the first metal drawer in her “one, two, three” and tried again. She stopped me. “Miss, you need to LISTEN to me. I’m trying to get you into the third drawer, and you just are not listening to me. The third drawer has beans in it. Do you know what beans are? Frijoles? I thought you were Latino.” BRUH LOL. I said back to her, “I’m not NOT listening, but I am clearly not understanding you, and you are just repeating the same words while pointing at the same thing. You are not making any attempt to help me understand more, when I am very clearly missing SOMETHING.” Between my family and another translation job I had, it’s a running joke that speakers just repeat what they’re saying and yell louder every time when they are not being understood. I was so shocked at how harsh she was being, but that finally explained it to me. She was saying “one, two three” and pointing top to bottom, but as soon as she said beans, I realized she was pointing/saying the opposite of what she meant. So the “third” bean drawer was actually the first one she was pointing at.
No matter what I did, it was wrong. I spilled water and got a mop that was right next to the spill. She immediately said, “what are you using the mop for? You have to dry sweep first.” I said to her that I had just spilled a splash of water. She said that we didn’t mop the kitchen until the end of the day. I responded that I had a little puddle in the spot I was standing (the spot where I was standing to get out of everyone’s way because I’m a lefty) and that I was simply mopping that up so I wouldn’t slip. I wasn’t planning on nor was I attempting to mop the entire kitchen.
What bothered me the most though, was this:
I mentioned she had a pot of rice going in the morning. She also had a big pot going that looked like it was going to turn into broth. I fully asked her in the beginning before things got rough, “is this going to be chicken broth?” She said yes. After lunch, she brought me a big pot that had all of the chicken in it, along with onions. She got me a second bowl and put a strainer on top of the bowl. She said to take scoops of the broth (with the chicken) into the strainer, until everything was gone and I would have a bowl of broth. I thought this would be great – I’ve seen this a million times. So, I took out the chicken and put the chicken into its own separate bowl, strained out the broth, and then asked her if I should be throwing anything out, or what she wanted me to do next. It went like this:
Me: now what? Did you want me to throw any of this out?
Her: which do you want to throw out?
Me: I am assuming I’m going to throw out the leftover shreds of chicken, since we have the broth now. But I also have a bowl full of good chicken left from the original broth that was going all day.
Her: so which one would you throw out?
Me: I think I want to throw out the shreds.
Her: is that what you think?
Me: I mean, yes, but I accidentally threw out something you needed earlier, so I’m just trying to ask you to make sure.
Her: well you need to make sure.
Me: I am trying to make sure. That’s why I am asking you. I am not sure. In my experience, and what I have been taught in the kitchen doing this sort of thing, I would be keeping the chicken and throwing out the shreds. I’d make something else with all of the chicken that’s good and leftover still.
Her: is that what you would do?
Me: YES! It is what I would do. But I am unsure, which is why I am asking you. But if you don’t want to tell me, I can just throw all of this out right here and right now.
Her: LEAVE IT. DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING.
Like, why couldn’t she just have told me lol? I don’t understand why she’s making it difficult or refusing to teach me anything. I never did find out or see what she did with the chicken, because we never got past that conversation. I tried saying I could just throw it out thinking that she’d say, “okay do this with it instead” sort of thing, but she just kept it to herself. She was so upset with how slow I was being all day, but we wasted so much time going back and forth like that, when she could have just told me what to do. It’s even more annoying that what I wanted to do was correct after all of that, and she just wouldn’t tell me.
In my experience, while I am very aware it is unprofessional, in terms of Latin cooking, there are a lot of techniques and ingredients, specific ways to do things, cut certain veggies, etc. etc. You have to roll mint leaves into a cigar shape before you cut them, put this type of leaf in the pot while it’s cooking and take it out after. Char the tomatoes and peppers and skin them before putting it into a salsa. Stuff like that. So it’s entirely reasonable for her to want things a certain way, right? Just… tell me how you want it! Maybe it was a test to see how well I could really do things – I know she was watching me and her mouth dropped open when I started rolling the lime before I cut it, like she wasn’t expecting me to know how to do stuff. So it’s not like I had no clue what I was doing – I mean, I didn’t lol – but at the same time, when it came to basic prep, I felt like I was fine other than her wanting it all a specific way and then her only telling me halfway through that I was doing it wrong.
I felt like such an idiot too putting away dishes, because again, it was my first day in the kitchen and I didn’t know where any of them went. If I was looking and I was in the chef’s way, she’d get mad at me, but then if I tried keeping a pile of clean plates off to the side to put back later when I wasn’t in her way, she’d get mad that I was putting them where they didn’t belong. Like, no matter what I did to try to not annoy her, I still messed up lol. On the other hand, the boss woman would come in and give me instructions in pure Spanish, I would understand what she said, and when she would come back in and see me doing whatever she told me to do, she was happy that I had understood it properly. So I felt great about that. I kept saying after my first day, “my Spanish is a lot better than I thought!” Ha ha ha.
It ended with the other woman (boss) telling me that she would probably give me a call on Monday. We confirmed that we had each other’s numbers. She gave me a new employee tax form to sign and bring back. I was so excited to get paperwork and get official! I won’t lie, it was a mess of a first day and I had been hoping to be a lot more successful, but I made it through, and I was pleased. Of course, the next day – Saturday – I realized I had left my purse there. I went in and it was a few other new people as well as the chef. I quickly and awkwardly explained that I was new, that I left my purse, nice to meet y’all sort of speech. The chef said to everybody else that this was the new girl she was telling them about.
Honestly, I felt like such an idiot lol. I did a lot of stuff “wrong” and I screwed up. I made the chef woman really angry more than once, and I felt even more stupid that I was so worried about the Spanish when it ended up being a completely different accent that I was struggling to understand. I made sure to look up the accent online and try to get a little more familiar with it. I know what it is like to have people misunderstand your accent, and I felt really bad for how many times I had to ask her to repeat herself. I figured maybe I could get more comfortable with that, and maybe the next shift with her could go a little more smoothly.
On Monday, I didn’t hear from anybody. I started to get worried – had I misunderstood something in Spanish? Was I supposed to message them instead? The chef said I was new to others in English, so I heard that one properly. I figured I’d try a text to my boss, and on Tuesday, just sent a quick “could I come by and drop off my paperwork?” especially since I live close by. She responded by saying that she wasn’t in the office that day, so I responded back saying no worries. I assumed she would have responded by saying “how about (whatever day) instead?” sort of thing, but she didn’t. They posted a staff Christmas party happening – not that I had expected to be invited after one shift, but like, they’re clearly still doing stuff and online.
I still haven’t heard anything. I feel incredibly awkward and like I’m low key harassing her if I send her another message. The most she told me on my first day that indicated some sort of hours was that she said I wasn’t in their electronic system for hours/scheduling yet. She said because of that, she would be contacting me through text/cell and that’s what I have been waiting for, but nothing now. She specifically said “Monday/Tuesday”.
I know it is incredibly common for people our age to interview and never hear back. I have had endless interviews where I was just completely ghosted. Parents asking, “how did the interview with that one company go…?” and me answering, “I thought it went really well, but never heard from them again.” I know that my boyfriend and my friends also experience it. I can’t help but wonder: is this something employers do now as well? Ghost fire? I did one shift, did it poorly, and now let’s just pretend it never happened and never will happen again? Did the chef hate me that much that she talked my boss out of hiring me?
How long do I wait until I contact them again? What do I even say? Or is that it and I’m done?