This is a little story about a job I lasted about a month at before quitting for something else.
I was transitioning out of a work from home position I got to isolate and make money at the same time during Covid and given that I'm still working on my degree I went with going back to line cooking. Where I live, line cooks make an average of 14/hr. Not great. But given rent prices around here, enough for me to live on.
Panda was offering 15 to start. Ok, sure, I liked Panda (I don't work for places where I wouldn't eat the food, looking at you Applebees)
I show up and get orientated and day 1 I'm like….uhhh wtf. There's 5 packs of meat defrosting in a sink with water running over them (super unsafe) while the 2 dudes running the kitchen during rush are flying around. Ok. Adapting.
I was told on hire that they were short staffed (everyone was) and that they were going to continue to hire until they had full staffing. Little did I realize that continue to hire meant me and one other person so that the two dudes who were running the kitchen 7 days a week doubles could like, have days off.
Its not hard cooking, half their shit comes frozen and gets fried. I picked up the actual things I needed to do to run the kitchen in about 2 days, not a ton of recipes and most of them are very simple.
But the volume is insane. Panda Express on the busiest street in my city in the rich (white) side of town. Average of 200 tickets a night on weeknights just during rush. Just absolute non stop wall to wall food production.
And then they hit me with it. The plan is to run this kitchen with 2 people during rush. That's staffing. That's it.
For the volume we put out, every other restaurant I ever worked would have had 4 cooks in the kitchen. Freebirds a few miles away employs three times as much daily kitchen labor at 12 an hour to do half our sales.
What we needed was An entree cook, a side cook, a prep cook, and a floater who mostly went back and forth between entree and side. What we had was 2 cooks. Prep got shoved in when and where it could be shoved in, which is why we were defrosting meat under warm water and sometimes letting it sit in a sink for a few hours during rush, because the actual procedures Panda laid out had us behind on prep permanently. Side cook had to make double portions for every side and be constantly churning it out because we ran through it so fast. So using a pair of metal spatulas to toss 30+ pounds of rice or noodles as fast as humanly possible in a huge wok only to dump it in a pan and turn around 10 seconds later and do it again.
We didn't even do dishes. Panda procedure was to put each entree we cooked in a new dish. So add to the 4 cooks a dedicated dishwasher on staff. Nope. We reused entree pans throughout the entire 12 hour shift without cleaning or changing them once. Health code violations out the fucking wazoo.
It was absolutely disgusting.
But 15 an hour and no immediate options to just jump ship day 5, so I rolled with it and put out job applications every night when I went home. Didn't even list Panda on my resume, just pretended the job did not fuckin exist.
Three weeks in I was developing carpal tunnel. The non stop breakneck always in the weeds cooking, particularly having to make every side in a double portion to keep up with demand then run to the back to bang out a giant container of cut broccoli and right back to rice and noodles, and my right hand started going numb and experiencing shooting pains on shift.
When I brought this to the attention of other employees and the manager, I got told “Just work through the pain, you get used to it”
The second I had another job offer I just walked out. I got a message on my phone from another employer sending me new hire paperwork and I just took off my apron right there and clocked out, told the manager I quit and walked out.
Never in my years as a food service worker have I seen such blithe disregard for health code or employee welfare. I took pictures of what was going on in the back before I left. Our meat cooler up front also broke, and what should have been an emergency same day repair turned into my last 3 weeks storing chicken and beef in an inactive refrigeration unit with ice under it with an average temperature of 55 degrees Fahrenheit.
Chicken. Stored. At. 55. Degrees. Fahrenheit. For. Up. To. 8. Hours. At. A. Time.
I sent all of this, including pictures I took when alone up front of a thermometer in the chicken at 56 degrees, to the health department.
Nothing was done. The restaurant was not even inspected. I checked back. Thanks, Texas health department.
I am never, ever eating Panda Express, ever again. And neither should you.