Balancing Act

Fifth in a series documenting A. Chef’s first year as an executive chef.

As is the case with many businesses (certainly not just restaurants), part of our company philosophy is to say “yes” whenever possible. You probably have something similar where you work. I think it’s a decent personal philosophy too. But that’s where things can get tricky, that definition between personal and professional.

How do you say “yes” to everyone when the demands of work and life can pull you in different directions? Recently, as I cross the halfway mark in my first year as Chef, I’ve learned how to say “no” to certain things. My old boss used to tell me he’d wake up every day thinking about all the things he was not going to get done. This always struck me as pessimistic, but now I see he was just being a realist. In fact, it was a sign of his ambition and drive to always do more, and do it better. It mirrors the belief that though you can never be one hundred percent, you should always try to do better. Something people can lose sight of is that we – from servers to dishwashers to managers – are all here to serve the business. If we do that part right, the rest will follow. If we mess that up, we’ll be looking for work pretty soon.

As cooks, we live and die by making lists. I have found that these last months have seen me continue to make lists. They’ve just become much longer and instead of reflecting the immediate needs of my station (stock on, soak casings, etc) they’ve become over-arching and less specific (plan Fall dining room buy out, Christmas menus, update two more pages of inventory sheets, talk to farm manager about winter crops) with specificity added as needed on a daily basis (butcher halibut, attend host meeting, follow up on credit request, complain about delivery during lunch service). This broad stroke planning has become critical to finding balance in my week, and it’s something I didn’t really appreciate until very recently. I must have missed that day at Chef school.

I have seen some newer people question my commitment to the business when I leave in the afternoon to see my kid’s swim lesson or go to the dentist, but their doubt quickly fades when they see a 16 day stretch on the schedule, or when I drop everything to cover them so they can go to a concert. It’s about balance, some taking for all the giving. Going back to my first installment on Scout, when people were dropping like flies and I was doing 75 hour weeks forever, I forgot all about balance. Everything else in my life was put on hold, trying to get my feet back underneath me. I took care not to wake my wife when I came home late, and she took care not to wake me when she left for work in the morning. I knew that what was happening was not sustainable, but I also knew that there was an end to all the madness.

The luxury of having stable, strong staff and good management support around me is starting to kick in – I know it won’t last forever, so I’m making the best of things right now. This is freeing me up to keep plugging away at that four page list, making long term plans for the restaurant and the guests who support it. Allowing me to say “yes” to the things that matter and “no” to the things that don’t. Getting a couple of new fantastic organizations on board to make my kitchen better, planning and costing menus further out making roll outs so much easier and planning marketing and promotional initiatives weeks and months in advance, narrowing down our focus to where it counts the most.

This luxury carries over to my personal life, too. This line of work demands a lot of sacrifice on the home front, and anyone with an understanding spouse with a flexible workday is extremely fortunate! The fact is that being tethered to work via email and cell phone is not quite the same as working at Blockbuster or Safeway – cheffing is rarely something you can do from home – and I count myself lucky to be able to stay at my kid’s birthday party right through to the end, or being able to help a friend move because I don’t have to work. One of the perks of assuming the position is that the boss can’t get mad at your if you are running late.

So now I know when he used to tell me he’d get out of bed everyday deciding what was not going to get done, what he meant was going to wait until tomorrow until I can do it right.

READ PART ONE | READ PART TWO | READ PART THREE | READ PART FOUR

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