Mean Girls part I

In my last post I gave my spiel on male chefs. I stand by my opinion.

Now I need to let loose on some of my sisters. Ironically the ones I am speaking of are both pastry chefs, which reverts back to my theory (see "Chefs vs Pastry Chefs" post).

It's women like these who give us a bad name. Whether they are just being the stereotypical bitch, or just plain mean, it's totally unnecessary and unprofessional. Here lies the tale of the first one:

I hired a pastry chef for my cafe. Very attractive, smart and talented. Her work was beautiful. She was expensive but if I could get the mileage out of her in terms of production she would be worth every penny. That was my strategy, but not hers apparently.

Before we opened officially, she came in to test recipes and start building a pastry menu. Light, flaky Danish, good cookies (truthfully mine were better) and an astounding chocolate mud cake. The cake was a show stopper. Once we opened it became a number one request by customers both by the slice and to order a whole one.

Though her large ego loved the fact that her cake was very popular, her artiste mentality did not like the idea of producing more than one cake at a time. "The Princess", (which became my code name for her) preferred using the 6 qt. Kitchen Aid mixer as opposed to the 20 qt. one that I had bought specifically for making quantity. She liked to decorate the top of the cakes with the fudgey chocolate frosting and squawked when asked to write Happy Birthday on anything. One day she had an order where she had to make three of them and one would have thought that I had asked her to run barefoot over hot coals. She bitched and moaned, complained and was incensed that she had to stay two hours late to make the deadline. May I add that I had a fully loaded car outside with the rest of the order with the motor running waiting for the last masterpiece to be completed?

I was taught that a pastry chef should earn at least equivalent to what they produce daily in terms of dollars. For example, if they are being paid $100 in a day, they need to sell a minimum of $100 worth of product. This gal needed to bump up her yield to in order to earn her fat salary.

So while people were raving about the baked goods, she only made what she felt like making. When the customers would discover and fall in love with one item, she would stop making it and replace it with some esoteric experiment. I had built a kitchen that was set up for production. The cafe was where we could hook customers on our food, the kitchen was built to make enough for special orders and hopefully even, wholesale. I had restaurants and caterers starting to come see me about possibly supplying them. Instead of complying, I got whining from the Princess when I approached her on this.

I will also add that she became very unpleasant to work with in general. The other cooks avoided her like the plague. She did nothing but complain and bitch at them, accusing them of laziness constantly.  She did not like having to share an oven with them, or the fact that she had to walk around the wall to get to it. She would comment and make suggestions on how they did everything, but would screech when I did so with her. After a while even I scooted past her area as quickly as possible before I would hear my name called, upon which I would wince as if someone was pinching me.
Why didn't I just fire her, you might ask? Well, I was starting to consider replacing her with someone less expensive and lower maintenance, but something prevented me from doing so.  Her husband was diagnosed with testicular cancer. She cried understandably, I gave her time off whenever she needed it. One day she started making cupcakes with ugly scoops of icing on top of them. Not only was it too much icing but it looked weird and unappealing. She said they (the ball shaped scoops) were in honor of "the boys". Ew.
You can't fire someone who's got a loved one with cancer. So we all continued to tip-toe around her. I also gave her credit on everything she did out of respect for her talent. I went so far as to introduce her to the famous "Domestic Doyenne" who was her idol, and my former employer. I was making an appearance on the DD's national television show and brought the Princess to New York along with me and a tray of her goodies, including the mud cake. The DD was visibly impressed and the Princess swooned, her ego filled up like a Humvee with a full tank of gas.
Shortly after this, a producer for the DD's show called me to do a segment about me and the cafe. This was a wonderful piece of publicity for us and caused great excitement among the staff, most notably the Princess. On the day of the shoot, a whole chunk of time was devoted to showing how she made her delectable sticky buns and the no-knead bread that we featured at the cafe.
Easter came along, I had to pressure Her Majesty about creating a menu for our Easter brunch. She hemmed and hawed, bitched and stalled. Finally she came up with 3 choices for our prixe fixe that were very simple and would certainly not require her presence for service.
A few days before Easter though, a crisis occurred. While I was running around, greeting customers, jumping into the kitchen to expedite, managing the usual lunchtime rush apparently there was a cock/hen fight in the coop. My father, who was my partner spoke up to the naked empress. She was complaining about something while he had other business to attend to. She followed him up the stairs to the office,continuing with her nagging rampage when he turned to her and said something to the effect that she was a "fucking bully".
Whoa.
The Princess did not like that. Not one bit. So when I came back into the kitchen, there she was sniveling and red-eyed, packing up some of  her stuff. She would absolutely not stand for this treatment, no one had ever spoken like that to her and she walked out. Three days before a fully booked Easter brunch.
In the immortal words of Winston Churchill, "If you're going through hell, keep going", which is exactly what I did. My Pops and I decided that enough was enough and that we were done with her. She had told me she need a few days to think, well not over Easter you're not. Adios. I told her she was not welcome to come back when I spoke to her later on the phone.

Next, I jumped into gear and put on my baker's cap. I called my friend Chef Dave to come in and lend a hand. Together with the rest of the staff we started knocking out the Easter menu. While service continued in the cafe we worked  so hard until we were punchy. I just remember that by Saturday night when all prep was completed and it was only Chef Dave and myself left we were so relieved that we cracked open a couple of beers and he did his famous pole dance on the supporting beam in the kitchen. Nothing like a goofy looking 6'4" guy in baggy chef's pepper pants doing the twirl. Brunch went off beautifully, without a hitch.

The following Tuesday as I was working the pastry station, the Princess walked in all refreshed. "Well hello there, Baker!" she chirped at me. I looked up from rolling my dough and asked her what she was doing here. She was there to do her job, she said. I told her she did not have a job anymore and to finish packing her things. Goodbye and good luck.

Not long after, the segment on the cafe was to air. I contacted the producer to tell her that the Princess was no longer with us, how would that affect the piece? So much had been devoted to our baked product. The producer said it would be no problem because her part had been shot with no sound and in the edit it would work out fine.

I can  just imagine, the Princess serving pretty little pastries whilst her family (not too many friends, for I don't believe she had many) gathering around the television to watch herself on her favorite program. How I would have loved to have seen her face when the wonderful piece aired with me demonstrating a signature dish, various shots of me interacting with the customers, other staff members smiling and doing their jobs. Oh, and with a voice-over narration by the DD, a scene of a pair of women's hands making cinnamon buns and bread. No face and no voice. Especially not a high pitched screechy one!