Is it possible to be so insanely tuned in to your workplace that you notice a new or slightly different sound and figure out that a piece of your equipment isn't working properly?

Sure. Of course. But is it also possible to be so completely clueless that you walk right by something potentially catastrophic and don't even notice? And to be both of these things at the same time?

Yep. That was me today.

First, the patting myself on the back part. I had a problem with my ice machine yesterday, the one that sits on top of the soda machine. It serves the dual purpose of providing ice for the drinks, but also cooling the water as it runs through the lines and mixes with the syrup. So no ice equals warm pop. Bleh.

It was a minor problem, and the ice machine company was out here quick with bags of ice, and then a repair guy soon after, who said the problem was fixed and my ice machine was running A-OK!

But I worked late last night and when I was here by myself with just the sounds of my compressors and cooling sheet metal to keep me company, I noticed that I didn't hear the familiar sporadic crash of the ice cubes falling down into the bin. At all.

So I called the company again and scheduled them to come out this morning. Proactively. Just in case. So I didn't have to deal with a down ice machine in the midst of a busy Saturday.

The same guy came out and gave me a look, but I explained to him that I hadn't heard the cubes dropping, so he reluctantly went up there and opened it up again. He came down with some piece of electronic circuitry and told me that my sensor was bad. "Must've just failed last night, after I was here", he said. "Yeah, or you missed it yesterday", I thought.

Whatever. 20 minutes later, he's got a new one installed and I was hearing the familiar crash of cubes descending down into the bin. All was well and I was patting myself on the back for being so tuned into my restaurant that I sniffed that one out before it became an issue.

Now for the clueless dunderhead story.

The pilot on the oven often goes out overnight, and so when I crank everything up in the morning, the oven won't fire up. Sometimes I'm lazy and let Carlos or Luis lay down on the floor and hold the damn red button down for 2-4 minutes, but they just did it yesterday and had a heck of a time with it, so I figured I'd be nice and do it this morning.

Only, instead of using a twisted up piece of paper towel to light the pilot, like they always do, I grabbed my propane torch and fired it up. I laid prone on the floor, resigned myself to holding down the damn button far longer than I think I'd need to, and shot the flame in there, lighting the pilot.

After I finally let go of the button, the pilot stayed lit, I turned on the oven and it lit, and all was well. Again, I started patting myself on the back for doing it so much more quickly and easily than they were able to do it yesterday. I put away the torch and got to work.

Then, later, there was this smell. Something like methane or sewage gas or something. I kept smelling it every time I went over near the shake station, and I could not for the life of me figure out what it was. Every time I passed by there, it was driving me crazy. Eventually I just figured that the floor drains were giving off some smell or something and stopped worrying about it.

At about 11:00 when Tufo, my batidero (milkshake guy) came in, he said he smelled gas and started hunting around the same area. I dismissed his claim, explaining (somewhat patronizingly) that it was just the floor drains giving off some kind of sewer smell and not to worry about it.

He kept sniffing and hunting, and finally he pulls out the propane torch and proclaims "esta!".

And he was right. That was, in fact, it. I had left the valve open on the propane torch and after I put it away, it was just quietly, slowly, releasing all the gas, which was what I had been smelling all day. Duh!

Thankfully, the ice machine vindication happened after the propane torch move, so it made me feel a little better.

Signed,

Hyper-tuned-in-but-also-head-in-the-clouds-Lakin.

Big difference between this Tuesday and last week. We sold eight shakes last Tuesday (Norberto and I always look to see how many we do on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, since those are the days we don't have a dedicated shake guy and have to split the duties), but today we did 49!

Crazy. Give Chicagoans a 40+ degree day and all of a sudden everyone thinks spring has sprung. More than a few guys with shorts and flip flops today as well.

The fact that this is kind of a sidebar-type of post indicates that, overall, things are going pretty well. I've remedied most, if not all, of the breakage and equipment issues that I documented in my last post, and since then, we've been humming right along fairly nicely.

We've been busy, but haven't yet had another insane weekend like the one that followed the Tribune article, and once you get through a period like that, even fairly busy days feel calmer. It's the same with equipment, and employees, both of which I've had issues with lately. For me, the looming sense that something might go wrong is always worse than it feels when it actually *does* go wrong, and then you run around and fix it or work around it.

I was dreading dealing with the french fry cutter, but when I finally wrenched the failed plastic anchors out and relocated it, the whole job only took me about an hour, and now it feels much more solid.

Same with employees. Up until this week, no one but Rodolfo had ever worked my disher/busser position. He needed to take a little time off, so this week we've had three different guys there. As usual, I get all nervous about what effect that might have on how things run, but, ultimately, everything goes fine, and at times, perhaps, even a bit better than they might've gone with the normal guy in place.

Which brings me back to cooks' quirks. One thing that's always amused me is how different people have their own different little ways of doing things. This is one of the reasons why it's so difficult to attain consistency in restaurants; because cooks--the good ones at least--all believe that they alone know the one true best way to do just about every single aspect of their job.

Whether it's cleaning various substances, washing/processing produce, doing prep, cooking for service, or quickly breaking down a station, just about every cook worth his salt is always striving to innovate in order to increase efficiency, speed, and quality.

There's a lot of ingenuity going on in restaurants. Smart guys like Javier (who I worked with back at the old Nick & Tony's on Wacker) figure out cool ways of suspending a jug of canola oil with a plastic-wrap tether and then poking a hole in the bottom so it slowly streams oil into a bucket of vinaigrette fixin's and a running stick blender (which, more than likely, had its switch jimmied to allow for hands-free operation).

Norberto, who runs my fry station, is an innovator. He's a nearly everyday employer of the plastic-wrap belt, brought in a power drill to bore slightly larger holes in the salt shaker, and he's constantly moving stuff around, re-jiggering, thinking about how to make his job and the restaurant more efficient and economize the movements needed to produce the dishes on his station.

Sometimes it's obvious stuff. We were using three skinny bain maries in a countertop steam table unit we have, and we kept running out of the Merkt's cheese for the cheese fries and would have to heat up more during service. Finally Norberto suggested that we use third pans instead of the bains. Duh! Why didn't *I* think of that?

Lots of it is experience, too. I remember a guy I worked for who, when trying out a new employee, would ask them to empty a gallon jug of mayonnaise into a large stainless bowl, and then watch to see how they did it.

Guys with less or no experience (at least in the sort of prep work that this chef was interested in from his guys) would open it and start pulling it out of there with a spoon, rubber scraper, or whatever.

The more seasoned prep guys would open the top, flip it upside down over the bowl, then give the bottom of the jug a few good stabs with a knife. The air that went in would break the suction, and the mayo would more or less slide right out of the jug, all in one piece.

That's just one random example, but it shows the value of doing the mundane tasks over and over again, and learning how to do them faster, more efficiently, or better.