Posted 26 December 2004 - 11:19 AM
A friend on another forum started a thread about "what are your favourite Christmas things?"
My first thought was, "Hon, this is my twelfth retail Christmas...I don't really have any left."
Thankfully I haven't had to work the Day itself since I was a teenaged security guard, but the month of December is a real kidney stone of a time for any retailer. Profitable, oh yeah (I was on commission most of those years), but hard on the nerves.
You know this is when you're going to make as much as 20-25% of your year's income, so you never want to leave the floor. You go the can when you're on the verge of soiling yourself, not before. You come in early, so you can try to repair the previous days' ravages before opening time. You look at the clock at 9:45 PM and say to yourself, "Dammit, I was supposed to lock the doors 45 minutes ago..." (and the mall security guy is outside the door giving you meaningful looks). Then you eat your lunch on the bus on the way home, if you can stay awake long enough.
Work until 5 or 5:30 on Christmas Eve, stay an extra two-three hours getting down the Christmas sales and displays, do the big family thing on Christmas Day, and then go in early on Boxing Day to get the new sale up. Open the doors, knowing that the first 10 people through the door will want a cash refund that's at least twice the amount of money you have in the store.
For years, I'd be sick as a dog by New Year's at the latest because of the pressure-cooker atmosphere and extended hours at Christmastime. When I went to cooking school I told myself that, however gruelling a gig cooking is, at least I'd never do another retail Christmas.
Where do I cook now? In a retail store. Oy.
My primary role at my day job is running the bakery. Our workload almost doubled, my staff did not. My staffing did not increase at all, in fact. All of our extra product was baked AND WRAPPED AND DECORATED (pet peeve) by myself and my one daytime production person; who were also expected to cover tills and take customer orders while trying to get all this extra work done.
Picture it. Thousands of extra cookies; shortbreads, gingerbread figures, cinnamon stars, sugar cookies, almond cookies; individually cut/decorated/dipped. Hundreds of kilos of sweet brioche turned into pecan-caramel braids, stollen, and filled loaves of different kinds. Some just baked off and sold to customers for their bread puddings. Oh yeah, and brioche puddings for the showcase, and marzipan to go into the stollen, and a few thousand 2" and 4" mince tarts, butter tarts, pecan-ganache tarts, and...well, you get the idea.
Did I forget hundreds of portions of gingerbread for takeaway Christmas dinners?
I'll be working New Year's Eve at both jobs, doing a full shift plus inventory at my day job and then going in to my night job (a fine dining restaurant) where New Year's is the busiest night of the year. Although we don't ordinarily turn tables, we do on New Year's; allowing us to serve about 130 diners. This may not sound like much, but bear in mind we are a small place (70-80 seats max) and we serve a five-course table d' hote. It takes 2 1/2 hours, on the average, to get through the meal.
Fortunately my boss, the chef/owner, comes from a background in industrial engineering. Although we're absolutely hopping, the "flow" is excellent and the plates simply fly out of the kitchen. It's actually easier than a busy normal night for the back of the house, and the frazzled servers do very well indeed out of their tips. And they do treat us well; staff meal is excellent and last year the final plates were celebrated by the kitchen with Veuve Cliquot.
Fat=flavor
