123 replies to this topic

[repoman]

Its been years since I have worked in a kitchen but some funny things we did include...

- Baking a co-workers keys in a calzone.
- Deep frying the same workers keys (after this he kept them in his pants pocket.
- mixing in raw eggs with the hard boiled eggs that were used for salads.
- rolling wet side towels into the shape of a penis, freezing them, and putting them in interesting places (lockers, hotel pans, etc)
- Sending newbies to deliver pizza to addresses that don't exist
-

[moosnsqrl]

Its been years since I have worked in a kitchen but some funny things we did include...

- Baking a co-workers keys in a calzone.
- Deep frying the same workers keys (after this he kept them in his pants pocket.
- mixing in raw eggs with the hard boiled eggs that were used for salads.
- rolling wet side towels into the shape of a penis, freezing them, and putting them in interesting places (lockers, hotel pans, etc)
- Sending newbies to deliver pizza to addresses that don't exist
-

The raw egg thing just never gets old, does it?

OTOH, modern car keys cost a fortune to replace, so the key tricks would probably earn you a pretty nasty retaliation (but only if they found out who did it, I guess ).

[Reefpimp]

Just putting an uncooked egg in somebody's wadded-up side towel is good for a yuk or two. They'll grab for it eventually. Ideally, it breaks right on their shoe.

An interesting variation on this is to blow out an egg, then hurl the empty shell at them. Wide eyes and shock, followed by relief.

Hiding in the basement to leap out and holler "BOO!" at somebody coming down for produce or whatever. Best done to skittish female waitstaff.

Do you have a co-worker who hides things in the ceiling tiles? Moustraps are cheap and readily available.

[chileheadmike]

I worked at a Mexican place for a while, back in the early 80's. We had this hot shot know it all dishwasher a-hole. HSKIADWA decides he's hungry about the time we're closing up. He gets the floor sweepins burrito. It looked really nice coming out of the oven with all that homemade enchilada sauce and cheese on it. Luckily for him we fished out the toothpicks. He ate every bit.

A couple weeks later we sold HSKIADWA a nice fat bag of oregano, we took the proceeds and bought a whole boatload of beer.

Dude had no taste.

Edited for spelling

Edited by chileheadmike, 26 January 2007 - 07:09 PM.

[Joisey]

--A could weeks later we sold HSKIADWA a nice fat bag of oregano, we took the proceeds and bought a whole boatload of beer.--

That's a classic. Amazing what some Oregano and a little pickling spice looks like.

[David D'Aprix]

What are some of the best practical jokes you've ever seen or been a part of?  Points for originality and mean-spiritedness.

For instance, everyone has hot-plated a waiter they are having a problem with.  A neat variation is to do it out of the pantry station...never expect a 200 degree salad plate.

But that's intrinsically unfair. When hot-plating a waiter, the point is to say, "you know the plates are hot, you're supposed to use a napkin to handle them." That is, under ideal conditions you give hot plates to everyone. Of course, as the night wears on, plates become handle-able without the napkin, so waiters get careless. Thus, a hot plate technically is following the rules.

If you give them one from the pantry, it's automatically and absolutely violent behavior, something that the waiter could not possibly have anticipated. It takes away the beauty of the act.

[David D'Aprix]

I dont recommend this to everyone...but some waiters can drive me so GOD damn crazy. Well...I call it the hot spoon trick. Put a nice soup spoon in a 600 degree oven for an hour or so....carefully remove and place in a conveinient spot where your waiter enemy frequents...BAM...seared thumb and index finger !!! Keep your head down behind the line and look stupid !! hahaha
  Dont forget...this can backfire on you...keep your eye out for the hottie waitress, you'll never get laid that way.

Interesting variation: use a hot quarter for the greedy ones.

[David D'Aprix]

The common one at the country club where I worked was Tabasco in the Coke. During busy times it worked every time.

Then there was chocolate syrup on the telephone ear-piece. Call out: "Julie, phone for you." She puts it to her ear and bingo.

[Joisey]

--If you give them one from the pantry, it's automatically and absolutely violent behavior, something that the waiter could not possibly have anticipated. It takes away the beauty of the act. --

Sometimes there are no lessons to be learned between the lines of gratuitous and abhorrent behavior.

[Reefpimp]

And sometimes, violence is just plain... fun.

[Joisey]

--And sometimes, violence is just plain... fun.--

Swan: Why'd you do it? Why'd you kill Cyrus?

Luther: No reason...I LIKE doing things like that!

[theclash]

--And sometimes, violence is just plain... fun.--

Swan:  Why'd you do it?  Why'd you kill Cyrus?

Luther:  No reason...I LIKE doing things like that!

warriors come out and play

[Reefpimp]

Being the big guy with a brown belt in Thai boxing wielding a 10" knife, it's sometimes nice to not be argued with.

Unfortunately, bank managers processing a loan request and snotty waiters aren't the same animal. How curious.

[Jeebus]

Our pastry chef kept having his truffles swipped. So for payback he rolled little truffles with a "refreshing" wasabi centre. It served 2 puposes, truffles never went missing and you had no problem spotting the theives.

[Lreda]

Had a server that I couldn't stand and I wanted her to quit, so I went to Spencer's and bought one of those fake lottery tickets that paid $10,000. I had a different server put it in her checkbook while I waited in the bar. I made sure she got the 1st table and found the ticket. I had also put real ones in the other servers books. She scratched hers off and immediately started screaming. Staff is not allowed to use the house phones and she picked it up to call her husband. After "winning" she told me she quit and was leaving right away. The look on her face and she read the fine print that stated she could collect her prize at The North Pole was the best.

I accepted her resignation.

[turkeybone]

One of my instructors told me back in the day he would frequently batter and deep fry green scrubbies and give them to the waitstaff.

Also, and even more fantastic, was the story he told about being a banquet server at this one hotel in Switzerland... in the winter, there would be 4ft of snow on the ground, so during weddings he and the fellow servers would casually throw bottles of champagne out the window.. then go digging in the middle of the night

[parisucks]

The "Noob" portion of the thread:

The Bucket of Steam is always cool, as are fictitious tools (left handed chicken stretcher).  If you have time, set it up to have the Noob go from person to person, eventually leading back to you.  I had some waitress looking for a "cucumber clamp" one busy lunch.  She came back exasperated without it, and was all dramatic..."God, what are we going to do now??"  Grimly, I said, "I guess I'll have to hold the cucumbers manually as I cut them"....

Get a saute pan smoking hot and put some red pepper flakes in.  Ask the Noob if this smells ok....hit the pan with a little white wine as you bring it up to his face to smell it.  Another good "how does this smell?" is reducing balsamic vinegar.

My favorite was when my boss asked this fresh fish kid who just couldn't keep up with a slamming lunch service to "Go in back and grab a can of elbow grease off the top shelf". Five minutes later, after moving the ladder all over the room, searching every shelf the kid came back, scared looking and whispered to me "I can't find it!". "The elbow grease?" I said, all hint, hint. "Yeah!" "The ELBOW grease!?!" I don't think the kid ever got the joke. He was gone less than a month later. OH! just remembered! Same kid! He had long hair. We used to get these bunches of strawberry tomatoes on the vine in those plastic mesh bags, about a foot long and kinda looking like a big mesh condom when they were empty. The kid came in one day and we told him very seriously that if he was gonna keep the long hair loose he had to wear a hair net. The thing was sticking off his head like an elf cap. We were rolling, we killed the joke finally when we couldn't control the laughing and he caught on.

[cdabney]

Some of my favorites:

Newbie's:
-keep taking their salt ..I mean all of it..empty 1/9 pan, after about three days it gets pretty funny..also ride them about NOT having any salt

-make up crazy stories about the dish washers and wait staff and have the rest of the line confirm them. This can be fun for months

For the waiter who eats off the line,once I coated a raw rabbit liver in chocolate.
Very funny.

I've filled tool boxes with sugar,rubbed habanero on water bottles and in the event I find something that smells like a$$ I always put it in someone elses trash can.

Once I asked the entire staff to call the intern by a different name.

[Tonyy13]

Man, you guys are brutal!

-There was once this server that I really was having a hard time, and yah, same story, cocky guy who knew it all that somehow ended up "slummin" it working in a restaurant. Well, after filtering the fryer one day, I noticed we had some extra grease, so I took it out and set it in a bain marie off to the side. Later that night, due to it's mix of some filtered grease but mostly new, it came to this semi homoginized mixture that looked a little bit grainy. Well, add some cinnamon, and all of a sudden, we had homemade apple sauce. I asked this guy if he wanted some and he went on and on about how he loved homemade apple sauce! He even took a big whiff of the cinnamon sprinkled on top too, and dug right in! You should have seen the look on his face. Projectile vomitting on the dishwasher was of course the next course of events, and the poor dishwasher even started to cry. Absolutely hillarious.

-Tobasco down the straw is classic, but we used to do a vinegar and club soda mix when one of a new cooks or an intern asked for a sprite. You have to top it off with sprite, or they will smell it, but that is classic!

-A big bowl over the head of someone focused on their prep and hitting it with a wooden spoon is also very very shattering

- We once bet an intern $200 that he couldn't eat 2 oz. of dried cinnamon in a single shot. We even put teh money out on the table for him. Well, he couldn't resist, and it was hillarous to see plumes of cinnamon coming out of his nose when he aspirated some of the spice into his lungs! Poor kid was blowing cinnamon out of his nose for three days! We all went out to the bar that night and offered to buy him shots of Goldschlager. Didn't want any, wonder why?

[alanamoana]

notice that the chef is a bit hoarse and coughing while on the line? has a nice quart container of iced soda near him at the pass? squirt about three ounces of fish sauce into his drink and say "Hey Chef, you sound awful, take a drink why don't you?"

on someone's last day (common practice to do something evil to them), wait until they change into their street clothes and then soak them with fish sauce. great in nyc where they have to ride public transportation!

[Marky Marc]

At the joint I work in now we have these 5 gallon jugs of grated horseradish. It's tradition, more or less, to ask one of the new guys "Does this smell alright to you?".
Oh man... I fell for that one when I started there and it was bad! My lungs hurts for a few days afterwards.

Trying to make a salad in someone's back pocket is pretty funny. Just slowly add ingredient after ingredient until, VOILA, You've got a salad.

Once someone I worked with started francticly calling for a server to the line. When the server (Luis with a mexican accent) got there he was told that we were out of strawberry mash potatoes and that he needed to make sure that all the other servers knew and to tell the bar as well. Dude came back 5 minutes later and said, "Is thees a yoke?!?"




I'm amazed at how many other people have done the compressed espresso patty surprise.

[Marky Marc]

Put a few theads of saffron in the pocket of someone's chef coat. When they wash it (if they haven't found the thread) it will leave a big yellow stain of the coat. Doesn't come out easily either.

[JDaniel]

A coworker of mine told me that a popular one in German bakeries is to tell new apprentices that ammonium bicarbonate smells like mint. Stick your nose in a container of ABC and take a good whiff and you won't be smelling anything for a while.

[EMCEE101]

one more thought, i don't allow cell phones in the kitchen, guy gets a warning and if he keeps it up....into the deep fryer!

Edited by EMCEE101, 29 December 2007 - 01:15 AM.

[EMCEE101]

nothing like freezing a noob's shoes or jacket in a 22qt. bucket. funny as hell to watch a guy walk home in his socks on a rainy night, knowing that he has beed defeated.

another one... a bucket of fish fumet with yeast and green food coloring (and any other various ingredients guarenteed to stink to high hell) left under the fryer, over the oven, or someplace else warm and moist for a week, then tossed over a guy without warning on his last night... always a great one.

[Saltydog]

Bring in a dozen doughnuts for the waitstaff. Position them next to the coffee machine.

The next day bring in the photo of the kitchen crew all bent over with a doughnut stuck in the crack of their a$$. Tape to coffee machine.

[wallchef]

Tabasco in the drinking straw.

Freezing personal items in buckets or bain-maries.

My favorite is taking the brulee torch and heating up people's bake pans or the handles of their reach-ins.

[Dianabanana]

Wow. I think in the future all questions of the should-I-chuck-being-an-accountant-for-my-dream-of-being-a-chef variety should automatically redirect to this thread!

[shauny82]

screwing around with peoples drinks is always fun.
ie changing a person's water with vinegar.
I got it bad when some one change my coke with a 5o/50 split of soda and soy sauce

[Chef William]

A couple days into my first job as a dishwasher, I'm called into the kitchen by my Chef and in this semi-frantic tone [it was a busy night, and I was a little nervous to be talking to this guy, so I had a pretty big sense of urgency] he tells me that I need to go find him the parsley curler on the fly. I eventually made my way back to Chef empty handed after having searched the entire kitchen/upstairs storage and asked just about everyone in the kitchen.

I finally found out that it was a joke about a week later.