Friday, February 12, 2010

Pros and cons

So I've officially finished my first full week at Plaza Athénée, and its been rough. Luckily no catastrophes this week, but I'm still tired. I'm slowly getting used to the schedule, so I'm not as fatigued as last week...where I just wanted to curl up into a ball and die. It's a really good learning experience though and I'm humbled every day by how little French I know, but everyone is willing to speak slowly and help.

Every day I add to my mentally compiled list of pros and cons about being a stagiaire. I hope someone finds it a least mildly amusing...as this is my life for the next six months.

Pro: Working with a World Pastry Champion.
Con: Achy sore feet after standing for 11 hours a day.
Pro: Seeing the Eiffel tower every night on my way home.
Con: Not seeing the light of day for four days straight.
Pro: The sous chef is super super nice.
Con: The sous chef is only super nice if you haven't screwed up and he's not lecturing you.
Pro: The magical 'lingerie' where you swap dirty uniforms for clean ones.
Con: Cleaning the lab/kitchen three times a day.
Pro: Getting to taste/take home some leftovers from the day.
Con: Allergy to D10 cleaning product that is resulting in a rash.
Pro: Latex gloves for said allergy.
Con: Being too short to reach most things.
Pro: My best friend the stool.
Con: Spending at least half an hour in the walk-in fridge stocking and cleaning.
Pro: Doing everything from juicing 4 kilos of lemons to chocolate work to cake assembly.

And the list goes on and on. One thing I've discovered is that stagiaires generally don't stay very long. One girl just left yesterday after six weeks and two others, who started when I did, only have about a month left. So guess who gets to be the long-term kitchen slave? At least I'm paid, whereas they aren't, even if its a pittance and I could make more working at MacDo. On the upside, the longer I'm there, the more I get to learn...and hopefully there will be more staigiares to 'ranger' and 'nettoyer' the lab.

3 comments:

Joan P. said...

Once you get the hang of things, you'll learn to work faster and more efficiently. One thing that always worked for me was being more aggressive and proactive about taking on more tasks. Make sure your chef notices it. And since you are there long term, you can end up being the stagiaire that tells other stagiaires to clean up =) hahahah !!!

mughound said...

Some more things to consider:

Con: Being on your feet 11 hours a day
Pro: Burning lots of calories in those 11 hours a day.

D said...

Con: Eating stuff in the lab and negating all that calorie burning.