Something that I quickly learned (after getting out of school mind you..) is that you can't waste motion or extra steps. There's no time. From the minute you walk in the door for your shift, the clock is ticking.
Learn to carry as much as you can in one trip, again the clock is ticking and you can ill afford to go back and get something you forgot or otherwise. I've become pretty adept at carrying a large cutting board, while balancing things like mixing bowls, deli containers - because once I get to my station - the plan is not to move as much as possible and hammer out my prep.
I learned this quickly during my externship, you see: the Carlyle (R.I.P.) kitchen was the size of a football field (or at least that's what it felt like), as it was built in what was a now obviously re-purposed warehouse (dining room was tiny, you could park a semi in the kitchen and still move about freely) on the outer rim of the Pearl district.
To make the trek from the line to dry storage or the dish pit, on had to hire a Sherpa to cross the massive expanse between the two. Trevor, who worked Pantry most days - was constantly riding my ass about this. Drilling into my brain to start thinking farther a head than I had ever been accustom to. Some days (and I'll be honest here), it grated on my very last nerve. But in the long run and hind sight being all that...I get it now.
The thing is though - it's been so ingrained into what I would guess is a re-coding of my positronic neural net, even at home I'm mapping out in my head where I'm going and do I need more than one thing from that same part of the house?
If we're being real here, (and I love keeping real yo.....are the kids still saying keepin' it real, yo?) I owe a great deal of that to Trevor, who was always telling me to "think" and "don't waste fuckin' steps".
Wasting steps, is wasting time.
Time you really didn't have in the first place, like in football you need good clock management in the fourth quarter - bend the clock to your will - not the other way around.
This was going to be a part of Notes From The Line, but decided it warranted it's own post. I'll also give you bonus points if you can guess what song I'm playing off of in the title.
