problem solving

One of the msot important things I learned was problem solving in the restaurants I worked in. At first I thought chefs in general flew by the seat of their pants, and just did what they would on a whim. But I later learned that usually if a chef makes a decision the it is based off of a past expirience. So I figured that if I was going to be able to do this I needed tons of expirience, then I could start making decisions. Untill I met Chef Paul, who has tons of expirience. But he will stop his line completely if he feels that something needs to be changed. You will see him step away from the board and close his eyes for a minute, and think everything out. And even though it feels like forever, it isn't. He has simply taken a minute to figure out what the best course of action is. Sometimes being in the weeds isn't solved by cooking as fast as you can because you loose quality. We one time saw a huge party come in that just wanted drinks and said they wouldn't order food. But they ended up ordering anyway, and if a party of fifteen all orders two or three appetizers a piece then it really hurts the nights mise en place. After a third round of appetizers, Chef took away their menus, and started sending out whatever he wanted to cook to them and just charged what ever he wanted. His reasoning was they already had a good buzz and were hungry so they would eat whatever we sent out to them. If they ate it they had to pay for it, if they didn't eat it then it was on us. Thismay not have been compeltely rational, but his expirience with people gave him the confidence to make stuff up on the fly and sell it, and we made a great profit off of it as well. He is rational as well, if something will not be high quality he will take it off the menu, especially on tough nights, nothing goes out his kitchen without his seal of aproval. People will be upset if a special was taken off, but will still order something and be happy with it. People won't be happy if they order something and it isn't to their expectation. Being rational and using your knowledge is extremely important, and impulsive behavior is never something to fall back on. It is never a bad thing to allow yourself a minute to collect under pressure. You just have to be able to jump right in after you have come to a conclusion, there is no room for error in what we do.