"It Aint No Thing Man"

For my externship for the Culinary Institute of America I choose to go to Lola’s Café & Gourmet Catering here in Poughkeepsie, NY. The place itself is extremely small with only four fulltime employees, that is including myself. Overall I couldn’t really complain about the externship as a whole but my biggest complaint of it all was how power was separated in the kitchen. Of course me being the extern and the new one in the kitchen I possessed little to no power. The only person I could tell what to do was the dishwasher so I might have well had no power but besides that there were two people who were above me and then of course the Chef /Owner. Whenever I needed to do something or know something that I wasn’t sure of I would always to John, he was the man in the kitchen with Personal Power. He was the only one who would be willing to help me out and show me exactly how to do something and if I ever did something wrong he would always say “It aint no thing man” and just let me learn from my mistakes. On the other hand the other person I was working with Jared was not like that at all. He was granted legitimate power for the fact that he had been working there so long. He was the most unsocial person I had ever met and if he ever saw you doing something wrong or not the right way he would let you keep doing it and then when your near completion he would tell you it was wrong. Then he would be the first one to tell the Chef that I messed up for his own satisfaction. Personally I think that this is not a way a kitchen should be ran. It needs a sense of structure especially from the head Chef. He needs to initiate leadership either autocratic, bureaucratic, democratic, or laissez-faire. By doing this the kitchen will run in a much better manner with power place in the right hands allowing for a much better work experience and hopefully less confusing for the next extern.