So August 18th I started work at Cafe Cacao in Berkeley. Things seemed well enough. A new chef, ,Terry Lynch, all new staff ( he cleaned house ) and a chance to build a great new team and build a great restaurant.
We meet, they ask me for my preferred days off, I don't say I want Sat.Sun. off because that sounds too greedy, so I go for Mon-Sat, and they'd like me to do the a.m. shift, not the pm shift. Ok, fine.

Week one goes by, I've been given a day and a half of training and then the sous chef, Sean Nelson goes to jury duty, I'm on my own now, so ok, I work part of it and take off a few days for a television shoot I previously had arranged and come back to a zoo, again. So the next week is fine, no one really has time to train and the "rules" are changing every day and no one has a clue what the FUCK is going on, then the week following, I come in to find my schedule has been changed to Mon-Fri. Hey, who's going to complain about that? NOT me! My teammate T'Hud is awesome, she's really working out great and she and I are already starting to get things moving in the right directions around that place!!!! But sadly there is just no consistency around this place and I keep getting comments from Sean like "well how do you know you're on the schedule for blah, blah, blah.....have you seen the schedule yet?" Well, no, I shouldn't have to, for fucks sake, I work monday through friday, don't I?

Well, week 3.....I work my full week, great, no problem. Another week begins and I'm really stoked, things are settling in great. Then I get laid off for "budget reasons". They don't even have my check ready for me.....oh, and they didn't tell me for 4 days, or was it longer? They just keep saying to me "oh we need to trim down the schedule, do you mind taking tomorrow off?" over, and over and over. So I go in to get my check. Scott, the guy who's covering my "old" shift didn't show up, he got a DUI. So I offer to work, they accept and I work.
Now, mind you, I haven't been paid and it's been a month, the payroll people don't seem to have their shit together and I'm well overdue on the daycare payment because of it. Chef Terry cuts me a partial check for $500 until they can figure out the rest of the payroll. Ha! Like THAT fucking helps. NOT.

So then I offer to take a day and small paycut just to keep our department from falling apart, the chef works something out and I've got 3 days now. Sun, Mon, Tues. That's lovely. What happened to my 40 hour week?

So I come back in this week, of course nothing is prepped, everyone who's been covering my shift has been just using everything up and not replenishing enough of it, leaving my poor pm team mate to have to play non-stop catch up, which is bullshit and me playing catch up too.

This morning went to hell fast when the DUI guy, Scott comes in with a huge attitude about how to cut butter into scones. Fine, you do it your way, I'll do it mine I say. He's got a shitty attitude already, great. I don't even WANT or NEED his help, why is he in my space? So he makes his scones, I make mind. Double batch, yield is 32, he makes ONLY 19.....so I comment on the size, he gets defensive, the fight starts. I'm swearing, he's trying to pull rank because "this is how I've been doing this for weeks........." and I point out to him, rather visciously, that I took a pay cut, and hour cut and all to keep this department alive, now if he's fucking with the food costs and yield, that stops me from getting my pay back or a raise and everyone else for that matter not to mention, he's not helping me "get ahead" at all.

Brat, he rats me out to the chef......grrrr. So I get a talking to about maturity by the chef.......granted I deserved it, I blew my cool. But the kicker is.....the paydays are on the 5th and the 20th, and now I'm missing another check. So the payroll ok's another 266 for me, uh.......where's the other 30 something hours of pay? I get another line about how chef had to "justify" keeping me and everyone is asking why I took back someone I let go". Whoa.....I was laid off, not let go. So I asked him "was I laid off? Or was I let go because I didn't do something right?" to which he replies, with a different story now than ever before!!!!!!! that I couldn't follow some of Seans simple rules AND it was for budget reasons. Oh, and we won't "talk about it" until later when we all can get together.

Oh I've got some talking to do, and it's going down tomorrow!

I think I'm going to complain about this to the state. I'm sure there's more to this story I don't have time to share, but I needed to vent, and welll, I'm just disgruntled beyond belief.

Today, I'm pretty pissed.
Fuck Cafe Cacao, the management sucks, too bad I really love my job.....if THAT makes any sense!!!