How Getting Pranked in the Kitchen Taught Me About the Importance of Tradition

Working in the hospitality industry can be tough. There is no university that teaches you how to work in a kitchen, so you start at the bottom of the professional food chain. The work isn't complicated, but you still have to learn it. The only way to do that is through failure and experience. But instead of playful support, the chef and kitchen staff will bestow their wisdom upon you in a mean and scary way that is commonly referred to as "tradition."

My first job in a restaurant was washing dishes, a position that is often looked down upon, but is very important, nonetheless. I was instructed to smile while I washed the plates. While I scrubbed the furnace, carried buckets full of frying oil upstairs from the basement, or was scraping cheese gratin from the bottom of the bowls, I had to smile. Whenever I was caught without a job to do, they gave me a demeaning look and called me a "tourist." Nobody said goodbye to me at the end of the night and I got about as much attention as a homeless beggar on a street corner.

My hourly wage was 4 euros (a little over 4 dollars).

I was expected to do more than just my job. Aside from my regular tasks, the staff trained me through extracurricular activities and experiments. I was spared the sexist jokes, but was tested when it came to persistence and obedience.

One day, the chef came to me with a hunk of cheese the size of a tree trunk and explained that I had to cut it into "very thin" slices with a cheese cutter. He had preset the cutting machine at 2 mm (0.07 inches) per slice. It was very hard and I didn't understand why he needed the slices to be this thin, but I kept cutting with a smile on my face, even though it took me three hours to complete the task.

After that, he pointed to a few crates of frozen fish. "You need to slam all of these fish on the countertop, one by one to make sure they're really dead before wrapping them in aluminum foil." I wanted to do a good job and was afraid to let my boss down, so I eagerly broke all of their little fish necks by whacking them against the counter before wrapping their bodies in foil.

Finally, the chef decided I was ready for the big test, a variation on an age-old joke from the Belgian province of Flanders. In this prank, the subject is sent to the other side of the country to obtain a non-existing object. Nowadays, the joke has developed into a prank that has the new kitchen employee going to a neighboring restaurant to ask for something that doesn't exist. Since they are new to the kitchen, they are completely unaware of the non-existence of the object, which is of course, made out to be very important.

Experienced hospitality staff immediately know what's going on when someone comes in asking for cappuccino beans and send you right along to the neighbors. You'll end up going to every bar and restaurant in the surrounding area, only to return to your boss with a look of despair on your face, because you weren't able to find what he was looking for. Cue the entire kitchen bursting into laughter.

In my case, the object was a tomato pitter, but it could have just as easily been lobster blood, chicken milk, an egg cracker, a flour cutter, onion glasses, a kiwi razor, microwave matches, transparent dye, or a pea peeler.

During my search for the tomato pitter, the chef of our neighboring restaurant told me, "Go to the neighbors, because they haven't returned mine yet and let them know that we owe them a bottle of Chateaubriand." I relayed the message, unaware that Chateaubriand is a piece of meat and not an expensive wine.

In every kitchen, they told me that the tomato pitter had been borrowed and sent me to the next restaurant. After the seventh, "'sorry, someone borrowed ours," I started to panic. My options were: going to the store and buying one or returning to my own kitchen, empty handed. I choose option two and had apparently passed the test, because after that night, I was left alone.

A few months ago, a new girl joined our kitchen staff and I recognized myself in her. Still, I kept my mouth firmly shut when she was told to stand on a towel while cutting onions. If I had told her that she was standing on the towel for no reason, this would amount to cheating, and she would be let into our world without the proper initiation.

Later on, I found out that the tomato pitter was child's play compared to things that went on in other kitchens. In one restaurant, the dishwasher was told that sweeping the inside of a church around the corner was a part of the job description. An Asian dishwasher who worked in the city center of Amsterdam told me that his co-workers regularly stuffed his entire body into the dumbwaiter food elevator during his first few weeks on the job.

Pranks, jokes, and so-called traditions are a common way to test the endurance of newbies in the hospitality industry. This education is handed to you for free in every restaurant. You never get a certificate stating you passed the test and I've come to realize that it's OK. Quitting would end a tradition that goes back at least five centuries, and only the boring routine of kitchen work would remain.

This post previously appeared on MUNCHIES Dutch.