Job Memo

Job Memo

At the end of my freshman year of college, I decided to finally get a job to make some money on the side. I searched through the endless job catalogs on craigslist to find a job that required me to learn a completely new set of skills: cooking. A startup sushi restaurant twenty minutes from my house was opening soon and needed workers. But not just any workers, they needed chefs. I initially applied to be a waiter because, well, I didn’t have any experience as a chef, but somehow I ended up in the kitchen. Now this wasn’t a high-end sushi restaurant (and I could tell since they hired me) that emptied your wallet, rather it was an average revolving sushi restaurant that hired a bunch of young inexperienced twenty year olds. Nonetheless, I was excited and nervous to start cooking.

There were three experiences that stood out to me:

1.     Training

2.     Grand Opening

3.     Nigiri

Training was first. They had to train us how to perform our respective jobs. The waiters needed to learn how to wait tables, and the chefs needed to learn how to cook. All my training was in the kitchen. As with all jobs, training starts from the very basics. I learned how to prepare rice. Not just how to cook rice, but also how to wash it. As mundane of a task as it was, cooking sushi rice was crucial to preparing sushi. After I mastered the technique of throwing washed rice into a cooker, it was onto cutting. Now, watching a chef cut sushi seems quite easy, but actually requires an extreme amount of skill. One trait that distinguishes sushi chefs from another is their ability to cut. The smoother the cut, the prettier the sushi is, and the costlier the food. Since I was learning how to slice, the restaurant didn’t want to waste fish and had me cut cucumber cut rolls. As if the cutting wasn’t hard enough, I also had to roll cut rolls prettily. When eating rolls, the rice needs to be at the perfect amount. Too much rice, and the customer ends up eating a rice ball. Too little rice, and the roll falls apart. The skill to estimate the perfect amount of rice takes years to master, but luckily for me, there was a machine that laid out the perfect amount of rice. Once I learned how to roll, I had to learn how to cut the rolls smoothly and evenly. I probably burned through dozens of cucumbers (keep in mind a whole cucumber can prepare enough cut rolls to feed a group of 4) before I got close to average cuts. Reaching this level of pseudo expertise took me to the end of my training.

Next came the grand opening. To celebrate the restaurant, the owner invited all of his friends and business partners to eat for free. I thought it would be only be a couple of people, but it turned out to fill up the entire restaurant. I was completely overwhelmed. Up until this point, the only skills I learned were how to cook rice, and cut cucumber rolls. Now all of a sudden, my boss wanted me to prepare the usual suspects: specialty rolls. Shifting from cucumbers to dragon rolls was quite the leap. Instead of the rice being wrapped inside the seaweed, which was easier to cut, the rice wrapped around the seaweed. This posed several challenges. It was far more difficult to roll properly because of the amount of sushi inside. Cutting was also a lot harder. I had to lighten the weight of the knife or else it would smash the roll. I would’ve been fine if it was still training, but I was in the spotlight. The boss’s friends were ordering right and left, swamping the kitchen. As I prepared more rolls, I began to pick up on a pattern to quickly make the sushi. They weren’t the prettiest of rolls, but I was proud of them. Just as I thought I learned it all for cut rolls, my boss piled on another skill I needed to learn: toppings. Again this was all during the grand opening, making it that much harder. On top of the already difficult specialty rolls, I needed to add toppings to the sushi and cut it. The first few turned out horribly. Rolling them wasn’t the hard part, rather cutting it was. In order to prevent the toppings from sliding as I cut, I had to wrap the roll up in saran wrap to keep the toppings in place. The first few rolls turned out pretty ugly, but the customers weren’t paying anyways. Eventually I picked up on the pattern and produced presentable cut rolls. Before I accepted this job, I used to think it required an immense amount of skill to create all types of cut rolls. However it turns out that all you need is the ability to cut sushi and imagination. There are endless combinations to what can be put inside a cut roll. From spider rolls to heart attacks, the difference is all in the ingredients. Because I ‘knew’ how to cut, all the possible rolls were in my capabilities. After the opening day, I sharpened my skills every shift until I was confident in preparing cut rolls for all customers. My boss noticed my confidence and decided to switch it up with a new skill: preparing nigiri.

If you’ve ever seen the movie JIRO, you’ll understand the pain I endured (much less severe though). Learning how to prepare rice takes only a few tries, but I was required to prepare dozens of batches before I was ready. The amount of nigiri I had to prepare before I was trained was unfathomable. As a customer, nigiri is just a piece of fish sitting on top of rice. But according to my boss, the fish is nestled comfortably with the rice. The proper technique to make nigiri is to grab the perfect amount of rice, about the size of your thumb, and carefully place the fish on top. Lucky for me, a machine prepared the right amount of rice. Holding the fish and rice in one hand with the rice touching your palm, create a slight curve with the other hand’s index and middle finger and press on the fish. This is the tricky part. Cock your hand back so your wrist of the hand pressing on the fish makes a near ninety degrees. It sounded simple enough, but took me hundreds of tries to pass my boss’s test.

I quit shortly after I learned how to prepare nigiri due to school, but I thoroughly enjoyed my summer as a sushi chef. Learning how to prepare sushi is a unique skill that can’t really be learned on your own. It requires the critique of a teacher and a surplus of supplies. I recommended the sushi chef experience to expand your palette and appreciation for other cultures.

Readability:
Passive sentences: 5%
Flesh Reading Ease: 74.3
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 6.7