remember when he took a pen out and signed the football then gave it to a fan ? <| sep |> The Internship Recently , I was discussing with my friend the concept of the internship . He is a computer science major who recently graduated from UW . I asked him what his internship was like . His response sounded more like a vacation . He told me about the different team building exersizes they did . That includes going to sports games for the entire day , having a week or two of purely events and no actual work . 200 interns built 20 bikes for the poor . I am just saying that is a pretty poor ratio of worker to final product . They had special intern days , swag and so on . In the end , their internship was only 3 months long . That means , for at least 13 of the time , they weren ' t even working . Often times it takes 39 months for an employee to even be useful . Meaning these interns weren ' t even useful ! The only reason companies are willing to really roll out the red carpet for these interns is because they want them back . Not for the good work they do up front . I am not dogging on tech internships at all ! The reason tech companies can pay their employees so much and pay their interns so well is because with one product they can easily sell millions of copies . Where as a restaurant has a 11 ratio of work to output . It is a one dish one dollar kind of process . There is a limit to your profit margin . The Culinary InternshipMy culinary internship was very different to that of my friends tech internship . Unlike him , day one I was put to work . Day one I was given a flat of peas to shuck , several boxes of scallops to clean , a boat load of porcinis to clean , parsly to pick and so many other task . None of which even got close to touching a knife . As a matter a fact , I don ' t think I did any form of knife work for the first two weeks . Most kitchens of a certain caliber want to first instill a level of understanding of detail before you move forward . For instance , starting out as a Japanse Sushi Chef at a very high level establishment , might require you wash and cook rice for the first year or two . So you learn to appreciate the method . I got off lucky with only two weeks of none knife work . Once you are given your first knife work task , it is often something involving finally mincing shallots . Now I don ' t mean any of that rapid choppity choping you see on TV . Where the home cook quickly thorws their knife haphazard over some poor unsuspecting shallots and garlic . No , that just won ' t do . That leaves your shallots a poor , bruised and watery mess . First , you must make sure you have a sharp knife . From there , you follow proper technique , as shown in the video below . It isn ' t any of that magic bullet nonesense . I hear some of you asking , wait , why go through all that trouble . Why put so much effort into a shallot . My answer is two fold , and maybe I am wrong . First , the idea is that increasing the amount of cells you damage in onions and shallots increases the amount of sulfer and compounds released and decreases the shallots sweetness . My chef wouldn ' t even use day old chop shallots for the same reason . Second , I am going back to the sushi rice example . If you learn to take your time on the small details . You will apperciate the bigger details . When I go into a restaurant and see some technique I know I would never put on a dish because of the sheer time it takes to do it . I am dumfounded . Don ' t get me wrong , for a normal person it is amazing . For me or any other cook , it touches something deeper . We apperciate true technique . Not just mind boggling technique , but technique that we know is a labor of love . When we know some poor intern took their time to peel all the grapes on a dish , or some cook made a nine layer Black Forest Cake like at the Fat Duck . We are just flabbergasted . All of this starts with the perfectly fine bruionised , the individually picked thyme leaf , the perfectly cleaned chantrelle . All of this disciplines the mind to make food perfect . To look for it , to yearn for it . There are no team building exersizes here , no fun days to go play . Nope , 5055 hour weeks of standing , running around and learning your technique sucks . The PayOh , guess what the kicker is . Most places of a certain caliber , don ' t even pay their interns , some do , but a good portion don ' t . Now , before you go to your closet fine dining establishment and demand they pay their interns . I would take a look at their prices . Yes , I know , they are expensive . Guess what , most fine dining places make pennies on the dollar . Oh , you don ' t believe me do you ? You think that if they charge 30 dollars for a 4 oz piece of salmon , and a small bit of puree and vegetable , that they are just banking on you ? If all that went into that dish was the salmon , and vegetable , you would be right . However , when you add in labor , overhead , high quality ingridents and just all the crap that goes wrong in a kitchen . Well , it ends up almost being a loss . That brings me back to my internship . There was one dessert that was rarely sold . It require a mousse that was plated using an ISI canister . It is basically a whip cream can . One night , we finally sold one . I got out all the ingriedents , and began to plate it . However , for one reason or another the canister wouldn ' t work . So I had to load another charge of CO 2 . Then I accidently released the CO 2 before it was charged , twice . It was a crazy night . My Chef flipped and charged down from the hot line to where I stood . You might be wondering why . Here is the math . The dessert cost about 8 $. Then you take into consideration that the two charges cost about 23 $. She just lost money on that dessert and then next 4 that came in . Now all I could do at that point was awkwardly try to laugh off the situation as she informed me of this math , in a less than cordial manner . I get it , to the outsider , a 30 $ plate must make the owner a lot of money . In the end , it is all about the numbers . The TreatmentNow I have discussed the basics of a culinary internship . We do very little technical work and we do it all for free . I spent about 800 hours working for free before I was hired at my first restaurant at 16 . Maybe that is already making you decide to keep your job in CS rather than come to the culinary fieldI say that because I know a lot of people who want to go from programming to cooking and I think they are crazy . If that isn ' t enough , lets talk about how you are treated . This depends kitchen to kitchen of course . Some places are probably really nice . The W hotel can ' t yell at you and tell you You are worthless . Of course not , they would be sued instantly , and it would be all over the TV . It may not happen at the W , but it has happened to me ! Yup , I have had several bad nights . My worst was actually not my internship but the first week when I was getting paid . It was an exciting week . Me , a young cook , getting offered a position at a very nice restaurant . How exciting ? All those thoughts exited my head as I was frantically f one night . To put some context to the situation . This particular Saturday , we had a 30 top downstairs from PCC or Whole foods . I don ' t quite recall . My duty that night was to plate the desserts . A peach Crostata and Olive Oil Gelato . Along with my typical duties . I was also responsible for helping out everyone else . This is normal in any job I have been at . The new guy always has to help everyone else . That is all fine and dandy if you don ' t have a one track like mine . Dessert comes around and guess what . Guess what I forgot to doyou might not even know you have to do it . I forgot to temper the olive oil gelato . Due to the fat content of Olive oil , the gelato becomes rock hard when frozen . Now , most places I have worked demand you do a Quennelle or Rocher . Whatever you want to call it . That means a football shaped ice cream scoop . It requires a quick wrist movement and soft ice cream . Not rock hard ice cream . Well , here I am , 30 tarts out of the oven and just pulling out my gelato . There is no way to quennelle this puppy . Similar to the story above . My chef comes barrelling down the line . She never really yelled or screamed . Nope , she always just needed to elevate her voice just slightly and then fire her missile . Tonight , she decided to go deep . All she needed to say was Why am I a even paying you . Bang , direct hit . My first week of being paid , after almost 1000 hours of free labor . She questioned my value , my worth , my skill . She didn ' t stop for the rest of the night . She questioned the Chef de Cuisine why she hired me , and if I was worth it while I was in ear shot . She never stopped . That was who she was . Once you made a mistake , she wouldn ' t let it lie for the rest of the night . Honestly , I have had friends who have sued for lessmaybe that tells you too much about my friends . I am actually , oddly , thankful . I have never had a hard job since that job . No matter how hard any of my jobs were , they were never that bad . I was never berated to a point that exceeded that . So sure , it stung my 16 year old self esteem . I also think it strengthened my resolve . I now fight harder because of the tongue lashings I got . Maybe some day I will find someone harder on me than her . The End Result It is actually really funny . Two of the last three jobs I have had , I got because of this internship . I am talking about years later . One of them was a cooking job and another was a job as a developer . That might sound like a weird combo . Both the chef at the restaurant I worked at and the director of the department knew the prestige and rigor that my first internship came with . They knew it wasn ' t easy .