Herding cats: A saying that refers to a task that is extremely difficult or impossible to do, due to one or more variables being in flux and uncontrollable.
We spent the afternoon recently in a very large commercial kitchen. While it was fun, it reminded me of why I love being small.
It takes a big kitchen and a big staff to feed 1000+ people three meals every single day. And if I sometimes have problems getting my four employees to work in the same direction, the problem increases exponentially with 20 or more.
Like herding cats.
I guess that's why it's hard to do "home made" and "from scratch" on such a large scale. The sheer logistics are staggering. Everything is bigger and takes longer.
Yes, I can make 300 cinnamon rolls at once, and bake them in one batch. But I have to dump a 50-pound bag of flour into the mixer without spilling any, unwrap twenty blocks of butter, and figure out how to measure large quantities of ingredients while sharing the scale with six other workers. Plus, 300 is not enough. When we get through with one batch, we have to do it again! And that's just to make enough for one day.
Every time we needed a new ingredient or tool, we had to trek over to the storage or dish area and search for it. Fascinating but time consuming. When we get a new employee at our little bakery we go through a period of guessing where he or she put some item that was washed. Are the spatulas with the knives, or the decorating tools. Third shelf or second, under this work table or that one. Imagine that times twenty or a hundred. Turns a two minute job into a twenty minute one.
It was fun once, but it would NOT be fun if I had to do it over and over on a daily basis. When it stops being fun, I stop being interested. And so does everyone else.
Like herding cats.
It takes a very special kind of person to run a large kitchen like this well. Oh yeah, and this commercial is pretty funny too.
Those are super cute. I like you on Facebook.
Posted by: supra skytop | November 09, 2011 at 06:10 PM