Editor’s Note: The author of this essay is an experienced club chef whose identity is known to the editors of Club + Resort Chef. We agreed to withhold the chef’s name to allow for a candid discussion of leadership, collaboration and accountability within club operations. The opinions expressed are the author’s own.
Maybe I’m the Problem
I have an unusually low tolerance for bullshit. Not in the way I see many people gloat about and take pride in. This isn’t about ego, and it isn’t about me needing to be right. For me, it’s about organizational inefficiency. Standards based on nothing. So-called standards that only apply situationally. Processes that exist because they’ve always existed. Decisions that nobody can explain but everyone is expected to follow.
I’ve spent some time trying to sort through where that mentality serves me well, where it drives me to be better, and where it might simply be causing problems. To be very clear, I know how to behave in a professional setting. I’ve seen far too many people with similar messaging who simply don’t know how to act and then wonder why they can’t make it anywhere. That’s not me.
I understand decorum. I understand hierarchy. I understand that difficult conversations don’t have to become personal. People can be honest, transparent and truthful with each other while still maintaining professional standards. It’s when those things break down that I lose my patience, particularly when the conversation loses track of the objective.
Years ago, I was at a property that was experiencing an unexpected budget crisis. It shouldn’t have been unexpected, but that’s another story for another day. We were having a meeting about mitigation strategies, and the meeting started to stall.
We were circling the point without actually getting anywhere. Eventually, I interjected, very matter-of-factly, “Okay, let’s get down to brass tacks here. Tell me what my marching orders are.”
It wasn’t rude, unprofessional or disrespectful. I’d simply had enough of going in circles. It wasn’t serving anyone at the table; it wasn’t serving the purpose of the meeting, and it wasn’t solving the problem we were there to solve. So I forced it forward.
Interestingly, my simply making that interjection prompted my superior to spell out what the deal actually was. It wasn’t a fun meeting, and I can appreciate that he didn’t particularly enjoy telling me what he needed to tell me.
I get it. I really do.
But the meeting had stalled, and somebody needed to say, “Let’s cut the shit and get down to business.” I did it a little more politely than that, but that was essentially what I said.
For everything someone might say about my intolerance level, I would argue pretty strongly that it isn’t necessarily a disservice to the operation I’m employed by.
Sometimes it’s the opposite. In that situation, I was able to be fairly polished about it. It doesn’t always land that way, though, and that’s where I think I have to be honest about the downside.
I’ve sat in plenty of other meetings, usually brainstorming meetings, where the intention was collaboration. I welcome collaboration. I respect it, and I think it can be incredibly productive. But collaboration requires the right people being assembled around a problem they’re actually equipped to contribute to, and in my experience, that’s not always what happens.
Collaboration is about putting the right people in a room to leverage interdisciplinary expertise and come up with the best solution to a problem. Too often, that turns into giving input to people without expertise for the sake of morale. That’s not collaboration; it’s chaos. More importantly, we can collaborate on ideas, but we can’t collaborate on accountability.
When this concoction of ideas aimed at making contributors feel good fails in execution, who owns it?
I’ve sat in meetings with people who had no business being asked to contribute to the project we were discussing. They didn’t have the proper point of reference, they had no relevant experience, and they bore no responsibility for the outcome. My intolerance was probably destructive in meetings like those. The event personnel whose responsibility extended to setting out decorations for an event had no business deciding the menu I was supposed to execute, yet that’s sometimes what would happen.
If you sit through enough meetings like that, it becomes very easy to stop taking outside suggestions seriously. That’s a dangerous place to arrive, because, yes, the majority of ideas about kitchen-related issues from people who don’t work in kitchens might be objectively terrible. But not all of them are. Every now and then, there might be a genuinely useful idea. Maybe it needs reframing. Maybe it needs work. Maybe it needs to be adapted to the realities of the operation. But there’s something there, and there’s value in it. As a chef, you have to be mindful enough to recognize that.
The biggest thing a chef tends to deal with is asking an organization to perform at the level expected of a chef. “We’ve always done it this way” works for organizations. It doesn’t work for chefs.
I’ve seen internal processes make absolutely zero sense, yet everyone stubbornly hides behind the historical precedent of always doing it that way. If the chicken is dry, “we’ve always done it that way” isn’t reason enough to keep doing it. Yet the instant I start asking an organization why it does things the way it does, I’m often met with resistance.
I think that’s been my biggest professional frustration. I’ve spent a lot of time looking for an organization that holds itself to the same standard it expects from me. I don’t expect perfection. I expect accountability. And accountability is actually pretty simple. When we realize that a process doesn’t work the way we intended it to, we go back to the drawing board. When we make a bad judgment call, we admit it. When something goes wrong, we fix it.
I’ve sat in front of too many general managers who tried to cover their tracks instead of simply admitting they made a judgment call that turned out to be wrong. Something didn’t go how they expected. Maybe they made a bad decision. Maybe circumstances changed. It happens. I don’t fault people for that. I fault them for being unable to admit it.
I’ve gotten plenty of things wrong myself. I subscribe to an idea John F. Kennedy expressed in one of his speeches: an error only becomes a mistake when we refuse to correct it. Mistakes are okay, at least to an extent. Lying about them isn’t. And that’s the kind of thing I don’t have much tolerance for.
I can overcook a prime rib. We’ll 86 it. I’ll go to every table it affected, apologize to the guests, tell them it was my fault, and take whatever verbal lambasting comes with it. I don’t care if it was the lead cook who was supposed to be watching it. I’m the chef. The buck stops with me.
That’s hospitality. It’s not always about being right or wrong. Sometimes it’s about being the person who stands in front of the customer, owns the problem and takes the wrath. You don’t get to hide behind your position or blame someone else because the outcome wasn’t what you intended.
Intentions don’t matter. Outcomes do.
And maybe that’s ultimately what I’ve been looking for all these years. Not an organization that never makes mistakes. Not an organization where everyone agrees with me. Not even an organization that does everything the way I think it should be done.
I want an organization willing to ask the same questions I ask: Why are we doing this? Does it actually work? What happens if it doesn’t? And if we get it wrong, are we willing to admit it and fix it?
I can work with almost anything when the answer is yes. It’s the answer of “because that’s how we’ve always done it” that I struggle with.
Maybe that’s bullshit. Maybe it’s just accountability.
Editor’s Note: Have a perspective on leadership, accountability or another issue facing club culinary professionals? Club + Resort Chef welcomes thoughtful, first-person essays that challenge conventional thinking, share professional experiences and encourage discussion across the industry. Contact our editorial team at [email protected] to share your perspective.
