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Comment by stuff4ben | Hacker News Reader

As a former dishwasher and line cook at the local steak house when I was growing up, I relate almost exactly what this guy said. I was 15 and sucked at washing dishes. We had this one guy, Snoopy was his nickname. Dude was so fast at washing dishes I wanted to be exactly like him. But it was how he attacked it that stuck with me. Organize what you can, soak the stuff with caked on crap, wash what needs washing first (plates for cooks, silverware and cups for waitresses, biscuit pans, then baking pans), sling plates around like a madman, get soaked to the bone, and never let your feet stop dancing. And exactly like this guy, I too can sort silverware with each hand independently (I have to admit I'm pretty awesome at this). Speed, speed, speed was what Snoopy drove into me. To this day I do the same things as a developer/devops person at work. Organize, prioritize, speed, speed, speed...iterate.

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Ya, spent 10 years in the restaurant industry. Started as dishwasher, then busboy, salad cook, etc, then waiter, bartender, doing deliveries, and finally manager. Here's the lessons I took with me to coding:

You can't pass the problem to later. Steak is not cooked right? Wrong salad dressing? Let's have a meeting tomorrow and talk about it. No. Gotta address it RIGHT NOW.

When you get in the weeds, meaning you're overwhelmed, you gotta stop doing what's not 100% required and hustle, hustle, hustle. Don't talk to people, just do your job super fast.

Last rule: you have to be prepared for the day: gotta have the food ready by the time the front door opens. You can't say at 12:03 that there's no iced tea. Everything has to be prepared ahead of time. If you've not prepared everything as well as possible, you're gonna be screwed. Even small things like rolling silverware in napkins will kill you if you have a party of 15 ready to sit down clogging up the front lobby and you can't sit then down because you're out of freaking silverware.

So: prepare well, resolve problems as they arise, and hustle when you're overwhelmed.

Last rule: don't whine. If 19 years old Becky can do it, you can too.

This sounds a lot like stage management.

That problem you just heard about? The audience is going to see it too if you don't fix it. Right. Now. And it's not going to get fixed unless you do it yourself or have someone else capable do it - you are in control, and if you don't make something happen, it doesn't happen. And while you're managing crises, you still have to fly the airplane - the performance crashes without your voice guiding it along.

You have to think through plans, make sure they will work and nothing will get in the way, and then execute them quickly and correctly, or you and the people you're responsible for are detracting from the quality of other people's hard work. Sure, you can get it right next time, but this is live. There is no editing. If you screw up, you screw up, everyone knows it, and you've blown the suspension of disbelief. But there isn't time to get flustered or argue over blame, because another cue is rapidly approaching. And sometimes, things that are nobody's fault will arise, and you'll have to work around those too. (Actor injured? Call 911, get them out the rear loading dock, and keep calling the show. Or know when to stop it. Building power outage? Get out there and get control of the audience, get some flashlights, and lead a safe evacuation.)

I don't think there's any exercise in high school with more real-world significance than that.

And the screw-up: calling the wrong backdrop on the wrong scene with an open curtain; realizing it 10 seconds later; calling it back up to drop the right one; thinking "everybody is going to notice that...I look like an idiot."

And then finding out nobody noticed or saw. Taught me an important lesson: The world is much less likely to notice my mistakes than I am, which means I can screw up more without worry as much.

Yeah, I was an uptight kid, still.

My first job was as a dishwasher too, learned the same things from a dishwasher-turned-cook there. And to work hard. No one else was going to clean those dishes, and they had to be cleaned. Right now.

Restaurant's signature was french onion soup, so we had these little crockware pots coated in melted cheese that Every Single Customer had to order. Ugh. Lots of scrubbing in very hot water.

Dave was the cook's name, he was a drummer in a band in Athens Ga (drove up from Atlanta for every show) at the time when indie bands from there were the thing. He set my musical tastes on a track they never recovered from.

It felt good to start buying records with money from my own job. It really did.

Which band? Asking as someone also acquainted with the Athens music scene.

Oh Ok. A million years ago, in the dark ages.

Yep, I can relate to this.

10 years in catering (a pub kitchen and then a steak restaurant chain) starting as a pot washer, then commis chef all the way to grill chef including stints as acting head chef in a couple of other local restaurants in the chain.

Constant hard graft that had 99% of deadlines measured in single digit minutes not months.

It also meant I had no problems getting part time work whilst at University. I could walk straight back in to the job each term/semester, and also continue work back home during the holidays. I left University almost debt free despite getting no grant[1] and no money from parents (they couldn't afford to).

1. The UK system of subsidising University students that was in place in the 90's. This was the days before there were course fees.

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