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TWO

Cooks' Time

Temporal Demandsand the Experience of Work

The chargings to and fro in the narrow passages, the collisions, the yells, the struggling with crates and trays and blocks of ice, the heat, the darkness, the furious festering quarrels which there was no time to fight out—they pass description.…It was only later, when I understood the working of a hotel that I saw order in all this chaos.

—George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

As a principle of social life, temporality affects the life of an organization as much as physical space or hierarchical organization (Maines 1987).¹ Indeed, organization and time are intimately connected. For an organization to run efficiently, schedules must be meshed (Cottrell 1939; Zerubavel 1979), and work products must be generated at a regular or intermittent rate that permits the organization to prosper (Baldamus 1961).

The way that people experience the passage of time is a central, yet frequently ignored, feature of organizational life. Industrial capitalism depends upon temporal structure and synchronization (Thompson 1967); time is a resource like material and personnel. Much research—notably those studies inspired by the tradition of Taylorism—attempts to improve the efficiency of work. Time is a cost that must be minimized, but how time is experienced by workers is not considered.

Observing work life reminds us that features external to the doing of work constrain the use of time, and temporal constraints influence how work is experienced. Time can be transformed into a mechanism of social control, as is dramatically evident to those who labor on assembly lines but also is true for those who work in medical clinics or restaurant kitchens. Workers develop techniques to cope with demands on their time and, as a consequence, gain a measure of temporal autonomy (Lyman and Scott 1970, p. 191; Hodson 1991, p. 63), carving out temporal niches.² Time operates on several levels: from lengthy periods of work (seasons, weeks, days) to smaller chunks of time (portions of days, or the time taken to achieve particular work tasks).

Time passes whether or not a worker or sleeper experiences that passage, and both “objective” and “experienced” components of time affect organizational life (Flaherty 1987). The philosopher Henri Berg-son emphasized that effects of time cannot be fully separated from how it is felt (1910, pp. 236-37). Time, like organization itself (Strauss 1978; Pettigrew 1979), can be negotiated or used symbolically, and is treated as if it were concrete. The experience of time is created by workers, given the constraints on their actions (Roy 1952, 1959-1960; Roethlisberger and Dickson 1939).

Five dimensions are critical to temporal organization: periodicity, tempo, timing, duration, and sequence (Lauer 1981, pp. 28ff; see Hawley 1950 and Engel-Frisch 1943). Periodicity refers to the rhythm of the activity; tempo, to its rate or speed; timing, to the synchronization or mutual adjustment of activities (Moore 1963, pp. 45-47); duration, to the length of an activity; and sequence, to the ordering of events.

Each dimension connects to the demands of the workplace. Although they are “objective” features of time, their effects depend on how they are experienced. The workers' negotiation of these dimensions is particularly likely when temporal organization (“too much” or “not enough” time) is felt as unpleasant or dysfunctional; as a result, workers adjust their routines to increase their satisfaction while accepting organizational demands. Workers create temporal niches—to do their jobs in a satisfactory and satisfying way while “creating” personal time (Ditton 1979; Bernstein 1972). They synchronize their activities to create an efficient routine in the face of uncontrollable and unpredictable durations and tempos. Workers strive for autonomy from management's and clients' temporal demands. The structure of time is a critical means of social control.

Successful restaurants are those that use time effectively. Anyone observing a moderate-size kitchen could not miss the central position of temporal organization in defining workers' reality. Time is as important to cooking as any herb. For food to be cooked properly, the cook must be simultaneously aware of the timing of multiple tasks. Awareness of duration is essential, distinguishing a rare steak from one that is charred, crunchy vegetables from mush, and sour milk from fresh. Sequence, too, is integral to the temporal organization of cooking, as is obvious to anyone who has ever used a recipe (Tomlinson 1986). Synchronization of tasks is more complex but equally essential for preparing a plate on time. Starch, meat, and vegetables must be ready simultaneously; on the counter a product rapidly loses sensory appeal. Periodicity and tempo are linked to the pace of orders, not to the individual order.

Because of the relevance of each temporal dimension to professional cooking, restaurant kitchens are an auspicious site to investigate how temporality is tied to organizational life. Every occupation must deal with these dimensions, if not always as directly or obviously.

THE EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT AND RESTAURANT TIME

All organizations have a temporal structure—times when they are “peopled,” when they are “operating at full capacity,” and when they are preparing and recovering from peaks of activity. How an organization fits into the temporal life of a community provides the basis for how the organization structures the time of employees (Engel-Frisch 1943, p. 46), which, in turn, affects their emotions and attitudes.

PROCESSING THE CUSTOMER

Organizations must make products available to those who are likely to be interested; they must maintain and staff an “output boundary” (Hirsch 1972, p. 643). In the service sector an operation must be open when clients are likely to be present—when organizational “output” can be provided to clients. Clients, in turn, expect different classes of organizations to maintain different hours (e.g., banks, supermarkets, or taverns); further, they have different temporal expectations based on the location (bars in S0H0 as opposed to Salinas, or bookstores in Berkeley and Bexley). To maximize profit, the establishment needs to be closed when it is not profitable to be open (although some establishments may use long hours as temporal loss leaders, so that customers believe they are “always open”). An efficient service establishment should have no more employees on duty than necessary to cope with customer traffic (Leidner 1993, P-63) although, again, some establishments may employ more workers than needed to insure that customers will expect that they will be served quickly. Indeed, lines are often longer in “off-peak” times than at relatively busy times because fewer workers are on duty to handle the customer flow.

Operating in a highly competitive environment, restaurants must respond to the timing of customer demand, at least as perceived by management. Although regularities exist, the temporal organization of business changes from season to season, month to month, week to week, and day to day. Management's concern is to select when the restaurant will be open, a decision that may lead to organizational failure (Miller 1978). In the United States restaurants have no widely accepted times of operation, reflecting the diversity in American schedules (Melbin 1987). Few industries have regular hours—the formal “banker's hours” of a previous generation are no more, as organizations compete with each other for temporal access. Each restaurant I observed had a different schedule of operation:

Blakemore Hotel: Main Restaurant: Lunch: 11:00-2:00, Monday-Saturday; Dinner: 5:30-10:30, Monday-Saturday; closed Sunday. Coffee Shop: Breakfast and Lunch: 7:00-3:00, daily.

'La Pomme de Terre: Lunch: 11:30-2:00, Monday-Friday; Dinner: 6:00-10:00, Monday-Saturday; Brunch: 11:00-2:30, Sunday.

Owl's Nest: Lunch and Dinner: 11:00-1:00, Monday-Friday; Dinner: 4:00-1:00, Saturday; closed Sunday.

Stan's: Lunch: 11:00-2:30, Monday-Friday; Dinner: 5:00-12:00, Monday-Saturday; 3:00-10:00, Sunday.

We often classify restaurants by hours of operation: luncheonettes, all-night diners, tearooms, supper clubs. Restaurants that cater to breakfast eaters often announce that in their name: the Egg and I, International House of Pancakes, or Al's Breakfast. In addition, location influences hours of operation. We do not expect restaurants in the suburbs, central business districts, inner cities, and bohemian neighborhoods to keep the same hours (Hawley 1950). Some restaurants are closed on Sunday; some, on Monday. Some serve breakfast; many don't. Some serve lunch every day; some, only on weekdays. Some are always open; others are open only for lunch and dinner; some cater to late-night crowds.

The hours of a restaurant depend on the market niche to which the owners aspire. Hotels whose guests are potential hotel-restaurant clients typically have food service throughout the day and evening, and room service at night. Gourmet restaurants such as La Pomme de Terre have shorter hours because walk-in customers are rare, and because they can afford to have customers come to them for a unique service. Neighborhood restaurants such as Stan's are open on Sunday afternoons when a traditional “family dinner” is served. While Stan's has customers at that time, if La Pomme de Terre were open then, it would be empty. La Pomme de Terre, with a clientele from a different social class, serves Sunday brunch.

To a degree, restaurant hours determine the times that the cooks work, but the two sets of hours are not identical. Cooks arrive several hours prior to the opening and generally work until after the restaurant closes. Unlike more tightly structured organizations, managers and head chefs are flexible in scheduling cooks, and schedules change weekly with cooks having some say. Schedules respond to “external” forces, such as the number of reservations and special parties. Head chefs occasionally tell cooks to take the day off, leave early, or appear on short notice. While cooks are not on call, the head chef and the manager are aware of who is willing to work extra hours.

The irregular and unpredictable need for workers gives the chef or manager power within the workplace. In coordinating schedules, he must keep his staff happy and treat them in ways they consider fair—both in the number of hours they work and the sequence of those hours (see Zerubavel 1979, pp. 21-22). The chef has an interest in allowing his most competent cooks to work more frequently than those less conscientious, but this choice may create friction. Unlike fast-food restaurants (Leidner 1993, p. 62), in only one restaurant that I observed were hours assigned for social control: a head chef decided to discipline a dishwasher by cutting his hours to teach him to show more deference to the cooks.

The extreme case is when workers are laid off to cut labor costs. This not only causes strain by having fewer people to do the same work but also sends a signal about management's intentions and makes all workers feel less secure. The decision of the Blakemore Hotel to terminate the popular assistant chef caused considerable dissatisfaction, in part because workers felt overburdened, and in part because they felt that management didn't care. From the standpoint of the hotel it was a necessary decision in that labor costs were too high when compared to income (Field notes, Blakemore Hotel).

Employers in all industrial segments have similar problems although these problems take different forms. How does one synchronize the staffing of an organization? In pure production units (e.g., factories) machines may run at any time, and electricity may be cheaper at off-peak hours; but it may be difficult to find workers willing to adapt to off-peak schedules.

FOOD PROCESSING

While the temporal structure of a restaurant is greatly affected by its desire to attract customers, other external influences affect internal decisions. Every organization must maintain an “input boundary,” as well as the “output boundary” discussed above. Simply put, a restaurant requires ingredients (foodstuffs) for its internal production. Most restaurants contract with middlemen or brokers for food to be delivered at set, albeit negotiable, times. These deliveries are arranged to occur before the restaurant needs the food, when the restaurant is not busy, and when cooks or other kitchens workers are present to check or sign for the goods. The restaurant and the vendor select a mutually agreeable time, and cooks need sufficient time to store the food and to prepare whatever portion of the delivery is expected to meet the demands of the day's customers.

Food itself has a temporal dynamic. Most food spoils the longer it is kept—beef and wine that “age” are, to a point, notable exceptions. As a consequence, high turnover is crucial not only for revenue but also to avoid losses from spoilage. Restaurant management sometimes attempts to manipulate customer choice through specials or by having servers “push” a dish. The clients' decisions, in turn, affect cooks by forcing them to spend their time cooking some dishes and not others. To the extent that some dishes are easier or more pleasant to prepare or are prepared by special workers (e.g., main-course salads or broiled dishes), culinary life is influenced by the “life” of the food.

While food has its own dynamic because of spoilage, other objects deteriorate over time or go out of fashion, and this puts pressure on workers to “move” them. Medicines and film have expiration dates, which customers may check. Fabrics become mildewed, and toys, dresses, and automobiles are subject to changes in fashion and technological innovation. Some clothes—swimsuits and overcoats—have their seasons and styles. Although food may be a particularly dramatic instance of how the timing of material objects push workers, it is not unique.

LIVING THE DAY

Kitchen work has both rhythm (periodicity) and tempo that stems from customer demand. Restaurants have slow times and times of incredible demand; each influences how cooks respond to their environment. Some cooks use a theatrical metaphor with its images of preparation for a performance, the emotional “high” of the performance and release after the curtain descends:

It's very much like an actor preparing to go onstage and go into work and start in a quiet place and figure out what you're going to be doing. You get your equipment ready, sharpen knives, cut meats, trim your fish and make your vegetables and make your sauces and get everything set up, and it gets a little bit hotter, people start talking more, and the waiters start coming in, and this is going on over here, and by the time everything starts coming together, it's like you're ready to go onstage. It's there…. Once the curtain goes up, everyone knows exactly what they're supposed to do.

(Personal interview, La Pomme de Terre)

A pantry worker tells me: “I like the atmosphere in kitchens, the speed. It always reminds me of a play. I understand how actors feel. It starts out slow and then it speeds up.”

(Field notes, Blakemore Hotel)

Life in a restaurant is not structured by the clock per se, but by events such as lunch, dinner, or banquets, indirectly set by the clock (Marshall 1986, p. 40). Cooks rarely look at the clock and may profess surprise when, after a busy evening, they learn how late it is.

SYNCHRONIZATION

Professional cooks face the problem of synchronization in that they are not merely cooking “dishes” but for “tables” or “parties,” and must prepare several dishes at once, each timed differently (e.g., steak and fillet of sole). Cooking to order is an occupational challenge to be overcome by skills of synchronization: the recognition of a temporally grounded division of labor. This skill determines their competence in the eyes of others, distinguishing the professional cook from the home cook:

Part of the job is knowing how to take a piece of fish and a piece of chicken up to the window at the same time. If the chicken will take fifteen minutes and the fish two, how do you get them up there at the same time?

(Personal interview, Owl's Nest)

I like to read the orders and time everything. It moves, you think and cook, and everything has to be just right. It's a real test of your dexterity and your ability to concentrate.

(Personal interview, La Pomme de Terre)

How is synchronization achieved? What organizational procedures promote this competence? Each restaurant had a slightly different system for achieving the orderly production of food, but each relies on the presentation of tickets by servers to cooks—the temporal linkage or sequencing of occupations sedimented into a structure. From the presentation of the ticket, cooks know that they have a set amount of time until the dishes need to be ready, until servers and their customers will complain.³ As they know approximately how long each dish will take to prepare, taking these constraints into consideration they can organize their work and gain some temporal autonomy.

The point at which the main course is needed is an approximation based upon the length of time that customers are expected to spend eating appetizers or are willing to wait. While cooks would like to know the exact times that dishes are needed, servers and customers desire food to be ready when it is wanted—different for fast and slow tables. The preparation of food involves a delicate negotiation among cooks, servers, and customers, with each having demands, constraints, rights, and privileges. For example, servers frequently inform cooks that they need dishes sooner or later than expected. To some extent this is modified by flexibility built into the structure:

Tim explains to me how the wheel operates. The wheel is a metal turntable with clips on which servers place their tickets when customers have ordered. Cooks examine the orders on the wheel and assume twenty minutes until the dish is to be served. When it is about seven or eight minutes from when the customers will want their food, the server places the ticket on the counter (generally when the customer is half finished with the soup or appetizer). When the ticket is placed on the counter, cooks “go full blast.” Some dishes such as lamb en croûte are started immediately when the ticket is placed on the wheel, because it takes twenty minutes to prepare. This structure means that no dish can be served by this restaurant that cooks for longer than twenty minutes.

Sometimes the system breaks down. When servers see many tickets on the counter, they put theirs down early, even though it doesn't need to be ready in seven minutes. They believe that the cooks will be running behind, and they want to insure that their customers (and their tips) are protected. As a result, food is ready ahead of time.

(Field notes, La Pomme de Terre)

The chef at La Pomme de Terre describes himself as an air-traffic controller, suggesting that dishes have the potential for “stacking up” and, if processed in the wrong sequence, they can create disaster. A chef, like any worker with multiple responsibilities, must manage the demands of the kitchen. Another cook at a different restaurant used a similar image of flow control in describing his difficulties: “You have to be really thinking about timing. It's really kinda like a science. You can control the flow. You can control if they [the servers] are running [i.e., if there are a lot of orders]” (Field notes, Owl's Nest). Still, the temporal ordering of dishes is so imprecise that cooks sometimes joke about occasions when they do well in the face of expectations of failure, as when Howie, the sous chef, comments to Mickey, a server, about a slow order:

HOWIE:	Those people must have been waiting a long time.
MICKEY:	Nope. They just got finished with their salad.
HOWIE, JOKING:	Great. What finesse.

(Field notes, La Pomme de Terre)

Timing food reflects a concern with synchronization—a division of labor among cooks and servers. The cook must internalize the ordering and timing of dishes to permit the production of fifteen different dishes, each at the peak of quality, and must believe that other cooks are acting similarly. Cooking decisions are not analyzed at leisure but are split-second decisions, barely permitting a comment between coworkers.

DISTRACTIONS

Ideally cooks as crafts artisans would be autonomous, leading to satisfaction with the temporal organization of work (Baldamus 1961; Ditton 1979). Such a world is impossible in restaurants and most industrial workplaces. Cooks are challenged when they cannot set their own schedule: “Where it's busy enough that it requires somebody to help me, I really have to concentrate. People, waitresses come up and ask questions. It's really hard. When we're busy enough, I can't break my stride or break my train of thought. Sometimes I just tell them to be quiet and go away” (Personal interview, Blakemore Hotel). Like all focused workers, cooks must “bracket” the extraneous events that swirl around them while establishing a rapid rhythm and coping with organizational demands. When the tasks have been completed, they can luxuriate in those events that they had previously bracketed, sometimes not “really working” for an hour or more (Marshall 1986, p. 40), creating a temporal niche: “The previous night the Owl's Nest had 116 customers, a heavy Friday evening. This included a party of 25. Fortunately there were no tickets behind that order [i.e., they didn't have to cook for other customers]. Larry tells me: ‘It can be hard when you have other tickets up. We were lucky last night. It's hard when you have four tickets right behind it. You just want to sit down and rest after it’ ” (Field notes, Owl's Nest).

EXPECTATIONS

Workers have expectations about when their work begins and ends; sometimes to their frustration these expectations are dashed. Workdays should have temporal cues, of which the factory whistle or school bell are models. Unfortunately breaking the serenity of work, customers arrive late, important clients want special meetings, or the boss demands overtime. Once routine and legitimate tasks become an imposition: “At 11:30 P.M. the cooks are almost finished cleaning the kitchen, when a new order comes in from a ‘regular' who often arrives late without a reservation. Larry is so annoyed that he throws a lamb chop bone and later throws a sharpened knife across the counter, fuming That's what's really frustrating. You're ready to close and another order comes in. You get kinda cranky sometimes’ ” (Field notes, Owl's Nest). Frustration with the violation of temporal boundaries applies to an extension of the opening boundary as well as the closing boundary. Although the Owl's Nest is open for lunch at 11:00 A.M., cooks are disoriented if customers arrive before 11:45 A.M. They're not ready for lunch to begin, and they resent it. Within their rights, customers arriving when the restaurant is open in practice disrupt the rhythm of the cooks' work. Cooks typify when their “real work” should occur, even though this expectation may be shattered by a client's exercise of his or her rights. As at colleges, where early morning meetings are taboo, “real” hours differ from the “official” hours of the organization.

THE RUSH

The effects of an organization's environment on its temporal structure is dramatically evident when the system is loaded to capacity. In the kitchen this is the rush, but it has equivalents in many organizations: emergency rooms, fire stations, theater aisles, airline counters, and toll booths. Seen collectively, clients do not use services at regularly spaced intervals. For some workers (ushers) the rush will be predictable; for others (emergency medics), much less so.⁴ Every restaurant, especially those that are successful, has a rush—a period in which the demands of customers threaten to overwhelm the capacity of the kitchen employees to cope—a time at which the restaurant is “slammed” (Klein-field 1991, p. C24). Customers, unaware of the “backstage” problems, expect their food when they are ready for it. Food should be served after what “feels” like the proper interval, neither rushed nor delayed—comprising the mysterious variable of “good service.” In an attempt to control labor costs, managers hire just enough staff so that the kitchen is on the edge of chaos but not so few that customers are dissatisfied with the service.

From these demands derives the experience of the rush. External demands produce a pattern of action by workers, and this use of time produces the lived experience of the rush (Denzin 1984). Its felt emotion—what Henri Bergson (1910) refers to as durée—differs from other “times” (Flaherty 1987).

The rush represents a distinct behavioral characteristic of restaurant life, which is noted for its demanding tempo (and associated rhythm) and intense pressure (Schroedl 1972, p. 187). The journalist John McPhee (1979, p. 78) describes the temporal life of a master chef: “As his usual day accelerates toward dinner-time, the chef's working rhythms become increasingly intense, increasingly kinetic, and finally all but automatic. His experience becomes his action. He just cruises, functioning by conditioned response. ‘You cook unconsciously,' he says. ‘You know what you're going to do and you do it. When problems come along, your brain spits out the answer.’ ” Those I observed relied on similar metaphors. “You're fighting a battle of chaos,” one cook explained. Another emphasized that coping with a rush involved “keeping calm. Lining up the station. Getting ready. The setups. Getting organized before the rush” (Field notes, Owl's Nest).

The rush feels similar at each restaurant, even though vastly different numbers are served. A rush is characterized by rapid movements (proper sequencing) and little talk, except for brief, subcultural exchanges (“an ivory downtown,” “nine tops, three shrimp, all baked, all medium”)⁵ or curses and insults. Because of the clattering of pans and plates, the kitchen is noisy, making the rhythms of work seem discordant or nonexistent to an observer (e.g., Kleinfield 1991, p. C24). The number of cooks present is barely sufficient to handle the expected number of customers. When more customers than expected arrive or when mistakes happen, the kitchen extends the duration of preparation; the customers do not get their food “on time,” and the servers may receive smaller tips. The food may be of lower quality than when the restaurant is not so busy.⁶ The success of the restaurant during the rush rests on a thin line.

Although cooks operate similarly during the rush, they experience it differently. Some cooks claim to enjoy the rush and relish the pace. Others find it unpleasant. The experience differs from person to person and from day to day. One cook remarked: “You can't keep up with your orders. It feels like you have to do everything in a second. Back and forth and back and forth. I don't like the feeling. It's not good…. You just feel like you're gonna cave in and collapse” (Personal interview, Stan's). In contrast, others noted:

It's a high. You have to get yourself up there. You have to get your adrenaline pumping. It feels good really if everything's going smooth. You're just cranking. It feels good. I enjoy it.

(Personal interview, Blakemore Hotel)

I'm pumped up till you wouldn't believe. I just want to go, go, go.

(Personal interview, Blakemore Hotel)

These cooks are like “trauma junkies” among emergency medical technicians, who enjoy those calls that demand their skills (e.g., heart attacks), as opposed to “pukes,” which are boring calls, not requiring training (Palmer 1983). They are like detectives challenged by the game of matching wits with criminal suspects (Stenross and Kleinman 1989).

Although personality, age, ethnicity, and gender affect how workers experience their busiest periods, most cooks whom I observed indicated that their reactions depend on the “quality” of the day. The rush has a situated quality, determined by what has occurred before and during. This is evident when a cook notes that his “high” occurs when work is “smooth.” Cooks (and other workers) may use a drug metaphor to explain feelings of mental transformation: “It can be a downer or an upper. When you're all set and you're ready for it, it can be great. When things are happening that aren't supposed to, it can be a nightmare. It's a good night when you look at the clock and it's already ten-thirty” (Field notes, Owl's Nest). As with drugs, the emotion is not merely chemical but also social. Cooks distinguish between days in which things go well and other days in which things have not been prepared or external forces break their expectations: “I ask Ralph whether he enjoys the breakfast rush. ‘Some days I do; some days I absolutely hate it.' [Then I ask him] what does it depend on? ‘How smoothly things are going. It can be very stressful. Mr. Businessman has to get to his meeting, so you have to get his eggs on the table quickly…. You've got to perform’ ” (Field notes, Blakemore Hotel). Despite the situated character of the rush, several cooks remarked that their reactions are “automatic” in that they do not consciously plan or control their emotions or behavior resulting from the demands made of them. They have incorporated the response to the rush into their behavioral repertoire. This image of the rush is similar to “flow” in leisure (Csikszentmihalyi 1975). Cooks can be so caught up in the tempo and rhythm of their work that all else is transfixed. Just because these experiences respond to external forces—an interaction between self, other, and context—doesn't mean that they are consciously willed. Cooks remarked:

[A rush is] like a beat to music where you get a beat and start working with it, and bang, bang, food's being done automatically. I get a song in my head, and if work's going great, I can hear that song in my mind and work with it.

(Personal interview, Owl's Nest)

I concentrate totally, so I don't know how I feel. I'm not even conscious of it. It's like a third sense just takes over.

(Personal interview, La Pomme de Terre)