Punching the Clock: Now we're cookin'

If being half-good at slicing potatoes and folding napkins was what it took to be a wildly successful restaurateur, I’d have a British accent and be a world-renowned culinary virtuoso, with my own hit reality show centered around screaming obscenities and calling other chefs “----ing disgraces” until they cried.

But, obviously, there’s a lot more that goes into making it in the food industry. That goes without saying. And after knocking over a tray of silverware, slicing my finger, breaking a drain pipe and flooding the floor in the first hour of my shift at one of Norwich’s lunchtime hot-spots, “The Bohemian Moon,” it’s clear I couldn’t even make it out of the kitchen. Thankfully Brenda Gibbon, and not Chef Gordon Ramsay, was my boss this day.

“You can’t complain about free help,” she said, looking on the bright side of my not-so-sunny performance as a prep staffer.