u/MekkoL

Hi,

So i am from the UK. I would like to get into the culinary industry.

I cannot afford culinary school so I thought to develop professional kitchen experience through restaurants. I plan to try and get a kitchen porter role however, I am not sure how I could get one with only volunteer experience at community kitchens. I do hold a certificate of food hygiene and safety.

I am not sure if this works but I was thinking of walking in to restaurants locally and asking the manager or chef if they need extra help in the kitchen/ have a kitchen porter role needed. But I feel like I would be rejected either way with this approach especially given job markets these days.

Most local restaurants open at 5pm and I’m also worried about the dinner rush and disrupting the service.

If I do not managed to get a kitchen porter/dishwasher role I am also not sure what to do, as I don’t think volunteering counts as kitchen experience.

Hi,

I am new to working in kitchen roles, I only volunteered at catering sites before.

I completed my trial shift yesterday and will start shifts later today unless I refuse the role.

during my trial shift, I had injured my finger through a meat slicer I was using, where I had to push salami with my hands into the blade section as shown by my manager and the other worker.

with a plaster and gloves was bleeding through them. This was within a half portion of my 3 hour trial shift. I notified the manager and the other person working with me and was told by the manager to keep working.

Also, my fingers kept locking up and given the speed of the service, I had to keep working but this together with the injury reduced my speed by a lot.

I had been told i will be the only one in the kitchen full time working doing food prep, dishwashing, stocking up the inventory and making orders according to the instructions they stuck to the walls.
For the 8+ hour shifts I would have one break but that is only one of my shifts: I work mainly 6-7 hour shift except for one day where I would work for 11 hours.

I am concerned that I would be made to continue working whilst injured alone in my shifts but I am very worried that if the same injury occurs that I might contaminate the food prepared and would slow me down a lot. Also, I am a bit concerned that despite my lack of experience I was hired very quickly after the previous full time worker was injured too.

I am very hesitant to accept the role now as I am not sure if this is meant to be normal.

I understand how demanding and hard the work is but as someone new, I would like to know if what I experienced is typical.