Kitchen Nightmares

Why do people with no restaurant experience open restaurants? This may be the case in other fields also... I don't know. I haven't interviewed out of this field in years. I just came from the worst interview ever with an owner that had no idea what she's doing.

I arrived ten minutes early and she was on the phone, she asked the caller to hold and asks if she can help me. When I introduce myself as her 9am interview, she looks at her watch and sighs. "You're early." The horror! I offer to wait outside if she'd like to finish her call in private. She continues her phone call, shocked, amazed, and annoyed that she cannot obtain a liquor license because she's within 1,000 feet of a school. Uh, first of all... this isn't a new law. Secondly, shouldn't you have looked into that before you bought/leased the property?

I'm browsing the menu and find two typos and a few grammatical headaches, also a few items that I cannot imagine anyone in their right mind ordering. The prices are reasonable. Almost too reasonable to turn a profit. She ends the phone call and is clearly still upset about her liquor license. Maybe this distracted her and resulted in her asking me every question you are not allowed to ask in an interview.

Including, but not limited to: How old are you? Do you have kids? Are you married? Can you work Sundays or do you attend church?

It was amazing. At this point I had already decided I was not interested in working at this establishment, but took the tour with her out of courtesy. There was a pet rabbit in the kitchen. I repeat: there was a LIVE RABBIT in the KITCHEN.

She had told me that the place had been open about a month, but they were waiting until they were fully staffed to 'announce that they existed'. I asked when the Grand Opening would be. "We're already open." Right, I'm sorry. I thought you said you had a soft opening and were planning a Grand Opening. "No. (looks at me like I just kicked her pet rabbit) We're already open. I have flyers I'm going to give out when we're fully staffed." Sigh.

Amazing.