Head Count Please!

A simple fucking head count. How hard can it be? When all the guests have sat down for the function, do a head count, then inform the kitchen just how many meals we are supposed to be serving. Is it that difficult a concept to grasp or am I missing something here?

Tonight we had a 3 course plated function for one hundred people, well actually, I'm still not really sure how many people we served! This particular even started out on our event sheets as 100, this was the sheet given to the kitchen last week. I've done the ordering and everything is in or in its way. Then, 1 day before, in the morning, it's gone to 140. I was asked if this was a problem and I said to give me half an hour and I'll see if I can get extra sent in. As it turned out it was relatively easy, so I went back and said it wouldn't be a problem. On the same day, one hour later, I'm told it's gone to 104 plus 7 kids. The next day (function day) I'm told again that it's now gone to 111, fuck me, how many changes? I'm forgetting now actually how many times it did change. THEN, one hour before, "Chef, we have a big problem, it's now 122" Oh double fuck!

Now we are in a spin, trying to up the levels to cope with the extras. We always cook extras, for emergencies, but never that many extras. Any way, job done, we've caught up and ready to go. I actually ran low on the soup for entree, which is my fuck up, but I spun out what was remaining, and made it to the end. The soup was tasting just fine, a little creamier than before, but still good. Then the main course. Here again, we always have extra plates warming up in the box, so this time, I had 130 stacked in the hot box. We plated up every plate, just to be on the safe side, but they stopped serving when the had everything they needed when we still had over 20 plates left. What the fuck? We're all confused a little now as to what is going on. We also served 7 kids meals, and then another, so 8 in total, so we now also have an extra kid in the room!

Just before desserts I asked exactly how many people do we have and was told 110, including 8 kids and 1 diabetic who is have a fruit plate. This arithmetic says to me that we have 101 desserts to plate. I plated 104, again, just to play it safe, and use all my chocolate mousse doing so. Obviously the mousse had to be made in advance, and thinking I only have 100 to plate, I've decided to give a bigger serving of mousse so I didn't have any left. At the end of dessert service I am now told they need 3 more. Not gonna fucking happen! How many people do we have, has anyone actually done a head count yet? Nobody had an answer, except umm well umm, not sure. So at this point I've lost the fucking plot, gone rampant! For me in the kitchen, it's unacceptable to run out of anything, and I've been embarrassed through no fault of my own. Then I'm told I should have plated 122 desserts anyway, as that is what they are paying for. Get fucked! Learn to fucking do your job and fucking count before we begin. Our function coordinator didn't know how many guests we had, didn't know we had kids meals available and didn't know we had a diabetic. I'm not going to short sell our guests so that our banquet staff can have a 3 course fucking staff meal.

At the end of the day it's really fucking simple. Tell me how many meals you want and I will fucking serve them. This is not a guessing game.

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