Life changes rapidly; one minute I am down running a business in Kapiti and the next minute a short stopover to visit my unwell mother leaves me with a totally new job on the Coromandel Peninsula.
I have spent the last few months working as a ‘sous chef’ on the Coromandel Peninsula. Two factors influenced the decision to make this rather abrupt move. The first, the end of a sales contract, and the second, seeing what state my mother was in when I came up to visit her shortly after attending a work conference.
I always wanted to gain experience in a commercial kitchen. My work at the motels seemed to point me in this direction, and I am very fond of hospitality in general. But I wanted to see what set a successful commercial kitchen apart – particularly one that produced a very high level of cuisine.
And in general, it amazed me how many job opportunities were available up here during the October-November period leading into summer. In past years I had sometimes been caught short, working for a company that effectively shut down over summer, or, even worse, once or twice been made redundant by a company looking to get away with not bearing additional employee headcount over the unproductive December-January period.
There seems to be a lesson in this. As we move towards an increasingly casualised labour force, it’s critical to be constantly sourcing new opportunities and developing new skills.
In future, I will know to look first to the high end tourist destinations when that situation occurs, because they require a number of available workers during this period. I had never never connected the dots before – now I have.
I am not a person who ever likes to stay idle – two months doing nothing would feel like backpedaling to me – and where else can I walk into a job and instantly be designated the role of ‘sous chef’ (which is, after all, a position of relatively high responsibility within a kitchen) with no experience?
I am pleased that it worked out so well. The job, although totally foreign to me, has provided me with new life skills. Not to mention, over the hectically busy summer period, given me on the job training that puts my time management skills to the absolute test.
