To get cross when people with no catering experience think they know more than those who work in the industry?

[ExtraPineappleExtraHam]

Someone was just talking about the food waste in the NHS. I said that the system in our hospital was that patient menu choices are chosen almost a week in advance. This is so the kitchen can order in the exact amount of each portion. My hospital is long stay so the likelihood of the patient still being there in a week is about 95%. If they happen to get discharged or go into another department then yes, that food is wasted but it's a very small amount. Staff usually eat it.
A woman with no experience in the field said to me 'that's a stupid system, they should order it the day before.' So that would be a better system would it, ordering loads of everything and then having too much of one thing and not enough of another, and then having just 4 hours to prepare EVERYTHING!
I've had this so many times, people who don't work in catering telling me how restaurants/ cafes should be run. The best was my ex- manager telling me that she would run a busy cafe using all vintage china (good luck putting those through an industrial dishwasher!)
Is it because it's 'low skilled' that people think they could make a better job at running it than the actual staff? I would never go into a care home and start telling the staff how to do their jobs, or start lecturing an engineer about how to design more effective aircraft.
I just can't fathom how people look at a huge corporation like Subway and think 'oh I could do a better job!'

I must have worked in the only job that nobody is either interested in or feels they can do at least as well as I can (statistical analyst in a market research company). I hadn't even realised my luck until now, at most people just say "I was always terrible at maths" and then change the subject.

Of course, then I became a SAHM to a child with SEN, plenty of people had opinions about what I was doing wrong then, thank goodness I have a resting bitch face to fend some of them off.

Restaurants and cafes are notorious for people thinking they have the skills to run them and shutting down after a few months (having haemorrhaged money).

As a teacher I have people tell me how to do my job because everyone has been to School!

Is it because it's 'low skilled' that people think they could make a better job at running it than the actual staff?

I think it's because most people cook and wash up at home so they think they know how to run a business where this is involved. They can go to the supermarket the day before or on the day and buy stuff for the family's meals so they think you just have to do this on a bigger scale to cater for patients in a hospital.
Same as people who think they know about education because they went to school themselves.

I must have worked in the only job that nobody is either interested in or feels they can do at least as well as I can (statistical analyst in a market research company).

That’s because you do the ‘hard numbers’

It’s interesting that people wouldn’t go near this stuff, yet seem to think that the costings and accounting for a cafe (for example) is s piece of piss.

Not that I’m directly comparing them, because they’re very different applications of maths, but more that the ‘I can’t do maths’ brigade only seem to apply that to certain circs.

Education is a good point as local councils and government get it the other end from teachers who are experts in teaching but not in administration, funding or the law. People slag off managers but without some sort of tier between politicians and the classroom things would be a lot worse!

So many people airily declaring that all research on breastfeeding, for instance, is pointless because apparently the scientists were too stupid to spot a flaw in the research that a random mumsnetter can.

Totally. Or how, since a tiny number of competitive athletes in fields requiring substantial muscle mass can be scored as "obese" despite having very low body fat, "BMI is rubbish".

Every profession get this (except actual brain surgeons, rocket scientists and mathematicians). Like a PP said, everything is simple when you know fuck-all about it.

I'm a psychologist :) actually what amuses me the most is how secretly scared many people are of psychometrics. I get a lot of nervous "jokes" about whether the test is going to show they're a psychopath.

Ignore her, some people are know it all's and without the big picture, they're ignorant.

I think people think that about everything.

I’m a manager at McDonalds and everyone thinks they could work there because it’s easy and they’ll take anyone. Both are categorically untrue: we won’t just take anyone, we have a specific kind of person we look for, and it is definitely not easy. It’s exceptionally hard work, but I do absolutely love it.

If you ordered the day before I can imagine that you would have problems during severe weather! But yes, it is incredible that people think they know what they are talking about having never done the job. The number of times you hear people trusting financial or tax “advice” from someone in the pub or down the golf club never ceases to amaze me. What is even worse is when someone takes unregulated advice of that nature from someone who charges them and ends up in a pickle.

By the way, there is one place I could never have worked and that is McDonald’s. It looks like an absolute nightmare. It’s probably quite hot and time pressured and all the beeping that the appliances do is something else! That said, Pret looks quite bad as the system seems to rely on shouting rather than the slicker McDonald’s system. Also, lots of people in the Pret I go to don’t have English as a first language, which must add to the stress for them.

Yes. I would not want to be a Pret barista in any City outlet between 7.30 and 9. If last 5 minutes before turning round, jamming a coffee bean up someone’s nose and screaming “fucking wait a fucking minute”

Another teacher, I feel your pain.

On the other hand I've had a couple of friends ask if I've considered catering when they have been for a meal.

No, my health is variable I can only cook sometimes and No again because I have no experience of catering. The one friend who doesn't ask is the one with experience.

There was one series of Kitchen Nightmares set in the UK, I remember one where GR and the chef both went on the street offering a free samples, the chef's 'something I can't remember served on black pudding' couldn't be given away,but he was convinced he could sell them.

@redcarbluecar

Where i live a head of planning once said;

"Ourcity is a city of 100,000 people that city happens to have 100,000 fully informed planning experts"

Nuff said..

Try working in the charity sector. My favourite opinions to date are

"it should be illegal to pay charity staff more than the minimum wage?" and the old "big charities spend all their money on private jets and gold toilets" thing.

I reckon you need to be simultaneously the world's most chilled and most task focused person to survive working in Pret etc.

splodge my sister is the WORST for what you describe. She basically keeps asking until she finds someone who will tell her what she wants to be true.

several very busy local cafe's use all vintage china. I don't know how they wash it, but they do use it.

At our Residential Home we use all vintage china. They are hand washed first and then go through a steriliser.

"it should be illegal to pay charity staff more than the minimum wage?" and the old "big charities spend all their money on private jets and gold toilets" thing.

Yes, and the extra fun side effect where underinformed people found their own tiny charities to "do it better" or support that African village that they saw on holiday, thus incurring a whole new lot of admin costs and inefficiencies instead of giving through the existing charities who can be much more efficient.

I run a cafe , use vintage china for tea , I’m not madly busy and a lot of tea cups get broken
However , some very kind people have given me their grandmas tea sets , so it’s not all bad
( I get lots of helpful 😀 advice too )

Totally get this! I work in animal welfare and have years of knowledge and experience (plus degrees) in order to advise people on animal care, behaviour and welfare. You'd be amazed the number of people who think they know everything because they watched some 'expert on TV' who has absolutely no qualifications in animal behaviour, or they will listen to their friend down the road who gives them the answers they want to hear, despite it not being the best outcome for that animal in terms of welfare. They seldom listen to what I recommend instead because my advice takes patience and time, rather than being a quick fix.

sigh

Try being a police officer everyone you meet is a lawyer/doctor/psychologist with years of experience in negotiation/ crowd control/fire fighting/traffic management/forensics.

By the way, there is one place I could never have worked and that is McDonald’s. It looks like an absolute nightmare. It’s probably quite hot and time pressured and all the beeping that the appliances do is something else!

Splodgetastic It’s not a nightmare; it’s actually a great place to work. It’s just not easy like people think it is!

The beeping you get used to pretty quickly, and we have good air conditioning so being hot isn’t an issue. It can get hot if you’re on fries or grill batch for a while, but that’s why we rotate crew so they don’t overheat!

My mechanic actually charges double for everyone who brings in a botched repair to his shop after watching it done on a YouTube video and thinking "I can do that "

SoHot you wouldn't find it that fucking "amusing" if you'd been chucked on the trashpile based on psychologists' evaluations.

Was going to say the same as a few other PPs. If you think you have it bad, try being a teacher.

Because everybody knows that teachers only work 9 - 3 and get long holidays where they do fuck all work related, and everybody knows that they wouldn't ever make a mistake so if a teacher does it's a hanging offence.