My a la Carte and Dining Room Service class (read: working the on-campus restaurant) is a fine preparation for working in a real restaurant. Namely, nobody knows what the hell they want and the servers don't know what the hell they're doing, and the cooks have to B-) deal with it anyway. Things could not possibly be worse, so there's nowhere to go but up!
For instance, last night I was working the grill station. Since we're so overstaffed and the menu so small, that means I'm taking skirt steak out of the marinade and cooking it to order, heating and adding the requisite potatoes and haricot vert, and putting it in the service window for a server to carry away.
There is a ticket printer telling me and the others working saute what to cook. There is an expo station telling me and others what to cook. So rarely did the two agree!
Over the entire shift, only two items I cooked came in, went on the grill, came off the grill, and went out on time. Everything else was cooked too early thanks to an expo miscue, or was cancelled by the customer after it was already cooked. Literally everything I cooked the first half-hour I was on shift wasn't served.
tl;dr Working the grill was just one big
* R^2 shades
missteak.