I spent 3 days working as a cook on the Pelican of London. It was a great experience that changed my perspective on the way I look at work. Throughout the handover I woke up at 04:00am and finished at 08:00pm. I barely got any break time because I constantly had to cook. One of the big challenges I faced was the movement of the ship. Plates and food kept on sliding back and forth or falling down. People outside the galley could hear us screeching all the time when something fell down. We encountered countless obstacles: at times I felt under pressure to have the meals ready on time, but somehow I managed through teamwork with my galley mates.
My daily routine:
When I woke up at 04:00am I started to bake bread and plan the meals. This involved getting food from the dry store and setting everything up in the galley. At 6:30 my galley team came up and set the tables for breakfast. After the galley team had washed all of the dishes and wiped down the tables I gave each of them instructions what to do. Some examples of this would be cutting vegetables or making sure the food doesn’t burn.
Basically we all spent the whole morning making lunch. If we finished a little earlier we would bake our dessert for dinner. Once lunch was finished and the galley was clean again then we started making dinner. When we finished we usually could afford a short break before dinner.
At 05:00pm the galley team resembled to begin dinner. After second sitting of dinner we would undergo one more big clean up so the galley was ready for the next day. This took about one hour. Usually we were finished at 08:00pm and I could finally go to bed after an exhausting day.
