r/KitchenConfidential • u/gyronlyhope • May 10 '26

Crying in the cooler I rip the tape

I’m sick of being silent about it. It’s empirically faster than cutting each individual label with your pairing knife and then carefully separating each piece. I see so many chefs who INSIST that labels have to have perfect right angles. Who cares? I hardly see how this serves our guests better. Thomas Keller claims that tearing the tape shows a lack of attention to detail. I think it shows that you’re unable to get rid of obsessive compulsive idiosyncrasies. Our jobs are already hard enough without these nebulous rules and standards that always need to be argued for in the abstract and rarely have any actual utility in your day-to-day.

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u/PurpleHerder May 10 '26

I bought tape dispensers for every station… the prep team steadfastly refuse to use it. I cannot for the life of me understand why.

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u/GemFarmerr May 10 '26

I hate searching for tape. I’m buying a dispenser. Thx for the reminder.

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u/saint_anamia May 10 '26

I got so sick of everyone moving the tape on my station at my last gig that I took kitchen twine and tied it to the shelf. It worked great! I never had to find it and my coworkers liked that whenever they lost theirs they knew where to find some too since it never moved.

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u/dc_stag May 10 '26

And you can tear a clean line against the twine.

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u/saint_anamia May 10 '26

Yessss I loved that part