My first target landed on a chaotic lunch shift

New here too, and this gave me so mch hope—congrats on the first target! The apron detail got me 🥹

Hi and huge congrats on 254 — tying your apron without holding your breath sounds like such a real win. I’m only week one, so I’m still nervous about every little thing.

Your lunch shift sounds like my nightmare: three soups would do me in. Can I ask a small question? Do you keep any kind of tally of the tastes, like a tiny mark on a napkin, or do you just let them go?

I’ve started putting my water bottle where the sample spoons usually sit, and it’s helped me pause for a second. Not perfect, but something. Wishing you a calmer Tuesday shift.

Congrats—77 down is a real milestone, especially landing on a Tuesday when the kitchen was already three soups deep. I remember the apron thread last spring; this is exactly the long game people were talking about.

One concrete thing that helped me in a sample-heavy job: I kept a tiny tally on the corner of the dup pad for every taste that was more than a pinhead, and at close I’d decide whether it was meal or just QA. Didn’t weigh scraps, didn’t beat myself up.

Do you count those bites, or write them off as cost of doing business? That one choice changed my weekly trends more than any big overhaul.

Actually I think it’s 77 lbs down, not 76—math aside, congats on the apron!

What’s your actual system for the “just one bite” moments? I worked a bakery counter and started using a quarter-teaspoon for QC tastes, then logged them as one “shift tastes” line instead of pretending they were free.

The number surprised me, but it stopped the guessing. Curious whether you’re tracking those bites now, or going more by hunger/fullness since hitting the first target—and do you taste before or after your own meal?

That timing changed my whole shift.

The Tuesday soup-tasting gauntlet is no joke — congrats on hitting that first target!

That "first target I set with my doctor" framing is smart — have you two picked the next one yet, and is it a number or a thing? Mine was a number, then I switched to a thing ("fit in the corner booth at Rosa's"), and honestly the thing version pulled me harder.

Also curious about your weigh-in ritual: same time, before service, before you've tasted anything? With sample-heavy shifts, that timing is the only reason mine doesn't bounce around all week.

What does your Tuesday morning look like now, scale-wise and otherwise?

Soup tasting as a workout is wild — congrats! My dorm “just one bite” is licking the peanut butter knife, so respect.

Respect on 331 to 254 while running a kitchen—that’s a different kind of hard. Mild pushback: I don’t think the samples themselves are the main boss; for me it was the after-service crash, eating the cold rejects while breaking down.

I’m also mid-plateau, so I started logging only tastes I actually swallow (not spit), keeping pre-cut cucumber and a shake in the walk-in, and tracking waist weekly because my scale lies for 10 days at a time. What’s your plan for the post-shift crash?

That’s where my loss stalls every time.