The characteristic of discourse communities that interests me the most is the use of a specific lexis. This is something I’ve experienced in a couple ways through my experiences as a discourse community member. Primarily, after working in restaurants for nearly 10 years, there are many words and phrases that are unique to these environments that I’ve adopted and grown accustomed to exchanging. While it would be interesting to develop an exhaustive list of the strange, restaurant words and phrases I’ve learned over the years, here I will list several examples that spring to mind. Some of these things are spoken to ensure everyone’s safety, but other things detail task management procedures.
The biggest one, (which I’d theorize even non-restaurant-workers would understand?) is “86”. If there is a menu offering that we’ve run out of or is no longer available for some other reason (such as, not enough labor resource to continue to prepare it), we announce “86 (name of item)!”. It’s important for servers and other staff members to know this, so that they maintain control in their guest interactions by managing expectations. It can be damaging to the guest experience to learn, after the fact, that you won’t be receiving something you’ve ordered.
Here are several more restaurant vocabulary terms:
- Fire- to fire is to begin preparing an order. You may announce “fire (table number)” to the expo chef to resume preparation on an order that was previously on hold. This means that you can expect the order to be ready somewhat soon (but not immediately), depending on the current ticket-time. Oops. I may fall into a restaurant lingo rabbit hole…
- Expo chef- culinary expert who plates, garnishes, and organizes the dishes
- Ticket-time- average time it is taking to fulfill orders (typically referring to entrée orders specifically). Many restaurants set and express a standard ticket-time, which allows everyone to predict how long in takes to fulfill an average order under average circumstances. Where I work, we make steaks, primarily. We strive for a 20-minute ticket-time, but 30-minutes is not unusual (especially for a well-done steak).
- Sell- this means the food for the order is ready and its time to get it plated and on its way to the guests
- All Day- You would say all day to describe how many of a particular item are needed or currently rang in at that time. For example, “four asparagus, all day!”
- To ring- is to submit an order, sending it from the POS system to the kitchen (in our restaurant, tickets are printed out on paper, but for many kitchens, the ticket is digital)
- Dragging- you would say “dragging on (item)” to communicate that an order is being sold but there is an item that is behind schedule. You may say this to kitchen staff as a notice that the order is going to go out without that item so that they can retain it as a priority. An expo chef may also say this to a runner, implying that they should notify the guests that we haven’t missed/forgotten the item and that it will be arriving shortly.
- Runner-hands?- this means that an order in the window is ready to go and that hands are needed to deliver it to its table
- Clear-hands?- this is a request for assistance in removing any plates, silverware, or glassware that the guests are done with (also, you aren’t supposed to do this until every guest at the table is done!)
- Also, some places will say “clear”, but in other places I’ve worked, we said “pre-bus”
- Frame- to frame guests means to arrange the tools (plates, silverware, etc) they will need for the next course (which can only occur after the previous course is cleared out of their way)
- Hands?- this is a request for teammates to lend you their hands. Typically, you need hands if you are going to start delivering one of the table’s courses but the order is too large. It is common practice to deliver the complete course to every guest at a given table at once, rather than in multiple trips. Guests may be uncomfortable if some of their party has received their dish while others are left empty handed for too long. Similarly, if you were a guest, it may be concerning to receive your entrée, but your side dish does not arrive until much later.
- Announcing where you’re moving, ex: “out!”, “in!”, “corner!”, “behind!”, “below!”
- Sharp!- when you’re moving while holding something sharp, typically a knife
- On the fly- this means something is needed as quickly as possible. Normally, we say this if something went wrong with an item and a replacement is needed, but it can also mean that the item got missed when the server rang the order, or that guests made a late request to add an item to a course they’ve already received or will receive very soon
Back to our discussion of discourse community attributes…
After considering the role of this specific vocabulary component of a discourse community, I would guess that its purpose in this context is to maximize efficiency (save time) but also to set our use of language apart in a way that isolates nonmembers. The best way I know how to explain the latter point is that there is a strong need for restaurant workers to manage and control guest perceptions. By using coded language typically unknown to nonmembers, we are maintaining the performative aspect of food service by not revealing, to any guests who may be listening in, what is going on behind the curtain, so to speak.