What they don't teach you in Chef school...

is how to count, apparently.

Which is why I really shouldn't be surprised when, in the middle of running the 3rd course of a 5 course dinner to the restaurant owner, his financial partners, and 12 food and wine writers, I come into the back to pick up my last two plates of salmon and find them non-existent. Odd, because when I left the kitchen a mere 30 seconds before there were two little salmon filets in the last pan, waiting to be plated.

I look at the executive chef and the sous, searching their faces for an explanation. Maybe they plated the last two very quickly and sent them out with another server and I didn't notice.

Or... maybe they didn't count their plates and decided that they were done plating without checking with me. And maybe they didn't want to waste any fish. And maybe the salmon in between their teeth, slowly being masticated and digested when it should be on a plate in my hands and heading out to the last two people without dinners at the FREAKIN VIP TABLE!!!!!!!

It is for moments like these that the phrase "actually, just insert the most foul epithet you can think of here... If I try to think something up I'll just get apoplectic again..." was invented.

More than anything it is the pure stupidity that drives me round the bend.