My first experience as a ‘stagiaire’ in Paris, France

(Written in 2019 originally) As part of my course, I am required to do a 5.5-month internship at a Patisserie in my first year. The process of getting the internship involved being pro-active, getting your application sent in, having chefs and friends who have previously worked in the same places send in emails of recommendations for you. This was the easy part for me.

After getting in to all 3 places I’d applied to, I chose the most fancy of the lot, for the ‘name on the CV’, the ‘prestige of working at a fancy hotel’ and for a ‘tough and highly demanding’ work environment because I thought I could do it. In fact, I knew I could do it. I like to believe I can rise up to any challenge and work my way through it. That was my plan for the next 5.5 months. Thinking back, I feel like I asked for it. I asked for a tough challenge and I invited failure into my space, and how miserably I failed.

Here are some of the positives of my first internship experience, cut short to 5 months, because by the end of it I finally spared myself and went running home to my family for a much-needed dose of love, pity and kindness - so grateful.

- Experienced working in a high-intensity pastry kitchen, with high pressure, stress and a lot of workload and production (all done manually)

- Got to witness some amazing creativity with classic pastry

-Definitely got better at speaking French

-Made some great contacts which I’m sure will come in handy in the future

Now for the hard part.

This was an experience that had me shed tears repeatedly, yet kept me going because of my belief that ‘if I quit, I’m too weak’. Not wanting to disappoint myself, I pushed through and stayed in an extremely tough and demotivating environment. Throughout this time, I was immersed in self doubt - maybe I’m not good enough? This is too fast-paced for me. I’m probably physically incapable of working to such high standards, what am I doing here? Maybe this is the wake-up call to pack my bags and go back to my job as a Chartered Accountant. At least I’m respected there. I’m valued. I fit in.

I don’t know if anyone is interested in knowing the details but here goes. (PS. Probably my longest blog yet with a long rant, but this was just some of it. There’s a lot more I skipped out so please bear with me!)

For the first 2 weeks I did everything anyone would let me, telling them I knew the techniques (trying to build that first impression), recounting the process seamlessly, adjusting to the language and learning the French words for everything. It was a little tough for everyone involved, because of my frequent use of “pardon” (excuse me) to have the instructions repeated, which slows down the pace of an otherwise lightning speed kitchen. French people speak in different accents in all parts of France. I learnt French in India about 10 years before this experience, which didn’t come in very handy. But I re-learnt French in the south of Lyon, where my school is. The hard reality is that in Paris, the accent is not the same and so it took a bit of getting used to. This environment was not flexible enough to give me that time. And my work was all 100% in French.

Gradually, once I was no longer new, which happened within 2 weeks with a new intern joining us, I was completely sidelined and given the same tasks every day for 4 hours at a time while the new intern, who was French and could talk to the team comfortably and be part of the kitchen jokes which I never quite understood, got to learn so much. She was made to do creams, sponges, caramels (this is the good stuff in a pastry kitchen), while I broke nuts and shaved the rims of tarts – exciting! not.

Unfortunately, after one of the days of breaking nuts for about 4 hours, I developed Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. I woke up with my right hand paralyzed for about 10 minutes, unable to hold my toothbrush, followed by intense pins and needles till my sensation re-appeared. This would happen every morning and soon started happening in the middle of the night too, making me unable to sleep a full night. I did a few tests, got on medication and started wearing a brace to sleep. I don’t know if it was the mental stress of the work, the physical requirements, or just this generation’s over-use of our mobile devices, but it was untimely and made me question my choice of career hard. I was almost certain my hand was going to give up on me. P.S. I’ve been told to do surgery, but I am strengthening my arms with a few exercises and I am pushing the procedure as much as I can. (Maybe I’ll do a post on this in more detail soon)

The chef de partie (who decides what work members of the team do) soon changed and I was once again treated like a complete beginner, told to wash dishes every time I would ask for some work, and made to do tasks that seemed like a complete waste of time, eg. sticking individual sliced almonds dipped in sugar syrup in lines on a tray – about 500 pcs on a tray and about 5 to 6 trays at a time. This has to be done, so it’s only natural that I, as an intern have to do it. But after 4 months of being there, with 3 other interns in the kitchen who were much newer than me - but all spoke French, I was the only one doing this task! That was not cool.

One fine day, another intern poured caramel into the bin and so the garbage bag was stuck to the bottom of the container. The Chef was trying to remove it with another intern, I decided to help because they were struggling, so I wore gloves to help pull out the stuck garbage bag. The Chef reacted by saying ‘Why do you need to wear gloves? India is anyway like a dustbin.’ I didn’t know how to react, so I politely asked him not to say that because its offensive. His response was to crack the ‘joke’ for hours every time he was in the kitchen. Later that week, I had people throwing tissue at me while I was taking out the garbage and saying ‘oops! Sorry!’ and laughing their hearts out. When I finally told the chef that this joke had to stop because it was influencing other’s behavior with me, he immediately stopped. However, from the next day he started saying ‘you can’t take a joke’ and ‘Sana doesn’t know how to smile’ to me for the rest of my time there.

I think language was definitely a great barrier and if I were to choose again, I would choose a place where people spoke English. You spend almost 12 hours in the same place with the same people, getting a chance to speak at lunch breaks and also be involved in some kitchen banter during the day, if you understand the language! But I couldn’t get a hold of a single sentence spoken when it was conversational, because it was always too quick for me ( no surprise no one made an effort to speak in a way that I would understand) and so I would spend the whole day in my head, getting more affected by the smallest things, taking things personally. The few times I did get to speak to people in English I was quickly told to concentrate on work (in the kitchen) or interrupted with ‘oh you speak so good English’ mockingly at the lunch breaks.

There was a week where an Italian chef came to our kitchen to do a short internship (young but at a high position in his establishment) and oh boy! Everyone in the kitchen was suddenly trying their hardest to explain things to him in English. I’m just laughing to myself thinking about this right now. That whole week I was like ‘you know English? You can speak English! How? What?’. Of course, these English-speaking skills disappeared as soon as he left.

Then there were days where my self-esteem and grit were tested. I was made to be on the dishwasher for 2 weeks continuously. With the Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, which I had informed my Chef, Sous-chef and chef de partie about, this was really tough. My pain was intensified at night for those two weeks and I was popping a pain-killer every night to sleep. Thankfully in the day I would be fine and it did not come in the middle of my work. When I requested to be given any other task but dishwashing, I was told by a commis (1st level employee), ‘I had to do dishwashing when I was an intern for 15 days till my hands were peeling, so now I’m going to make you experience the same thing’. Is this really the direction we’re heading in? I pledge to treat my juniors in exactly the opposite way I was treated because I know how it felt!!! Are you with me on this?

We also had 2 different teams and I was moved around the teams frequently, never getting a chance to reach a comfort-level with either of the teams. To top it all, each team did things quite differently. I was always getting yelled at for doing small intricate things wrong, whereas just the week before I was taught to do the same task in a different way. In line with this particular miscommunication in the kitchen, I have had boxes of Almond tuile which I’d spent the whole day making (which involved banging a spoonful of almonds in syrup flat on a tray with a heavy metal weight, and then carefully cutting it out into a circle – a lot of time and physical effort) thrown at me because they were packed (as they were for the last 4 times I did them) in big boxes instead of small boxes.

I’ve been told to get out of the kitchen because a demi sous chef - high on some drugs - (I found out about this only in my last 2 weeks there and what an ‘ahhh! That’s whyyy!’ moment that was for me) was throwing different instructions at me, while himself doing what he was asking me to because he was way too quick for me and everyone else was looking at this with a smirk. Not understanding what was going on I smiled slightly and said I can’t understand what he wants me to do. That smile was a big big big mistake. He made sure I was humiliated, thrown out of the kitchen, and had to apologize in tears for not understanding him, because I smiled. (You guys, when I played miss world-miss world with my sister and friends as a 6 or 7-year old, I always won best smile 😊 :P)

I know a lot of you might have thought at some point or the other while reading this, ‘oh come on, that’s normal, you should’ve said something, you should’ve done something’ or ‘you’re complaining way too much for things that are everyday in the kitchen, you’re not going to get something new to do every day, you got to do the boring stuff too, that’s part of this job.’ Yes, you’re right. I’ve thought the same thing too. I told myself this every single day. I had a post-it on my door that said ‘Today is going to be a great day!’ and I would start everyday thinking, it’s a new day, it’s going to be good, I’m going to enjoy my life as a pastry chef. After all, it is my passion, my calling, it’s what I love, it’s what I want to do for the rest of my life right? And yet, I’d end everyday thinking I’m not good enough, I can’t, I’m not capable, I don’t have it in me, pastry is so so so competitive, there’s no way I, who can’t survive 5 months at one of the best pastry kitchens in Paris, will manage to make anything of my own that equates to the standards of being the ‘best’.

Still I pushed through, I endured, though barely 5 months. I know now, if not about pastry, the experience taught me about life. Made me a stronger person. I don’t know if I deserved the experience, but I do believe everything happens for a reason. I could’ve just opted out and gone to a better work environment, without as fancy a name. But something kept me there, kept me fighting and didn’t let me quit and I only hope it adds to making me more of the person I want to end up as.

Would I do this again? BIG NO.

Do I think it was worth it? Not yet, but I kinda think I will some day

Am I going to quit my dream of being a pastry chef? HELL NO. My world of baking cakes is a better world than this. I’m a 100% sure 😊

Update in 2023, /5 Years after first writing about this experience:

Over the past 4 years, I have often thought about whether my experience at my very first Stage in paris, in a high end hotel was worth it. For the last 3 years, my answer has always been a definite NO. However, in the past year, i finally got the chance to set up my kitchen, right from scratch. To build a team and to be wholely and solely responsible for its success. And now, in retrospect, i look back at all my experiences in the kitchen, with my first experience ever always standing out. I built my values of who i want to be as a Chef thanks to this experience. This to me is someone who is extremely detail oriented. Someone who strives for perfection in everything i create. Someone who doesnt compromise when it comes to hygiene, cleaniness and created a product in an environment that i would be proud to eat from anytime of the day. I also believe i have understood how not to behave with my team, what to expect, and how to deal with people who may be too into their head, stressed and unable to perform due to the pressure of a kitchen. My discipline, commitment and dedication to building a system which works to make the customer happy can definitely be credited, to each and every experience i have had working with different chefs and kitchens till date, including my first experience, which was extremely hard and challenging for me at the time. Hope this helps you get through an experience which may seem challenging at the moment, remember, you have probably chosen to do it after having considered the value it would add to you, so be patient :)