Only shop here if you feel like supplying a racist's paycheck. I worked here briefly, and this has got to be the most unprofessional business I have ever seen. There are many problems to address, but I will start with the first and most unfortunate: the allowance of racial slurs, jokes, and comments about black customers entering the store. In the kitchen, I heard comments made up about strangers, carefully kept out of earshot from them as to not actually offend anyone, or lose business. I was probably the only non-italian person working here. Most of the customer base is old white italians that know the store owner. I noticed that the owner seemed to be friendly with these guys, yet hesitant to deal with non-italian customers. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if I was hired because my name is Vince, because the second anyone who worked there got a look at me, I got conceited looks and a cold shoulder from them.
Speaking of which, I was not greeted with anyone's introduction, a description of how the shop worked, any rules or regulations, or practices. Instead I was given a few tasks to do, which as an obedient and swift person, I am typically able to handle. However, none of the people giving orders could actually agree upon what the correct method for any of these tasks was, nor could they agree upon what I should be doing. At few dozen times I was told:
"Oh ignore X for now, just focus on this",
"Hey, you're not paying enough attention to X"
or
"What do you mean nobody told you how to do X?",
"Well don't listen to him, he's an idiot"
and
"Do X, Y, and Z for me",
"You really need to get to Z now",
"Well, I don't want you to do Y first, forget what I said"
etc...
"After you do this, ask me what to do next"
*No response after many prompts*
The fact of the matter is, there is no communication here. There is no courtesy here. I don't expect to be treated like royalty as an entry level employee, but typical human social practices would be nice. Such as, I expect someone to acknowledge my existence, or return a sentence when I speak to someone, and I expect that the exchanges be thoughtful or informative in nature and related to work, and not petty put-downs and slander. Now, say my expectations weren't appropriate, you'd still think that if I'm willing to learn more about my job, and I'm striving to do good work, then someone would address me properly and speak to me in a productive manner. But as I said, there is no communication here, and there are no rules.
The one general consensus between all of my co-workers though, was that quality doesn't matter in the face of speed of service. That means if you're filling cups of condiments, and you've got X sauce all over the spoon you're about to use to fill y servings, that's fine, because we have enough old white guys coming back here to keep us rich for ages. I had a woman stand in front of me and order something I was about to fill, so I attempted to clean off a spoon or tartar sauce. The boss comes over to me, looks at both of us, and says "never mind cleaning that off, just hurry up and serve her." The womans eyes go wide. I ask her if she wants tartar sauce in her serving, and of course, she says "Hell no." I apologize for her and clean everything off despite the boss's orders.
There were incidents like this all day: not having the correct utensils, not having ingredients to serve customers, essentially a lot of communication errors that led to customers waiting on us. Fish Cove is simply not run on the up n' up. It even took my boss 15 minutes to get around to explaining to me that I was getting paid under the table after telling me my paycheck was on the way. I don't know how much of this stuff becomes aware to the customers, but as a customer myself, I also wasn't impressed.
The food. I guess it's okay as far as small dumpey specialty fry shops go, but overall is there much worth getting? As a kid I enjoyed the food a few times, but after one serving as an adult, I remembered why I quit eating here ages ago. First off, a lot of the buns we give the fish out on are still partially frozen. Needless to say, when you ask about it, you also don't get answers. Many people were shooed off about this and told their sandwich overall was still fine because the fish was good. Except your sandwich isn't fine if it's got frozen parts.
Alright, lets say you skipped the fried fish sandwich and went baked. There still isn't much of a meal here to go for, because you can get... fried mushrooms, fried potatoes or more fried seafood to go with it. I'm no hippy, but this stuff was really hard to stomach. There is a threshold somewhere, after which passing, food goes from delicious, to too rich and oily, to disgusting.
If you must have a fish sandwich and chowder, go to Varsity on Friday. You'll get a fat fillet, pickle, sauces, and a side to go with it. read more
