“The tough day was yesterday.”
It was a saying I saw in a video features André Chiang (江振誠), a famous chef from Taiwan.
Last summer, a friend of mine suggested I watch this video. It was a video series named “Mentor x Mentee”, produced by CommonWealth Magazine in Taiwan. The first episode of the series talked about “teamwork”, an important lesson for us to learn in the workplace.
We all have to enter the job market after graduating from the school. As a freshman to this society, dealing with troubles and issues encountered would be our daily tasks. For example, working up late, maintaining relationships with people in the office etc. The most crucial one is, working as a team member with colleagues.
In the video, there were about 15 members in Chiang’s kitchen. They were asked to work “efficiently and effectively” as cooperating with each other. If you’re a newly-joined member, you would feel be very physically demanding and stressful.
There were sayings on the wall in the kitchen to encourage the workers if they felt depressed, like “Go cry in the walk-in” or the one that impressed me most:
The tough day was yesterday.
This saying reminded me of a Japanese trendy drama “Bambino!” (バンビ〜ノ!). It’s a story about how an arrogant newcomer became a well-trained chef through adjusting himself to handle the troubles in the restaurant. The owner of the restaurant nicknamed the newcomer after “Bambi”, derived from the word “Baby” in Italian, “Bambino”.
We’re all newcomers when entering the job market. There were colleagues with various capabilities and personalities, we might have to get along with them well in order to finish the duties assigned. There must be tough times if we can’t handle them properly.
Everyone would have a hard time in their life. In my first year of work, I was responsible for the planning of marketing strategies of product lines that brought big profits to the company. I had a really TOUGH time when being asked to adapt myself and start working quickly in a short time. However, I didn’t know how to manage duties and stress with both efficiency and effectiveness, some people even blamed me for whatever mistakes I made.
The saying “the tough day was yesterday” encouraged me when I was nearly about to give in the stress and quit the job. We could either make every day a better day than yesterday or just let the problems keep on bothering us.
There are no troubles we couldn’t solve, only if we don’t want to face and overcome them!
Taiwan’s CommonWealth Magazine (天下雜誌) held a project named “Mentor x Mentee” last year, inviting Taiwanese chef Colin Chen (陳昱任) to work as a mentee in a restaurant at Singapore, Restaurant ANDRÉ, and the owner André Chiang served as a mentor.
Chiang is a Taiwan-born chef who owns five restaurants located in Singapore, France, and Taiwan. His Restaurant ANDRÉ in Singapore was ranked 32 in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants. Working in cuisine for over twenty years, Chiang’s inspiring “Octaphilosophy” (八角哲學) was the approach that helps him creating ideas and managing creating process.
“Octaphilosophy” includes the following eight words and ideas: Unique (獨特), Pure (純粹), Texture (質), Memory (憶), Salt (鹽), South (南法), Artisan (工藝), and Terroir (風土).
You can see more details about “Mentor x Mentee” project on this website: “In Our Time, CommonWealth Magazine”(Chinese)
For more about “Ocaphilosophy”, please click the following links: Phaidon Store (English), CommonWealth Magazine Online Bookstore (Chinese).
