Breakfast shop kitchen helper - the first-week onboarding SOP: hygiene, weighing, steamer safety, and calls taught day by day; on day five, solo on exactly one station

Write a first-week onboarding SOP for a breakfast shop kitchen helper -
archivable, tickable. I'm the owner, usually slammed; I need a document
I can follow without knowing how to teach.

Trainee: a new helper with little or no kitchen experience. Trainer:
owner or head chef, checking and ticking against this SOP 15 minutes
after each morning rush.

Ground rules (printed at the top):
- One gate per day; pass to advance. Fail means re-drill the same
  gate the next day - no accelerating, no skipping. Better a slow
  week than an untrained person inside a rush
- Safety red lines are listed separately; violating any one stops
  that day's training on the spot

Day 1 - Hygiene gate
- Teach: the four handwash moments (arrival, after the restroom,
  after touching raw ingredients, before switching stations -
  memorized); uniform and hair covering; color-coded raw/cooked
  tools (the board for raw and the tongs for cooked never mix -
  identify by color)
- Drill: the trainee demonstrates each of the four moments unprompted;
  sorts every board, tong, and cloth to its color spot
- Pass standard: three-for-three on random "should you wash now?"
  checks; zero misplacements in the color sort
- Fail: re-drill next day; Day 2 slides accordingly

Day 2 - Weighing gate
- Teach: reading the recipe card (take what the card says, not what
  feels right); zeroing the scale; the error tolerance of [±5g]
- Drill: weigh flour, filling, and water three times each per the
  card; trainer logs each error on the card
- Pass standard: three consecutive rounds inside tolerance
- Fail: five extra rounds; still failing, consider a different
  station (not everyone is a weigher - runner and cleaning are
  still open)

Day 3 - Steamer safety gate (the red-line gate; half a day)
- Teach: opening the lid from the side (face and hands never over
  the top - steam burns happen on frontal opens); oven mitts versus
  a damp cloth; powering off and resetting; the mid-rush "time
  remaining" call-out
- Drill: three supervised lid opens and one power-off/reset; call-out
  practice
- Pass standard: all three opens from the side, zero leans; the
  call-out audible and clear
- Red line: until this gate is passed, never alone at the steamer -
  one violation pauses training and resets the gate
- Fail: not a failure - steam-shyness is normal; move to runner or
  cleaning, revisit the steamer later

Day 4 - Rush shadowing
- Assignment: one station only (packing/runner recommended), through
  a full morning rush; the trainer records stuck points without
  intervening
- 15 minutes after: walk through exactly three stuck points, one
  corrective action each - no attitude talk, no praise, actions only
- Pass standard: full rush completed without leaving the station;
  the three stuck points restated correctly

Day 5 - Solo day
- Assignment: one station, solo - restricted to runner / weighing /
  cleaning; never the steamer (solo steamer work is evaluated no
  earlier than week [two])
- Trainer glances every half hour, hands off unless a safety red
  line is crossed
- Pass standard: the full rush without calling for help AND the
  close-out handover note (per the close-out checklist) filled in
  properly; this day closes onboarding: both parties sign

Safety red lines (in force all week; violation stops the day):
- Opening the steamer alone before passing Day 3
- Raw/cooked tool cross-use
- Working while sick (diarrhea, unbandaged hand wounds)

Constraints:
- Every day's pass standard must be tickable - no "basically gets
  it" or "roughly familiar"
- No "build a service mindset" training goals - week one drills
  verifiable actions only
- Day 5 is one station for one person - multi-station solo is a
  week-two-and-later matter

Why it is written this way

Real onboarding in a small shop: the owner can't teach and has no time to - the newcomer watches for two days, gets thrown into the rush on day three, and hygiene and weighing habits are set wrong for good, while steamer safety waits for the first burn to be taught. This SOP is built on the premise "follow the ticks, no teaching skill required": one gate per day, three parts per gate (teach / drill / pass standard), and the trainer only executes and ticks. Every standard is decidable - three-for-three, three rounds inside tolerance, three side-stance opens - and "basically gets it" is banned as untickable.

Day 3 gets its own half-day gate and doubles as the anchor of the whole document: steam burns are the most common real injury in a breakfast kitchen, and nearly all of them happen in the instant of a frontal lid-open. Side-stance opening is a motion teachable once and valid for life - it sits on Day 3 rather than Day 1 because it needs two days of environmental comfort first, and "never alone at the steamer before passing" is written as discipline rather than advice, because the trainer's most common failure is delegating on the illusion that the newcomer "looks ready." The fail path is deliberately generous - "not a failure, move to runner" - because fear of steam is a normal body response, and forcing someone through it buys hesitant hands and a real accident.

Day 4's "record, don't correct" and Day 5's "hands off unless a red line" are discipline for the trainer, and harder to keep than the trainee's rules. The trainer's instinct mid-rush is to grab the task back and do it - faster now, but the newcomer loses the chance to surface problems, and day five's "solo" becomes staged. Day 5's one-station limit with the steamer explicitly excluded closes the pacing: week one's goal is not "knows the kitchen" but "holds one station safely and acceptably" - writing that down is what resists the temptation, on the next understaffed morning, to use the newcomer as a full utility player.

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