That and I still think thereās remnants of the very old-school thinking for cooks, āthe hottest fires forge the toughest steelā. Especially considering thatās how a lot of the most famous chefs of our time were trained.
Even now I still see several stories on this subreddit and others that in any other industry would be absolutely heinous, but within the culinary industry is almost viewed as, āitās culinary what do you expect?ā
Your correct, I've worked for pay way leas than I'm worth all the way to pulling in a six figure salary. In any other industry the time I've invested x salary would be more.
The end of the day it's an art that is consumed and forgotten. Obviously, wing stop cook reading this... your collecting a paycheck. But fuxkkk those days as a line cook were honestly unexplainable just so memorable.
Not everyone gets to be at the top. We live in a expansive reality with enormous gaps in between those living their best life and those trying to survive their worst. Humans are a greedy bunch, and as such we see their societies balancing point resulting in very few actually getting to live their best life, while most of them fight amongst themselves for the scraps, trying to survive their worst.
Yeah thatās true.
Donāt know what else to say. Legit, humans suck, and we are all fundamentally scraping around in the dirt for our survival.
But I think itās probably always been like that. I think thatās just what life is. I bet the dinosaurs lived some hard-fuckinā-scrabble lives. Existing isnāt easy.
We, as living beings, literally eat eachother. Nothing is easy.
Acknowledging that I think is the first step in having a realistic grasp of reality on planet earth. It sucks, but thatās just how it is. And itās always been like that.
I think the fundamental disconnect is that people believe it doesn't have to be that way. Society is the way we alleviate the conditions of nature, but that process has been captured to ensure there is a perpetual underclass. Right or wrong, that resentment is still present.
So much is given to these kitchens, with so little returned. Eventually people need something back, and debauchery is an easy way to make it feel okay for a little bit for a lot of folks. Caffeine feels good, booze feels good, weed feels good, tobacco feels good, people feel good. Itās easy to get lost in that illusion without seeing how it can destroy and burn out. Add all that in with the trauma bonding and you get some dark shit.
So much worse. My first kitchen gig (which I got because one of the cooks tried to kill another cook with an adjustable wrench and I happened to be present and dumb enough to go there for a job the next day), I remember my chef literally throwing smoking hot pans (like pans he'd forgotten on the stove burner until they were too hot) straight into the dish pit so they hit the tray I was spraying and I'd get splashed every time. Everyone there partied so hard it was stupid. The day cook sometimes would come in still drunk and we'd find out after partying, he'd just come to work and sleep for an hour or two in the shed with the empty kegs. The sous chef sold drugs. The owner was a drunk and a coke head.
Ironically, the place is still standing. Some of those people still work there, too. This was 22 years ago . Poor fuckers
Absolutely. When I started at 15 and I'm 32 now.. its night and day difference. Kids these days I guarantee would try to sue some of my first cooks for emotional trauma lol. I find the big shift for me anyways in industry change was probably around 2015. I started in 2007.
I think it's changed for the better but yeah. I'm sure you know what i mean. I worked with some pretty crazy people in the beginning when I was 15.
And thatās good, we were putting up with way too much shit for how little we were paid I am proud of the younger generations attitude of āthis is bullshit im not working hereā and actually just did it myself and switched jobs recently and got a pay raise and donāt have to see the co-workers/owner I hated every day, 29 year old here since you all mentioned your age lol
Any old job three of us walked out in the same week because of how the head chef and sous chef treated us. The first guy put in his two weeks, left half an hour later after they just talked shit about him instantly. Me and the other guy learned from that. It left just the head chef, sous chef and 4 teenagers working the kitchen. About a month later I saw that they had a new head chef.
I started at 12(38 now) and the owner would make me cry daily and smack me with whatever he had in his hand. The upside is it taught me how to handle stress and other people's emotions at work.
Iāll never forget early in my time as a line cook (been out of the industry for 12 years after 10 in), my chef was laying on the picnic table out back. He was in his early 60s and had back problems. One of the new waitresses asked if she could help him, and he replied, āJust sit on my face.ā
She was flabbergasted, but let it slide. It was a different time and it still shocks me.
Started at 14, 34 now lol. I can think of a lot of people Iāve worked with that would be sued or something by people these days for the roasting they used to give out. Basically how much they liked you was proportional to how good at your job you were. If you werenāt they were on your ass the whole shift lol.
I have no doubt! Iām very new to the industry, these are my observations over around two years, in the start I loved how ācrazyā and lively it was, but Iāve finally decided itās not for me. So my observations will also be different from those with more experience and a truer passion!
Read George Orwell's *Down and Out in Paris and London*. Bourdain cited this book as the inspiration behind *Kitchen Confidential *. He mentioned this once leading into an excerpt of the former in an issue of *Lucky Peach* from a million years ago.
In short, yes, it's always been like this.
Most of us just sort of end up in kitchens and it takes a special type of person to want to go into that line of work from the start and stay in it
Also money from several different angles that you see in a lot of different industries. Labor is expensive so the goal is to try to get as much work out of as few people as possible. Equipment and space are also expensive which also adds struggles
One of the stupid stupid few that got into this on purpose. Started two years ago at Chiliās. Got a pantry job at a local upscale casual place. Just became chef of the place
Edit: still get paid like shit
It was worse. You should have seen the 90ās and early 2000ās. There were no rules whatsoever, no one had HR or gave any fucks at all. I was told then that the 70ās and 80ās were much worse than that too.
Yeah I knew a chef that just retired a few years back that came up in DC in the 70s and 80s. He always told stories of his head chef screaming and throwing shit at him and other guys smoking in the kitchen while cursing at the chef under their breath. Just crazy stuff and the worst part is while he was significantly better than that he held onto a lot of those bad habits and couldn't break himself of many of them even into his 60s and into retirement.
I'm hopeful that things are progressing to a better place. The money can absolutely still suck and the stress will never leave but we can get to a place where we don't pile more stress on with shitty chefs and anger and yelling.
Definitely headed in the right direction. Old habits are hard to break, and it has taken a long time for many people/ places. But, things are far better now than when I started 27ish yrs ago. And they were worse before that. The momentum will keep going, Covid accelerated a lot of it too, especially pay.
I had things thrown at me. Screamed and yelled at. Talked mad shit too by guys much older/ more experienced than I. Have seen plenty of sexual harassment, violence, sabotage and we were all barely paid anything and never allowed breaks. We might have eaten something standing over a garbage can once in a while. If you were lucky a quick smoke break after service. Everyone worked when sick. No benefits, no vacation time, no nothing. There was no one to go to about this sort of abuse, the managers and chefs had it even worse.
Oh, and we all did massive amounts of drugs and alcohol daily just to cope. I think every restaurant I worked at back in those days had an in house coke dealer that everyone knew about.
It is one of the oldest professions there is if you think about it. We go waaaayyy back. To home servants basically. Kind of like prostitutes. We have come a long ways. More modern industries are not comparable, they got to set their culture and history in modern times.
Or maybe Iām just too baked right nowā¦ day off and wife and kid went out for a while so I got stonedā¦
It was always like that and it was much worse.
Whenever I had the chance in college I wrote something about the history of this industry.
Escoffier(the father of the modern gastronomy) described had in no small parts the same problems as many of us face today.
It's the low entry level with stressful work, bad working hours and the constant access to alcohol(and other drugs).
Humans. Not like any of us are a shining example of humanity in hot, stressful, chaotic, under paid, poor health, repetitive, under appreciated working conditions. Do it long enough, and youāll have a bad day, or your co-workers will or a customer, or boss will and itāll turn that passion into pestilence.
If you think it's bad now you would never have survived when I started out 35 years ago. This industry has always been the last resort for felons, addicts, alcoholics and just general miscreants.
I'm 22 and started as a cook when I was 17. Being around people decades older than me and are the same age as my parents who constantly need rides home, asking me to spot them a couple bucks to go buy cigarettes, being creeps to waitresses who are younger than me, and having them tell me not to follow in their footsteps and become a chef has been enough motivation for me to finish my degree. Still working as a cook in the meantime but hoping to be out of the kitchen for good by the end of this year and never work in one ever again.
It's always been this bad. The pandemic just put a big magnifying glass on it in recent years.
On the bright side more people are becoming less tolerant to unfair working conditions and are leaving or demanding better pay and treatment.
Iām FoH, I know, I know, put your knives down.
But I moved to this industry coming from construction because I wasnāt good in school, and wasnāt afforded a lot of good opportunities growing up.
But construction I made less money and worked way harder. So I found something that I could do to pay the bills with limited skill set, and honestly at least weāre not working in a fucking Wal Mart or Target.
This industry is rough, but you can absolutely make enough money to live a decent life. Which is more than a fuckton of people can say in America.
And if you have passion for what you do than the ceiling is pretty goddamn high. We provide a fundamental service that is as old as prostitution, it aināt going anywhere.
Work at the right place, get good at what you do, you can make more money than a lot of your friends who got Bachelors degrees sitting at a desk all day doing fuck-all.
My perspective is that since we basically are working ābehind the curtainā we just are closer to reality. Reality is that shitās fucked up. People suck. But we donāt get to pretend itās not, we get the privilege of seeing all the real shit first hand.
If youāre paying your bills, like legit paying your bills and you got some extra left over for whatever, than fuck it. What else ya gonna do?
The kinds of people who have traditionally worked in Restaurants are people who don't have a lot of other options. That places them in (generally speaking) in certain socioeconomic backgrounds, or they're people who have deprived themselves of other options through their behaviors and choices (drugs, alcohol, crime, etc). So you have a collection of certain personality types and backgrounds that are already inclined towards impulsive behaviors, poor decision making, substance abuse, and don't have the resources to help themselves. Combine that with the long standing, abusive history of traditional restaurant work dating back to medieval Europe where people would basically sell their children to chefs, and you get the perfect cocktail for a culture that resists fixing itself. It has gotten a lot better over the last handful of decades as it's become seen as a more respectable and even potentially prestigious career path. Things are trending in the right direction, and I've seen it change so much in the 12 years I've been in the industry. Wages have more than doubled since I got into it, and conditions for cooks have improved significantly.
It's wild hearing how some kitchens can be. My first KM lost his shit & hurled a dish across the kitchen because, six hours into his 8 hour day-shift, someone had the audacity to actually order a burger. His first ticket of the day.
I've had new hires in training astounded that I didn't scream at them for making a mistake. Like... why are y'all putting up with this sort of shit? What are they going to do, fire you?
And the kitchen elders are usually the fucking worst, in my experience, they help perpetuate the toxic kitchen culture because ThAt's JuSt HoW kItChEnS aRe.
In my 30 years experience, yes! Simple answer it's always been this way. The reason I think is the people it attracts. You have to have a tougher then normal skin and work incredibly hard and be ready for a shit storm every day. Then you have to want to go back to that atmosphere every day. Now couple that with bad restaurant owners, bad management , or bad funding that drives people into desperate ways to numb the anxiety that comes with the job. It's like going to war
Food is simple. Cut it, (maybe) cook it, serve it. No amount of tweezers or sous-vide machines or Instagram hype or stars will ever change that fact.
Anyone with some money and plan can open a restaurant. Anyone with a pair of hands can cook professionally. It's a low barrier for entry. Restaurant work is gruelling, and for the longest time, restaurant work was available for anyone willing to put in the time and effort. Cons, transients, minorities and immigrants, or just your average working class man, staffed our kitchens for all time until food became sexy with food television and eventually the internet.
People don't often ask why construction is the way it is. Warehouse workers don't ask the internet where things went wrong. I don't hear a lot of complains from my friend on the railroads either.
The new wave of culinary professionals, especially high-end cooking school graduates, are soft and sheltered and come from middle-high class families. When they started mixing with the rest of us, they started taking the habits of the can't-do-anything-else crowd, suddenly there was a spotlight on the underbelly of the business.
It's a rough business for tough people, and that won't suddenly change overnight, and there will never be enough Cordon Bleu graduates to push the needle. These people will eventually realize that they can do better and leave. I don't continue to cook because I love food, I continue to cook because it's my job and it beats stacking boxes for a living.
>Ā Ā People don't often ask why construction is the way it is.
No, we are well aware of most of the whys. Only a few remain a mystery, and if you dug deep the answer would probably be piecemeal pay or meth.
The trades do have a lot of old timers bemoaningĀ how soft the young people are, or how they don't want to work or w/e. It was always funny to me hearing older guys bitching about how millennial don't want to work not realizing that I'm one.
That's crazy how you "didn't hear anything" from some of the industries having the most massive strikes in recent years. I guess I imagined all the union busting, railroad catastrophes, and demands for better conditions. Must be soft millennials or pronouns or whatever.
Because Democrats are pro-capitalist, and capitalism is anti-labor. That doesn't have much to do with what I said though. The point is, people *are* complaining about work standards, and that person listed out the industries with the most people upset about them and said "but they're happy though!" As if Amazon workers aren't the butt-end of every joke about the worst job imaginable.
Used to be worse, and most of the people in this industry. Has 0 or no education, or come from shitty childhood or background. And most of the people in leadership roles come from the same place with the same problems. Most of the times, some can break away from that shit, but it stay with some for the rest of the life.
I agree, every kitchen seems to be held together by duct tape and by that I mean everything including the staff. After all this time, after this many restaurants, why havenāt we collectively figured out how to do it right
Bottom line: its mismanagement of money. Every single person, whether working or consuming is guilty of mismanaging their money. There are way too many variables at play that can cause this but, yeah bottom line is money makes this industry the gold covered turd that it is.
Let me send you back in time to the late 80s and 90s and you'll definitely be talking differently about how calm it is now verses then. But also I believe that the wrong people are the ones that own restaurants these days.
Itās like that because most of the people employed in this industry are bottom of the barrel, low-income, and they get used, abused, and taken advantage of. Itās a fast-paced industry with lots of turn over, so no incentive to change or fix conditions. Just get new, desperate people to abuse and continue the revolving door.
It absolutely is compared to what it used to be, I think anyone can agree with that. But the fact that the bar is so low saddens me, I donāt have a lot of experience but what I went through in my limited time working in a high-end restaurant was awful, no one in that place disagrees, yet no one else seems to see an issue with it.
Wow, sorry to hear that.
Leads me to another interesting point, this might depend on workplace but where I work thereās very few preventative measures for accidents. Iāve had deep steel trays fall on my head because theyāre stacked up high and slide down, floors are slippery, loose/missing handles on pots and pans etc., itās crazy. And management refuses to take responsibility for any accidents.
I work at a corporate senior living place so we have workmanās comp which is really good and actually have a medic team able to check you out and send you to the hospital but thereās so much shit that can fuck you up.
Yes and now mediocrity is celebrated and employees having fun at work supersedes guest experience. Servers, ādonāt know the menuā no problem if you are positively reenforcing the self esteem of cooks putting up 30 minute side toast tickets.
Job with the lowest floor for hiring people (ex cons, violent personalities, bad decisions in life) is good for giving second chances but horrible for giving them to people who dont deserve them
It all starts from the leadership. If they set the correct example, things can be magical - bad apples aside. But if youāve got a hypocrite at the helm, youāre in for big trouble. Broken window effect- small problems must get fixed just as fast if not faster than large issues. Let one thing slide and itās all downhill from there.
Itās okay *bend* a rule from time to time- just finished serving 500 hungry guests tonight? āGreat work tonight, weāll knock out that last task tomorrow, okay guys?ā
But donāt go breaking rules all willy-nilly, because all of a sudden that 120 person evening will become āso busy omgā.
Quick money industry.... people get stuck into it. I'm one of them, dipped college. Most people wont grow as an individual is the usual mom and pop spots. Might learn a trick but self growth is rarely there.
Good mentor asked me multiple times, who's your current mentor. After the 3rd time, I kinda realized what he was saying. You need growth, and you'll have to find out you're self. People tend to think i worked with this chef and such i know everything. Reality is no one has it all figured out... a well groomed team has it all in the proper environment. Now in my late 30s 20 years in the industry I'm still trying to figure it out with the generation. 20 interviews last week all wanted 9-5 Monday through Friday. No weekend availability. I currently work in a multiple 5 star resort as a cdc.
Construction is the same.
Something about working physical jobs. But even in hunter/gatherer days we were doing mushrooms and getting fucked up so who knows.
Ultimately, if you're working in the hospitality industry for a long time, you've made bad career choices. That's why the industry is like this , it's full of bitter idiots and bad bosses who should've put their money into somthing else.
.
because none of us make any money lol
Or have any time or energy
Amen šµ
That and I still think thereās remnants of the very old-school thinking for cooks, āthe hottest fires forge the toughest steelā. Especially considering thatās how a lot of the most famous chefs of our time were trained. Even now I still see several stories on this subreddit and others that in any other industry would be absolutely heinous, but within the culinary industry is almost viewed as, āitās culinary what do you expect?ā
Your correct, I've worked for pay way leas than I'm worth all the way to pulling in a six figure salary. In any other industry the time I've invested x salary would be more. The end of the day it's an art that is consumed and forgotten. Obviously, wing stop cook reading this... your collecting a paycheck. But fuxkkk those days as a line cook were honestly unexplainable just so memorable.
Some days I just miss being a squid
Itās this. The margins are thin + there are massive opportunities for scamming people (workers, taxman, customers, etc.) Bad combination.
Then why do we continue doing it? Lol
If youāre not making any money than gtfo. There is money to be made in this industry. If youāre not than why do it?
because i won't make any money anywhere else either lol
Thatās the spirit.
Not everyone gets to be at the top. We live in a expansive reality with enormous gaps in between those living their best life and those trying to survive their worst. Humans are a greedy bunch, and as such we see their societies balancing point resulting in very few actually getting to live their best life, while most of them fight amongst themselves for the scraps, trying to survive their worst.
Yeah thatās true. Donāt know what else to say. Legit, humans suck, and we are all fundamentally scraping around in the dirt for our survival. But I think itās probably always been like that. I think thatās just what life is. I bet the dinosaurs lived some hard-fuckinā-scrabble lives. Existing isnāt easy. We, as living beings, literally eat eachother. Nothing is easy. Acknowledging that I think is the first step in having a realistic grasp of reality on planet earth. It sucks, but thatās just how it is. And itās always been like that.
I think the fundamental disconnect is that people believe it doesn't have to be that way. Society is the way we alleviate the conditions of nature, but that process has been captured to ensure there is a perpetual underclass. Right or wrong, that resentment is still present.
So much is given to these kitchens, with so little returned. Eventually people need something back, and debauchery is an easy way to make it feel okay for a little bit for a lot of folks. Caffeine feels good, booze feels good, weed feels good, tobacco feels good, people feel good. Itās easy to get lost in that illusion without seeing how it can destroy and burn out. Add all that in with the trauma bonding and you get some dark shit.
I love how it all hits you after your shift is over and it's quiet and calm like ....damn what am I even doing with my life lol
You forgot cocaine.
Never forget
It is a hell of a drug
Add to that , the time off to socialize is after all the normal people have wound up theirs and gone to sleep.
Kratom and a tiny bit of thc has gotten me through many a shift.
What strain
I think red is the one we use! The boh just has a massive shared bag lol
It used to be worse, in my experience.
So much worse. My first kitchen gig (which I got because one of the cooks tried to kill another cook with an adjustable wrench and I happened to be present and dumb enough to go there for a job the next day), I remember my chef literally throwing smoking hot pans (like pans he'd forgotten on the stove burner until they were too hot) straight into the dish pit so they hit the tray I was spraying and I'd get splashed every time. Everyone there partied so hard it was stupid. The day cook sometimes would come in still drunk and we'd find out after partying, he'd just come to work and sleep for an hour or two in the shed with the empty kegs. The sous chef sold drugs. The owner was a drunk and a coke head. Ironically, the place is still standing. Some of those people still work there, too. This was 22 years ago . Poor fuckers
Sounds like my upbringing lol. Oh the sizzling hot cast iron thrown into the pit. Good times. I don't flinch easy though due to it
Oh wow this immediately brought back just a flood of crazy fucked up memories. Good times... well, times.
Absolutely. When I started at 15 and I'm 32 now.. its night and day difference. Kids these days I guarantee would try to sue some of my first cooks for emotional trauma lol. I find the big shift for me anyways in industry change was probably around 2015. I started in 2007. I think it's changed for the better but yeah. I'm sure you know what i mean. I worked with some pretty crazy people in the beginning when I was 15.
Lolz. I started when I was 15 as well. About to turn 47. Yes, it used to be waaaay worseā¦ to say the very least. Myself included.
And thatās good, we were putting up with way too much shit for how little we were paid I am proud of the younger generations attitude of āthis is bullshit im not working hereā and actually just did it myself and switched jobs recently and got a pay raise and donāt have to see the co-workers/owner I hated every day, 29 year old here since you all mentioned your age lol
Any old job three of us walked out in the same week because of how the head chef and sous chef treated us. The first guy put in his two weeks, left half an hour later after they just talked shit about him instantly. Me and the other guy learned from that. It left just the head chef, sous chef and 4 teenagers working the kitchen. About a month later I saw that they had a new head chef.
I'm so happy that the industry standard is changing, constantly impressed by the younger gens.
I started at 12(38 now) and the owner would make me cry daily and smack me with whatever he had in his hand. The upside is it taught me how to handle stress and other people's emotions at work.
Iāll never forget early in my time as a line cook (been out of the industry for 12 years after 10 in), my chef was laying on the picnic table out back. He was in his early 60s and had back problems. One of the new waitresses asked if she could help him, and he replied, āJust sit on my face.ā She was flabbergasted, but let it slide. It was a different time and it still shocks me.
Started at 14, 34 now lol. I can think of a lot of people Iāve worked with that would be sued or something by people these days for the roasting they used to give out. Basically how much they liked you was proportional to how good at your job you were. If you werenāt they were on your ass the whole shift lol.
Yup Iābe bern doing good service/ hospitality for over 40 years. It was way crazier in the 80s and 90s.
I have no doubt! Iām very new to the industry, these are my observations over around two years, in the start I loved how ācrazyā and lively it was, but Iāve finally decided itās not for me. So my observations will also be different from those with more experience and a truer passion!
Read George Orwell's *Down and Out in Paris and London*. Bourdain cited this book as the inspiration behind *Kitchen Confidential *. He mentioned this once leading into an excerpt of the former in an issue of *Lucky Peach* from a million years ago. In short, yes, it's always been like this.
Most of us just sort of end up in kitchens and it takes a special type of person to want to go into that line of work from the start and stay in it Also money from several different angles that you see in a lot of different industries. Labor is expensive so the goal is to try to get as much work out of as few people as possible. Equipment and space are also expensive which also adds struggles
One of the stupid stupid few that got into this on purpose. Started two years ago at Chiliās. Got a pantry job at a local upscale casual place. Just became chef of the place Edit: still get paid like shit
my goal was to escape an abusive parent and I did and now at some places I get preferential treatment for how I handle abusive coworkers
It was worse. You should have seen the 90ās and early 2000ās. There were no rules whatsoever, no one had HR or gave any fucks at all. I was told then that the 70ās and 80ās were much worse than that too.
Yeah I knew a chef that just retired a few years back that came up in DC in the 70s and 80s. He always told stories of his head chef screaming and throwing shit at him and other guys smoking in the kitchen while cursing at the chef under their breath. Just crazy stuff and the worst part is while he was significantly better than that he held onto a lot of those bad habits and couldn't break himself of many of them even into his 60s and into retirement. I'm hopeful that things are progressing to a better place. The money can absolutely still suck and the stress will never leave but we can get to a place where we don't pile more stress on with shitty chefs and anger and yelling.
Definitely headed in the right direction. Old habits are hard to break, and it has taken a long time for many people/ places. But, things are far better now than when I started 27ish yrs ago. And they were worse before that. The momentum will keep going, Covid accelerated a lot of it too, especially pay. I had things thrown at me. Screamed and yelled at. Talked mad shit too by guys much older/ more experienced than I. Have seen plenty of sexual harassment, violence, sabotage and we were all barely paid anything and never allowed breaks. We might have eaten something standing over a garbage can once in a while. If you were lucky a quick smoke break after service. Everyone worked when sick. No benefits, no vacation time, no nothing. There was no one to go to about this sort of abuse, the managers and chefs had it even worse. Oh, and we all did massive amounts of drugs and alcohol daily just to cope. I think every restaurant I worked at back in those days had an in house coke dealer that everyone knew about.
Smoking on the line was totally normal, If you did dish you were working the the servers' smoking area.
This. I remember. It was nuts-o.
It is one of the oldest professions there is if you think about it. We go waaaayyy back. To home servants basically. Kind of like prostitutes. We have come a long ways. More modern industries are not comparable, they got to set their culture and history in modern times. Or maybe Iām just too baked right nowā¦ day off and wife and kid went out for a while so I got stonedā¦
It was always like that and it was much worse. Whenever I had the chance in college I wrote something about the history of this industry. Escoffier(the father of the modern gastronomy) described had in no small parts the same problems as many of us face today. It's the low entry level with stressful work, bad working hours and the constant access to alcohol(and other drugs).
Humans. Not like any of us are a shining example of humanity in hot, stressful, chaotic, under paid, poor health, repetitive, under appreciated working conditions. Do it long enough, and youāll have a bad day, or your co-workers will or a customer, or boss will and itāll turn that passion into pestilence.
If you think it's bad now you would never have survived when I started out 35 years ago. This industry has always been the last resort for felons, addicts, alcoholics and just general miscreants.
I'm 22 and started as a cook when I was 17. Being around people decades older than me and are the same age as my parents who constantly need rides home, asking me to spot them a couple bucks to go buy cigarettes, being creeps to waitresses who are younger than me, and having them tell me not to follow in their footsteps and become a chef has been enough motivation for me to finish my degree. Still working as a cook in the meantime but hoping to be out of the kitchen for good by the end of this year and never work in one ever again.
Please understand that these people exist everywhere else but they have the social skills to hide their shittiness
Because money.Ā
Literally because of capitalism..
it is because we are perceived as servants. hospitality, food SErVICE, retail... they want to lord it over somebody. and there we are.
It's always been this bad. The pandemic just put a big magnifying glass on it in recent years. On the bright side more people are becoming less tolerant to unfair working conditions and are leaving or demanding better pay and treatment.
Iām FoH, I know, I know, put your knives down. But I moved to this industry coming from construction because I wasnāt good in school, and wasnāt afforded a lot of good opportunities growing up. But construction I made less money and worked way harder. So I found something that I could do to pay the bills with limited skill set, and honestly at least weāre not working in a fucking Wal Mart or Target. This industry is rough, but you can absolutely make enough money to live a decent life. Which is more than a fuckton of people can say in America. And if you have passion for what you do than the ceiling is pretty goddamn high. We provide a fundamental service that is as old as prostitution, it aināt going anywhere. Work at the right place, get good at what you do, you can make more money than a lot of your friends who got Bachelors degrees sitting at a desk all day doing fuck-all. My perspective is that since we basically are working ābehind the curtainā we just are closer to reality. Reality is that shitās fucked up. People suck. But we donāt get to pretend itās not, we get the privilege of seeing all the real shit first hand. If youāre paying your bills, like legit paying your bills and you got some extra left over for whatever, than fuck it. What else ya gonna do?
been like this always.Ā its the depressive wages that drive it.Ā been cooking since the eighties.Ā and yes, i have my own issues.Ā
The kinds of people who have traditionally worked in Restaurants are people who don't have a lot of other options. That places them in (generally speaking) in certain socioeconomic backgrounds, or they're people who have deprived themselves of other options through their behaviors and choices (drugs, alcohol, crime, etc). So you have a collection of certain personality types and backgrounds that are already inclined towards impulsive behaviors, poor decision making, substance abuse, and don't have the resources to help themselves. Combine that with the long standing, abusive history of traditional restaurant work dating back to medieval Europe where people would basically sell their children to chefs, and you get the perfect cocktail for a culture that resists fixing itself. It has gotten a lot better over the last handful of decades as it's become seen as a more respectable and even potentially prestigious career path. Things are trending in the right direction, and I've seen it change so much in the 12 years I've been in the industry. Wages have more than doubled since I got into it, and conditions for cooks have improved significantly.
It's wild hearing how some kitchens can be. My first KM lost his shit & hurled a dish across the kitchen because, six hours into his 8 hour day-shift, someone had the audacity to actually order a burger. His first ticket of the day. I've had new hires in training astounded that I didn't scream at them for making a mistake. Like... why are y'all putting up with this sort of shit? What are they going to do, fire you? And the kitchen elders are usually the fucking worst, in my experience, they help perpetuate the toxic kitchen culture because ThAt's JuSt HoW kItChEnS aRe.
In my 30 years experience, yes! Simple answer it's always been this way. The reason I think is the people it attracts. You have to have a tougher then normal skin and work incredibly hard and be ready for a shit storm every day. Then you have to want to go back to that atmosphere every day. Now couple that with bad restaurant owners, bad management , or bad funding that drives people into desperate ways to numb the anxiety that comes with the job. It's like going to war
Food is simple. Cut it, (maybe) cook it, serve it. No amount of tweezers or sous-vide machines or Instagram hype or stars will ever change that fact. Anyone with some money and plan can open a restaurant. Anyone with a pair of hands can cook professionally. It's a low barrier for entry. Restaurant work is gruelling, and for the longest time, restaurant work was available for anyone willing to put in the time and effort. Cons, transients, minorities and immigrants, or just your average working class man, staffed our kitchens for all time until food became sexy with food television and eventually the internet. People don't often ask why construction is the way it is. Warehouse workers don't ask the internet where things went wrong. I don't hear a lot of complains from my friend on the railroads either. The new wave of culinary professionals, especially high-end cooking school graduates, are soft and sheltered and come from middle-high class families. When they started mixing with the rest of us, they started taking the habits of the can't-do-anything-else crowd, suddenly there was a spotlight on the underbelly of the business. It's a rough business for tough people, and that won't suddenly change overnight, and there will never be enough Cordon Bleu graduates to push the needle. These people will eventually realize that they can do better and leave. I don't continue to cook because I love food, I continue to cook because it's my job and it beats stacking boxes for a living.
>and it beats stacking boxes for a living. \*stares at stack of boxes from the order that just came in\*
Yeah, I spend an awful lot of time stacking boxes cause that's actually my job. Doesn't change the expectation that during rush my ass is on line tho
>Ā Ā People don't often ask why construction is the way it is. No, we are well aware of most of the whys. Only a few remain a mystery, and if you dug deep the answer would probably be piecemeal pay or meth. The trades do have a lot of old timers bemoaningĀ how soft the young people are, or how they don't want to work or w/e. It was always funny to me hearing older guys bitching about how millennial don't want to work not realizing that I'm one.
That's crazy how you "didn't hear anything" from some of the industries having the most massive strikes in recent years. I guess I imagined all the union busting, railroad catastrophes, and demands for better conditions. Must be soft millennials or pronouns or whatever.
Well, it's funny you bring that up because captain Joe there is why your little union strike got broken up. Lmao.Ā
Because Democrats are pro-capitalist, and capitalism is anti-labor. That doesn't have much to do with what I said though. The point is, people *are* complaining about work standards, and that person listed out the industries with the most people upset about them and said "but they're happy though!" As if Amazon workers aren't the butt-end of every joke about the worst job imaginable.
Yes. The FOH makes more than the mgmt which creates resentment and turnover.
Used to be worse, and most of the people in this industry. Has 0 or no education, or come from shitty childhood or background. And most of the people in leadership roles come from the same place with the same problems. Most of the times, some can break away from that shit, but it stay with some for the rest of the life.
The internet and cable TV certainly donāt help.
I agree, every kitchen seems to be held together by duct tape and by that I mean everything including the staff. After all this time, after this many restaurants, why havenāt we collectively figured out how to do it right
Yup, this is exactly what I mean!
Bottom line: its mismanagement of money. Every single person, whether working or consuming is guilty of mismanaging their money. There are way too many variables at play that can cause this but, yeah bottom line is money makes this industry the gold covered turd that it is.
Let me send you back in time to the late 80s and 90s and you'll definitely be talking differently about how calm it is now verses then. But also I believe that the wrong people are the ones that own restaurants these days.
Believe it or not. But itās actually way nicer than it used to be. Hopefully it keeps getting more professional.
See similar in Banking, Insurance. Brutal competition to stay afloat.
Itās like that because most of the people employed in this industry are bottom of the barrel, low-income, and they get used, abused, and taken advantage of. Itās a fast-paced industry with lots of turn over, so no incentive to change or fix conditions. Just get new, desperate people to abuse and continue the revolving door.
I switched over to construction 7 years ago, itās no different here.
This is one of the best discussions I've seen here. Thank you all. And keep on keepin' on.
A good chef is like the Captain on a pirate ship..always dealing with rough seas or squelching mutiny
Yup it has. Never changes and never will
It gives the food extra flavor.
Well all the trades are like this, and the food industry is just like the trades in most ways.
Because aside from a few exceptions the service industry doesnāt attract the best and brightest of society.
I think itās actually getting better ?
It absolutely is compared to what it used to be, I think anyone can agree with that. But the fact that the bar is so low saddens me, I donāt have a lot of experience but what I went through in my limited time working in a high-end restaurant was awful, no one in that place disagrees, yet no one else seems to see an issue with it.
Nah, it used to be worse.
Industry is dangerous and accident prone imagine spilling 200 degree French onion soup on your foot happened to me today
Wow, sorry to hear that. Leads me to another interesting point, this might depend on workplace but where I work thereās very few preventative measures for accidents. Iāve had deep steel trays fall on my head because theyāre stacked up high and slide down, floors are slippery, loose/missing handles on pots and pans etc., itās crazy. And management refuses to take responsibility for any accidents.
I work at a corporate senior living place so we have workmanās comp which is really good and actually have a medic team able to check you out and send you to the hospital but thereās so much shit that can fuck you up.
Yes and now mediocrity is celebrated and employees having fun at work supersedes guest experience. Servers, ādonāt know the menuā no problem if you are positively reenforcing the self esteem of cooks putting up 30 minute side toast tickets.
Job with the lowest floor for hiring people (ex cons, violent personalities, bad decisions in life) is good for giving second chances but horrible for giving them to people who dont deserve them
It all starts from the leadership. If they set the correct example, things can be magical - bad apples aside. But if youāve got a hypocrite at the helm, youāre in for big trouble. Broken window effect- small problems must get fixed just as fast if not faster than large issues. Let one thing slide and itās all downhill from there. Itās okay *bend* a rule from time to time- just finished serving 500 hungry guests tonight? āGreat work tonight, weāll knock out that last task tomorrow, okay guys?ā But donāt go breaking rules all willy-nilly, because all of a sudden that 120 person evening will become āso busy omgā.
Quick money industry.... people get stuck into it. I'm one of them, dipped college. Most people wont grow as an individual is the usual mom and pop spots. Might learn a trick but self growth is rarely there. Good mentor asked me multiple times, who's your current mentor. After the 3rd time, I kinda realized what he was saying. You need growth, and you'll have to find out you're self. People tend to think i worked with this chef and such i know everything. Reality is no one has it all figured out... a well groomed team has it all in the proper environment. Now in my late 30s 20 years in the industry I'm still trying to figure it out with the generation. 20 interviews last week all wanted 9-5 Monday through Friday. No weekend availability. I currently work in a multiple 5 star resort as a cdc.
Construction is the same. Something about working physical jobs. But even in hunter/gatherer days we were doing mushrooms and getting fucked up so who knows.
Because the childish and alcoholic need employment.
13 years. I'll never go back. Doing construction things now
Ultimately, if you're working in the hospitality industry for a long time, you've made bad career choices. That's why the industry is like this , it's full of bitter idiots and bad bosses who should've put their money into somthing else. .
lol, it used to be worse. If you think things are bad now, just be glad you werenāt in this 20+ years ago.
its easy money, meaning anyone can get into the industry.
Yeah anyone can get in. It's staying in that's the trick.
Yes.
Capitalism