3 ms·
"I’m not telling you that culinary school is a bad thing. It surely is not. I’m saying that you, reading this, right now, would probably be ill-advised to atten
by moate 4y ago
"I’m not telling you that culinary school is a bad thing. It surely is not. I’m saying that you, reading this, right now, would probably be ill-advised to attend—and are, in all likelihood, unsuited for The Life in any case. Particularly if you’re any kind of normal."
This is the most important quote in the whole piece. Restaurant Life is a thing people outside of it DO NOT understand fully. Most well meaning, normal people are not compatible with it.
Do you do recreational drugs? Are you an alcoholic? Do you have a criminal record? Are you in the country illegally? If no, how are you going to deal with the fact that 75% of your coworkers meet one if not all of those criteria? How are you going to deal with the intense pressure? How are you going to make your rent, because if you want to do this in a major US metro at this point, you're going to have a hard time affording housing. How will you adapt to your new role when, inevitably, someone rage quits during their shift and you get field promoted to running their station?
I've been out of the industry for 6+ years at this point, and when I get super stressed out at my current tech job, I dream about running a restaurant. That's not to say that I want to go back, but that my mind inherently links "you are stressed out" to "you are the chef of a 2 million/year restaurant". I have never had a stress dream that involved a computer, to the best of my recollection.
- floppydiskette 4y agoI have stress dreams about working in a restaurant all the time! It’s insane. I haven’t worked the line in almost 10 years at this point, yet I still have nightmares that the tickets are overflowing. > Do you do recreational drugs? Are you an alcoholic? Do you have a criminal record? Are you in the country illegally? If no, how are you going to deal with the fact that 75% of your coworkers meet one if not all of those criteria? This resonates so much. I was never able to connect in any long term sense with my coworkers due to these reasons. Not getting drunk or doing other drugs after my shift meant that I wasn’t bonding with my coworkers.
- curuinor 4y agoticket machine for short-order line cooks is the strongest pure example of operant conditioning in work today, I feel.
- moate 4y agoI think I just hit a point in my life where I needed to grow up to get the things I wanted and restaurants aren't a mature place. I got married and wanted a life with my wife, so when I got a seasonal layoff from a beach restaurant I worked at, I took the chance and switched to tech. I loved the late nights and drinking and partying until I didn't, and then I was mostly able to put it all behind me (I still smoke very regularly but much less problematically). I have always been one of the misfit toys, but luckily not in a self-destructive way.