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I worked in fine-dining for several years before reaching a point where I had to make a choice to sacrifice everything for my dream, or take care of myself and

I worked in fine-dining for several years before reaching a point where I had to make a choice to sacrifice everything for my dream, or take care of myself and give up on the dream. I saw many things that contribute to the rampant alcohol and drug abuse. 1. You work obscene hours. The industry standard for fine-dining is to work 60+ hours a week, and you're on your feet pretty much 90% of it. Also, you're only getting payed around 35k a year with minimal benefits, although this is changing somewhat in the last few years. Drugs and alcohol are just kinda needed by most people to cope with the stress. 2. You work odd hours. Most fine-dining restaurants close around 11 pm, which means you'd get out somewhere between midnight and 1 am. There's nothing else to do when you get out besides go to another bar or restaurant and get wasted. Also, since you work in restaurants, you know other people that work in bars/restaurants. Thus, when you go out to other bars/restaurants, you usually know people who hook it up in terms of drinks. I went to so many bars after work where we'd get "industry discounts" and literally pay like 20% of the listed price. 3. You're surrounded by it. This is one of the most important ones in my opinion. When I worked in restaurants, it was very common for wine vendors to pop in during our prep periods and say something like, "Hey, we just got a special shipment of wine from this fancy place in Italy. Here's the pricing and a free sample bottle for you guys to try out!" Or your boss comes in one day and says, "Hey, this beer isn't selling so you guys should just drink this keg before it goes skunk on us," and now suddenly, there's a free, half-full keg in the walk-in. A lot of what prevents me from drinking is that I'm just lazy and it's expensive, but if someone is going to bring me booze for free to me on a regular basis, you better believe I'll be getting drunk on a regular basis too. 4. The people it draws. Restaurants are known for being pretty lax when it comes to background checks so it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone when you get people who have more clandestine backgrounds.

justsomehnguy 4y ago
> There's nothing else to do when you get out besides go to another bar or restaurant and get wasted As a regular one in a bar which is frequently visited by the guys after hours[0] I can only confirm this anecdata. > "Hey, this beer isn't selling so you guys should just drink this keg before it goes skunk on us," Yep, is a thing too. > but if someone is going to bring me booze for free to me on a regular basis, you better believe I'll be getting drunk on a regular basis too Of course. All other points doesn't help too. PS guess where am I writing this? [0] this is greatly depends on the location and the feel, but it is not an uncommon thing. If you are near this you would learn of such places pretty soon if you tend to be there after half of the midnight.
barry-cotter 4y ago
I never worked proper fine dining, just hotels and not exactly fancy restaurants and bars so I strongly suspect that’s the hospitality industry in general. Everything you wrote accords with my experience.
miked85 4y ago
I worked as a server at various restaurants through college. Alcohol/drug abuse along with servers being extremely promiscuous was the norm. It may be a good reason some choose to go into that line of work.
jamal-kumar 4y ago
I'm not sure, but I think this might be be regional. I worked as a chef doing fine dining for like two catered dinners, and it was actually the hardest physical labour I've ever done in a long time, but it was also immensely fun. My friend who got me into the job (He knows I like to cook) isn't a huge drug addict or alcoholic, might find him smoking a bit of weed but that's it. We live in a country with a vastly different drug culture to that of North America/Europe, though. Like 5-10$ bags of extremely pure cocaine and shit like that just has a way of keeping the locals off the harder stuff, and also a lack of a consumerist mindset. A paycheque that sucks in the occidental world goes waaaaaaaay longer out here (I only made like what 90$ a night doing this? That's like at least a month of groceries) When I worked in a kitchen at a popular thai restaurant in North America when I was a kid, I walked into the mini fridge to grab some noodles and the manager was in there taking a bump of blow, I kinda just froze and then the guy yelled at me. Then I got yelled at more for not getting the noodles fast enough. Quit that job and got into IT as soon as I could.
viraptor 4y ago
There's also lots of ego and us-vs-them in many places. For example chefs will often berate waiting staff and think they're better, which then becomes an issue where the front staff gets tips but don't feel like sharing them with the kitchen. And that's kind of tolerated by owners, because in fine dining a chef can leave with half the kitchen and take the restaurant's ranking with them. (awards are for chef+restaurant, they go away if the chef changes) I've seen very basic laws ignored by the managers as well, like the minimum number of days off.

justsomehnguy 4y ago

> There's nothing else to do when you get out besides go to another bar or restaurant and get wasted As a regular one in a bar which is frequently visited by the guys after hours[0] I can only confirm this anecdata. > "Hey, this beer isn't selling so you guys should just drink this keg before it goes skunk on us," Yep, is a thing too. > but if someone is going to bring me booze for free to me on a regular basis, you better believe I'll be getting drunk on a regular basis too Of course. All other points doesn't help too. PS guess where am I writing this? [0] this is greatly depends on the location and the feel, but it is not an uncommon thing. If you are near this you would learn of such places pretty soon if you tend to be there after half of the midnight.

barry-cotter 4y ago

I never worked proper fine dining, just hotels and not exactly fancy restaurants and bars so I strongly suspect that’s the hospitality industry in general. Everything you wrote accords with my experience.

miked85 4y ago

I worked as a server at various restaurants through college. Alcohol/drug abuse along with servers being extremely promiscuous was the norm. It may be a good reason some choose to go into that line of work.

jamal-kumar 4y ago

I'm not sure, but I think this might be be regional. I worked as a chef doing fine dining for like two catered dinners, and it was actually the hardest physical labour I've ever done in a long time, but it was also immensely fun. My friend who got me into the job (He knows I like to cook) isn't a huge drug addict or alcoholic, might find him smoking a bit of weed but that's it. We live in a country with a vastly different drug culture to that of North America/Europe, though. Like 5-10$ bags of extremely pure cocaine and shit like that just has a way of keeping the locals off the harder stuff, and also a lack of a consumerist mindset. A paycheque that sucks in the occidental world goes waaaaaaaay longer out here (I only made like what 90$ a night doing this? That's like at least a month of groceries) When I worked in a kitchen at a popular thai restaurant in North America when I was a kid, I walked into the mini fridge to grab some noodles and the manager was in there taking a bump of blow, I kinda just froze and then the guy yelled at me. Then I got yelled at more for not getting the noodles fast enough. Quit that job and got into IT as soon as I could.

viraptor 4y ago

There's also lots of ego and us-vs-them in many places. For example chefs will often berate waiting staff and think they're better, which then becomes an issue where the front staff gets tips but don't feel like sharing them with the kitchen. And that's kind of tolerated by owners, because in fine dining a chef can leave with half the kitchen and take the restaurant's ranking with them. (awards are for chef+restaurant, they go away if the chef changes) I've seen very basic laws ignored by the managers as well, like the minimum number of days off.