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> You’re really trying to teach someone to better themselves through their own personal integrity. I am subbed to /r/KitchenConfidential sub (a place where che

• teractiveodular 2y ago
  Commercial kitchens are incredibly high pressure workplaces and many famous chefs are also assholes. It doesn't excuse Chang, but there's definitely a certain personality type that's drawn to and can function in these environments.
  • taeric 2y ago
    This "high pressure workplace" has always struck me as crazy. I grant that it looks true from the anecdotes, but it also seems that the vast majority of the pressure is self created. Often times specifically created by that second point, that many famous chefs are assholes. Worse, as most of their asshole behavior seems to stem from the fact that they are buckling under pressure. Pressure that they themselves are causing.
    • wnc3141 2y ago
      I've always wondered about this. Apart from the small fine dining market, people just want decent food at a decent price and timeliness.
      • taeric 2y ago
        But I am right that the general narrative is definitely that kitchen help staff is a high stress job? I just don't get it. Now I'm curious if this is reputation that is legit, or just one that everyone parrots. :(
        • gravatron 2y ago
          High end kitchens really are high pressure, even though at the end of the day its just food. From the moment you walk in the door for your shift, you are already hours behind. You will be given a couple of hours to prep an insane amount of food from scratch, often bouncing between 5-10 stations at a time to make it happen. I worked at a place that I was expected at all times to have food cooking on a giant flat top, charbroil grill, multiple ovens, 6 burner sauté range, deep fryers, steamers. While all this is cooking you also need to be doing the cold prep of cutting, measuring, weighing and portioning all of this prep work. After you finish this, you will have a little bit of time to start a mad rush to set up your actual station for the service. I worked at a place once where this was a two hour ordeal to set everything up while basically working at a slight jog the entire time. And all of this can be really heavy when it comes to moving around large buckets and containers of ice, for example. Finally, once service starts on a busy weekend for example, you are now looking at a 4-5 hour rush with a minimum ambient temperature of 95 degrees, where you will be absolutely slammed with multiple orders all coming in steadily, requiring a tremendous amount of skill to balance the timing of all this. Think about how hard it can be just to time a main protein with a couple of side dishes when you are just cooking at home for the family, and now imagine having to cook that same amount of food 300 times within a few hours. There will be no break during any of this either, standing and running around the entire time. Once the service rush is finally over, you might think that your day is winding down, but think again. You now get to start the multi hour process of breaking down and cleaning every single thing you dirtied over the course of the night. This will also be a somewhat fast paced time of the night as labor costs are always a concern in the restaurant industry, so there is no time to slack here either. Finally the shift is done and you can go home after 10-12 hours, stuff your face with a peanut butter and jelly, and do it all again tomorrow, since you work 6 days a week, every holiday, every weekend. I am a software engineer now and I can confidently say that I have never had a day in this profession even remotely close to as stressful as just a regular Tuesday could be in the restaurant industry.
          • taeric 2y ago
            I mean, this sounds legit, but it also sounds like any other job. Have you worked construction? You will have an absurd amount of stuff to get through, with no help if the weather decides not to cooperate. Bus driver? Good luck if traffic is bad. Teacher? Hope the kids are cooperative today. Working in a tech company when your stack is down? That is, you are correct that it is higher stress than a healthy software job. It doesn't take a lot of searching to see that "grind" for game devs is absurd, though. And I'm sure you can find stories of toxic teams in any big company. That is all to say, a ton of that pressure being "high stress" is specifically from people buckling under the pressure. I think it is fair to say that working an active event at the likes of Amazon can be as pressured as any food service work. Doesn't mean it has to be high stress.
• __loam 2y ago
  Ironically I've heard Gordon Ramsey is actually a pretty swell guy despite the impression some of his shows give. You can see it when he's trying to genuinely empathize with the people on kitchen nightmares and actually help them, or when he goes to a place like remote India to try any chutney and he's being extremely respectful to the local culture. He gets passionate and angry but there's little condescension unless you're a professional chef who should know better and he's playing it up for the camera.
  • esperent 2y ago
    Is this actually substantiated by people who've worked with him? Or is it put out by his PR team? Because I've also heard this several times, but only through comments like this on the internet.
    • chausen 2y ago
      He has been on shows where he’s an ass and shows where he is not. Watching both, it seems like the former is purposely done for the drama and latter is closer to what he’s actually like. Who knows what he’s like with no cameras in an actual kitchen, and maybe it’s just because he’s older now, but it seems to me that the majority of content he’s in he seems really nice.
    • tayo42 2y ago
      Iirc his UK shows are turned down alot. Though I guess either the US or the UK personality could be the fake one lol