Hungry, exhausted, sore, and overheated it’s hard to take care of your personal needs when there are orders that need to be completed. The head chef suddenly yells that he needs 3 baked scallops. You’re falling behind during the dinner rush at the end of a 60-hour work week. Your brain cannot function, and you feel you are no longer mentally or physically stable. This is the reality of working in the restaurant industry.
Over the summer I was sucked into the restaurant industry, I was a line cook, I cooked things from french fries to saute shrimp and steak. I started in May with a total of 14 hours per week cooking shrimp and fish tacos. As soon as school got out, my hours were changed significantly. My 14 hour work week changed to 65 hours weekly. I was coming in from 9am-10:30pm 6 days a week. For the first 2 weeks I was loving it, I was making great money, cooking food, and was working with some pretty cool guys.
Soon the work caught up to me. I found myself no longer able to get sleep, eat, or do anything else besides work. This is the restaurant industry, once you are working all day when you go home to sleep and relax your brain is still in work mode. This happens to almost every kitchen worker, which then leads to many turning to substance abuse to help them stay relaxed and sleep at night. Lack of appetite is another major effect on your body from overworking. Something I got from people that did not work in a kitchen with me was it must be amazing knowing how to cook all that food so that you can eat it for yourself. In all honesty when you’re handling food all day it is the last thing you want to eat. I used to have a bowl of fruit every morning and that was about it for the entire day.
“I have been consistently working in the restaurant industry since I was 14 years old,” said Matt Rowe, a Triton alum. “After high school I moved to Miami and was working as a full time chef. I moved back to Mass in my mid twenties, hoping to escape the restaurant industry, but I was young and full of hope. Here I am 32 managing a restaurant. I barely have time to spend with my wife and daughter.”
Despite the difficulty of the industry, these are the hours that are needed to fully run a kitchen. The highest paid workers in a kitchen in Massachusetts make around $25 an hour with overtime (1.5 times the hourly pay). So these crazy hours are a necessity to make a living in the restaurant industry. Along with the money side of things there is so much that goes into working in a kitchen, such as food prep in the mornings and continuously cooking throughout the day and long into night, which creates a large mess that will need to be cleaned at the end of the night.
Not working long hours would have a serious effect on your cooking and quality of service. The most important part of food or a dish is not only what the ingredients are but how it looks. On my first day my boss told me “You eat with your eyes not your mouth.” Seeing a messy, poorly assembled dish can really have a serious effect on how the dish might taste. But how can you properly put together an eye-pleasing dish when you’re exhausted. I personally can remember being so tired that I forgot to put the finishing touches on many of my dishes. In the big picture a little garnish of greens, sprinkle of olive oil and salt and pepper does not make a huge difference to the taste, but it can seriously impact the looks of the food.
Being hungry, tired, and in pain are not ideal feelings to have when you’re cooking on a busy line during a dinner rush. Everybody needs to relax throughout the week. If your brain is constantly working it will never have a chance to relax. These 60-70 hour work weeks can seriously impact your day to day life. All you will have time for is work, and then a little bit of sleep.
