Is an industry wide problem found locally?

Is there a city where this isn’t a problem?

This is the whole industry.

Never again. I make significantly less than I did during my time in the industry. I’m struggling.

But never again.

I worked in some kitchens in my late teens and early twenties. This was 25 years ago in a kind of rural area way smaller than Richmond and it was the same shit then.

I agree. My son who is 28, has been working ten years as a cook in Richmond. I watched the show called the Bear and recomended it to him, as it dealt with the honest environment in most restaurants. He watched the show and told me he almost turned it off as it gave him PTSD. Restaurant work, suffers from the same Capitalist bullshit as everyother business. Treat and pay your workers badly, while trying to convince your employes you are doing them a favor by abusing you this way, that its part of the training. The problem isn't restuarants, its about trying to feed people with the Capitalist approach of raking in the most money for the least amount of money spent. As my son would say, there are way too many restuarants. If you can't make enough money to pay your workers a living wage, then get out of the business. Covid and the advent of Door Dash only compounded the problem for kitchen staff. They are now suppose to cook for an entire restuarant, while feeding an entire city at the same time with no additional help. The only thing big cities have is a great many more terrible customers.

[deleted]

What's the solution?

22 years in the industry, 12 here in Richmond. It's a problem here there and everywhere. The article is sugar-coated honestly with how bad the industry can be.

Yep, workin for a lil over 10yrs in the industry and job hopped quite a bit. There are some god awful places in Richmond. Little to no training, skeleton crews, vindictive managers, managers that cuss employees out, managers that throw shit, absolutely clueless fuckin managers, shit pay, long hours, constantly changing menus/order of operations, unsanitary conditions, bad food storage, not dating anything, mixing old product with new, total lack of safety/communication, and a constant push to make workers do more with zero raises or hiring the appropriate amount of people to cut down on labor.

I love my work but the industry has pushed me to seek pursuing higher education and leaving the industry. It is exhausting and the amount times management turns an easy job into a shitshow. My prep job is hard work but it's so much better than easy work MADE hard. Which is a massive issue in restaraunts. Easy work made difficult and becoming mentally exhausting day in and day out for low wages.

Restaurants as they exist can only ever trend towards being horrible places to work. We need radically different ideas of going out to eat if we want an industry that doesn't function off of chewing up and spitting out the people that make it tick.

Amen, never again.

Never ever again !

A solution is for someone to run a non-toxic place and attract the best talent in the area and make people compete on culture.

Low barrier to entry jobs all have extremely abusive environments as they are touted as jobs that the employee should be grateful for because they are told it's an unskilled job. Unfortunately the vast majority of employees in the industry (not top earning chefs but other back of the house staff) believe this bs about it being unskilled and do have to capitulate to the abusive boss because they are dependent on the income.

This is where unions can be useful or even just open discussion among the workers, both of which are federally protected rights that restaurants are caught breaking often. Law breaking of worker rights is so prevalent that businesses are legally required to post certain laws, and they still break them!

We have to raise the floor on bad behavior, legally. That means ending bad practices like week-to-week scheduling, clopens, wage theft, sexual harrassment, and retaliatory firings / hour reductions. The tipping system also encourages a lot of bad behavior by making servers dependant on customer good will. Until that happens, it will always be cheaper and offer better margins to run a restaurant like an asshole. That also means we as consumers need to understand that on some level the dining out experience has been subsidized by allowing poor behavior.

That can be a viable business model, but only for high end restaurants and bars. Providing good working conditions, benefits, and fair pay is expensive and those costs are passed on to the customer.

Jasper is a good example of this. They attract talent by offering a great work environment and fair pay/benefits but it costs an arm and a leg to drink there. If we want that kind of work environment to be the norm we have to be willing for those prices to be the norm. A lot of people are not willing to pay that price.

To be fair, there are exceptions. I've cooked at the same restaurant for the better part of a decade, and while there are the usual issues you would face in a high stress environment, it is the most non-toxic BOH experience I've ever had.

Back when I worked at the Cheesecake Factory I would pull shifts from 4pm to 4 am almost every weekend. The money was absurd, but I swear I aged 5 years in the 2 I worked there. And developed back problems.

Haven’t even thought about working in the food industry since. Never again.

[removed]

Papi’s be like

I’m a felon.

It hasn’t been 5 years since my conviction so even most second chance minded companies that pay decently such as Amazon, FedEx, UPS won’t take me.

I worked at two restaurants in Richmond, one being Papi’s, where they told me if they had enough people there post-grand-opening I could work for one of the numerous other restaurants the owners owned in the area.

Instead, I work for a weekend, not just being a bar back, bartender, dishwasher, and server all at once, but trying to hide the fact that literal shit water was coming up from the basement and leaking into the bar and dance floor, troubleshooting random issues, and being the honorary dishwasher. I never signed a W2 for them, I explained I was a felon and what the charges were, which they allegedly respected my honesty for.

So on pay day they tell me there’s not a check written out for me. And also there was a Covid scare. So I spend the next 3 days trying to get my check after getting tested. One of the last things the owner said to me was “Let your girlfriend know she has a job if she comes here” because he had been drunkenly harassing and hitting on her, gave her shots, and mistakenly called my girlfriend’s friend “Bambi,” who was allegedly someone who looked just like the friend, that had worked for him for a day. He would not leave my girl and “Bambi” alone that whole night. He also routinely slapped the posteriors of the servers, and would touch guests like they were his concubines.

Basically after picking up the check, which I was in very bad need of financially (still haven’t recovered from this) they removed me from all the group chats, immediate superiors, managers and even the co-owner wouldn’t answer my texts or calls about why I was removed so I just presumed I was fired. Never figured out what happened.

A month or two later I’m still without a job, and also without unemployment benefits. No bills have been paid. A local spot JKogi hires me as dishwasher, the owner tells me to not use the dishwasher my second night, then tells me to go home early because the dishes are too oily. He wasn’t there all day until the moment after I had just prepared the rice, and was momentarily about to drain the sinks to continue manually washing the dishes. Worked for two nights, the owner decides he would rather wash his own dishes, which is what he was doing when I came to pick up my check, without further disrespect or incident.

I cried for about an hour that day, once jkogi let me go.

Now all I do is use my friend’s door dash account and split the measly money I get from riding around in my failed inspection, headlight-out, vehicle that I can’t even make enough money with fraudulent door dash to make the monthly payment on.

Unionize

I worked at Mannino’s in Virginia Beach as a prep cook.

It was such an unnecessary amount of stress for just $9 an hour. At the time I was 21 and had low self esteem so I felt this desire to prove myself as a cook. I enjoyed being pushed to work hard but the level of harassment and personal bullying had a huge negative impact on my personal and professional development

I worked under a sous chef who got in my face and screamed at me over some really petty issue while I was plating a dessert he bought for a server he liked.

Their were threats of violence, a lot of deep shaming for trivial mistakes that are a part of the learning process. Territorial issues, and gross treatment of the servers. Male servers were called f****t’s and female servers got unsolicited texts and calls from kitchen staff that would get their phone number from the list of contact info for employees

I have so much regret for the year I wasted working there, and finding any kind of charm in such a negative work environment. Many of the staff tried to justify their behavior saying things like, “hey man it’s not personal”, or “hey in the end we’re one big family. A dysfunctional one but we’re a family” and that’s all a lie. It manipulates naive workers into putting up with treatment that should honestly be illegal

And the thing is, when you step back and look at the hours worked and the lack of benefits, the money really isn't "absurd." It just feels that way while you're trapped in the cycle.

Please share. Love to support that.

Run the economy hot enough so that shitty managers lose staff as people go elsewhere.

4AM at the Cheesecake Factory?

I'm the sous chef at Helen's. There are, of course, issues that all restaurants are going to face, but our BOH is consistently drama free, I don't remember the last time my chef barked, much less THREW anything, at me. We're all paid as well as the restaurant can afford to, regular raises, no issues with taking off as long as we can find a cover. It helps that we are a very small team. Chef, two line cooks, and a dishwasher max per shift and we all do our own prep. Believe me, it's fucking hard work, but the newest person on the line has been with us for five years, and the Chef has been here 18 years now. I think that speaks highly for how we feel about working here.

Love Helen's! My wife and I were already considering having dinner there before an upcoming bday party. We just agreed on it after reading this reply.

Glad to hear it! I look forward to cooking for y'all.

It so weird to read this article. It almost feels like the author is… surprised? The industry environment is the same - big city, small town, hillbilly podunk. I’ve worked in DC, Fredericksburg, Richmond. There isn’t anywhere where this isn’t standard.

I can understand that, but also think many people who aren't industry insiders would be very surprised at what kind of misconduct is permissible and commonplace in the BOH.

I agree with almost everything said here and have experienced the infamous BOH v. FOH war in richmond, and many other places. But unfortunately the tipping system is truthfully the only reason people stay in FOH and can somewhat stand their lives. Especially in more "fine dining" places where it more closely resembles other creative industries (aka cocktail mixing, table side service, etc. (I realize it also has major issues.) It needs to be done fairly and each place is different, so I'm leaving it vague for now. Respectfully, I want to just state this opinion and not reddit argue about it at this time. Some will agree, lots won't, and that's OK.

Boiling down the problem to behavioral issues as if those aren’t in part a direct result of exploitation from owners (often via management)who sometimes don’t even know how to run their own with their own hands business, is disingenuous as fuck. Spend more on your employees and less on new cars and houses. The cognitive dissonance is making my head spin

Which is also surprising - everyone knows someone who has worked in a restaurant, whether it’s FOH or BOH. We all talk about the bullshit we’ve endured. People know, they just don’t want to know, because then something would have to change.

When you take off, are you paid? I.e., are you allotted any paid time off?

Only the Chef gets paid time off, since he's salary and works like 70 hour weeks. I have had them give me a food stipend to go out to eat at pricier spots when I go on vacation with my wife, which is a definite perk.

As a child of the industry and having lived in many places and been raised in many restaurants, I can say with confidence that the unpleasant atmosphere of both back and front of house is endemic to the food industry. Not just in the restaurants themselves but in the suppliers as well. And no, I don't know how to fix it. Like all things it starts with management and pay scales. But people have to want to change and as far as I know, no one in management wants to.

Too bad there’s not a restaurant workers union, they can have an electricians union, teamsters work for many different companies, obviously there’s way more too it than that, but if the employers, law enforcement, bbb, and osha don’t have your back then who does. I’d love to see my friends in kitchens get paid better; and the people I don’t know for that matter. Our voices have to reach the high towers, we gotta scream together

Always has been.

Anahahahhaa this article is hilarious considering the context. I wonder if they talked to any former employees of the subject at Eat restaurants because I bet they’d have a lot to say.

God, I wish you luck. This was so hard to read.

I can't get over the fact that they were expecting you to do a perfect job on your first day at JKogi, the owner could have sacrificed a couple of minutes to problem solve and maybe train, like managers are supposed to do! People can be ruthless.

I wish I could hug you :(

anyone hitting the bar at midnight at the cheesecake factory really needs to reconsider their approach

I worked in the dish room/busser. The amount of dishes and deep cleaning needed to be done was insane.

Most nights we ended around 3am since we used to close at 12:30am. But if it was a like $30,000 night we were there till 4 easily.

I would be very surprised if the average Style Weekly reader wasn't aware of this already.

I got hired as a “kitchen manager” and was paid the LOWEST LEGAL annual salary a person could receive. No benefits. No PTO. No vacation time. I was expected to work 60+ hours a week sometimes. I got to the worst point of my drinking during this time. Every time I would open the conversation of a raise they always came back with stuff I needed to improve on. Even when labor was brought up I would literally work open-close and use minimal staff possible. Never ever saw a raise.

I ended up quitting because an employee came in still drunk from the night before and was threatening bodily harm on me. When I realized I did not want to handle the situation myself I asked another manager. They just stood back silent and let this dude continue to threaten me. I realized right there I would never have the support i knew I deserved. Owners didn’t even do anything.

First time I had ever walked on a job. And I never returned to the restaurant/bar industry. I fell into such a bad depression.

A month went by and they actually reached out asking me if I could come back because they needed the help. I kindly declined.

Actually have ran into some of the staff that worked under me there and they all apologized to me about how I was treated and that I didn’t deserve it. But nobody ever wants to speak up in the moment because that’s just how the industry is.

Well, I can agree with that, that people in RVA know, but they "don't want to know" or choose to look the other way bc they don't want to lose access to whatever chef they want access to so they can use that access to try to blow up their Instagram numbers. 🤔

[deleted]

I try to warn people to avoid going into kitchen work. Just suck it up and go front of house. You'll never want to go back in a kitchen again.

Kitchen staff get completely abused. Stop letting servers make 2x what you make for half the work... become a server.

Dang 30k nights. Hope you were making bank too.