Why Do You Love Your Job?

[lisa_antonia]

Lately most of the posts i've read here only address the challenges of a job with food.

So what do you love about your job?

In my current pastry gig, I love the people I work with. I usually get to pick one dessert of my choice to make whenever we change the menu. I love having a little creative control despite my relatively limited experience. My hours are good.

Despite coming home exhausted some nights and occasional problems in the personal life, I find my work very stimulating and rewarding.

[Timh]

I'm one of the "adreneline junkies". as well a someone who needs structure. I also like leading a team into the unknowns of service and emerging unscathed. I also find great respite in working with raw product and developing it into something refined and finished. It doesn't suck either that we all eat well, drink good wine, and meet loads of interesting people nightly.

[TJHarris]

I really get stoked on seeing a dining room full of people enjoying what we have created for them. The rush of service is cool. Every day is a new adventure. New people, new products, New ideas to explore.

[K8memphis]

I've mentioned it recently here but we call it ringing someone's bell (not in the prize fight sense like in the hit the jackpot sense). I mean I consider myself a baker and an artist. And I love to make someone happy with a sweet personalized creation for their celebration like a wedding cake or whatever.

To take it to another level, my son is a chef and it is pure joy to know that he enjoys and strives to ring people's bells. ding ding ding

Edited May 1, 2007 by K8memphis (log)

[Alchemist]

I love my job. I love bartending. I am not an actor. I'm not a writer. I'm not a model. I'm a f&%!*ing bartender. I’ve flipped burgers and eggs in a 24 hour diner, waited tables, washed dishes, worked a door in a club, managed (I use that term lightly), I have sous chefed, worked a line in a four star restaurant, I have unplugged toilets, battled rats outside a fast food s&%t hole at three in the morning. I learned so much from all that and I think that it was all leading me on the inexorable path to here. Here, to Nirvana, bartending in NYC.

I live for the hours when it is three or four deep at the bar, and I’m in the zone that time when I can do no wrong. If a glass is dropped I catch it. You get inspiration for a Cocktail, and it is as good as you thought it would be. Movement becomes dance, drink ideas become ambrosia. When I see someone take a sip of my cocktail and they shudder, close their eyes and their toes curl. It makes me giddy to bring such pleasure.

I am master of my domain. I am performer, chef, captain in a nasty squall. Guys throw money at me and beautiful women bat their eyelashes, and leave their phone numbers on lipstick smudged bev naps.

Then there is working with another bartender that you groove with. To be so in sync with another person that you duck in below their sledge hammer shake, garnish and straw their drink, and ease out to spin and finish what is in your cocktail with flourish. Goddamn!!! It is like playing squash in a submarine, for six hours, with another human, all the while the barbarian hordes are clamoring at the gates for more, and more, and more.

I get goosebumps from the summer smell of bruised mint, the burn of good rye, the complexity of a good wine, the look of a Loch Ness lemon twist in a wicked wet gin martini, the smokiness of Compass Box Pete Monster, a Mai Tai made classically, the way essential oils rainbow on the surface of a Manhattan. The clatter of shaking a Ramos, sounding like a runaway subway train. Life would not be complete without the ice that forms on a Queens Park swizzle, the layer of creamy head on an Apple Blow Fizz, the sound of the shakers popping metal on metal, the mini mushroom flare of a flamed twist done well, building a perfect Pousse Café, the laughter and private jokes that take a random group of people and bring them to a well oiled machine.

And I overlook the cuts and bruises that make me a working man. I have no problem with celebrities, investment bankers and trust fund hipsters looking down on me for what I do. I tolerate the old chicken and pasta family meals that I'm expected to exist on, the lack of insurance, hearing "One More Time" six times a night, the aching muscles that lull me to sleep.

I love the accomplishment of digging myself out of a hole that I thought was not possible. I dream of the clack and chittering of the printer that I can’t keep up with. I love the feeling when the shift is done and you know that you just made so many people happy, full, buzzed. I launched them on to more great cocktails, good sloppy 4am food and uninhibited sex that they will talk about for years.

It just doesn’t get better than that. With a wee dram of hubris, I feel sorry for people who create art that hits only one sense. Van Gough's Starry Nights is a masterpiece, but you can’t smell, taste, touch, or hear it. I make art that hits all senses. Organileptic, baby.

I never have to deal with rush hour on the subway. I rarely have to be functional before 4pm. My job is to get rich men and beautiful women drunk. This can lead to places that would make Heff, and Hunter, and Bukowski go home feeling like a eight-year-old girl in pigtails.

Another thing that I love is meeting people that share a joy of living, and an appreciation of the best things in life. All of my friends love good food, drink, books, clothes, style, and humor.

If I try to imagine spending 9-5 in a cubicle my blood turns as cold as a daiquiri shaken to 24 degrees farenheit.

Yes, sometimes my body, soul and morals hurt at the end of a grueling shift, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

I will repost tomorrow to add tomorrow.

Edit for rum soaked syntax/spelling/meanderings.

Edited for daisy17 rating.

Edited May 2, 2007 by Alchemist (log)

[lisa_antonia]

I love my job.

←

Wonderfully described post.

It's nice to see other people live for the everyday.

[Oyster Guy]

Why do I love my job?

A good question. I am an oyster shucker by trade.

I do a job that scares the living shit out of what is known in my line of work as "civilians."

You get cut almost everyday, then expose your new cuts to lemon juice, hot sauces and vinegars, you get asked a million questions and the most frequently asked one is, "Do you cut yourself?"

And then, they expect you to react to that question in a socially well adjusted way.

It's enough to drive the most gentle soul to acts of incredible carnage.

I love the fact that I can do a job that very few people in the world are really proficient at. And I can do it well. Very well.

I work with a product that is alive and one that very few people know a whole hell of lot about it.

It's not like ice cream where you can go to your corner store and have 31 flavors to choose from and you know what they are going to taste like.

I love teaching people about oysters the most. I help people make a connection with their food.

Most people get their food in huge supermarkets. They don't get their meat from a butcher or their fish from a fishmonger.

It comes wrapped in plastic, no identification with where it came from or what it used to be.

I like telling them how their oysters are grown, where they come from, what they eat and most importantly: are they an aphrodisiac?

"Depends on who you are with," I say. "Peanut butter can be an aphrodisiac if you're with the right person."

I am an educator with a sharp knife in my hand. The mud on my apron and the occasional swallow of an oyster or two attests to my knowing what I am talking about.

Yes, I love the adrenaline and the joy described so very eloquently in the above post

of serving the rich and the famous and putting them in a complete state of bliss if only temporarily.

I don't care if people look down on me for what I do. How many of them can truly say that they love their work?

I love it when I convince someone to try their first oyster and they love it and I have created a memory that for some people lasts their entire life.

I love being knee deep in the shit, the orders spitting out of the printer like a toilet paper roll unrolling and people just going right off at the bar.

I love it when guests press money into my hand while telling me what a great time they had. And when they return with their friends saying, "You just got to meet this guy. He's amazing!"

I love sitting down at the end of it, having the chef place an ice cold beer in my hand and thank me for all my hard work and knowing that I really kicked ass and being happy with it.

I am soaked down the front from the oyster liquor and ice and my feet are soaking wet, my tendons are screaming at me, yet I am at peace with everything and everyone. I love the feeling of deep friendship and bonds that I have with my co-workers as we have just gone through an intense battle and won.

I love the fact that I never take any work stress home. When it's over, it's over.

But I can't wait till the next day.

Most of all, I love to share my passion for oysters with people and my job allows me that stage every night on which to perform.

Because, my friends, that is what we do the best. We perform.

The servers, bartenders, managers and last and certainly not the least, the cooks and everyone else in this line of work.

The restaurant or bar is our world, our stage and we, we are the players!

Just my 2 cents

Keep on shucking

Oyster Guy

Edited May 2, 2007 by Oyster Guy (log)

[Malaclypse]

I love the kitchen people I work with. I love seeing people enjoy the food I have made. I love the fact that I can be having the worst day ever and the second I hear that micros chatter it all goes away. I love cooking, I love the rush of service.