@MattyC, can I ask what your new job is?
5 hours ago, MattyC said:To me it just seems like there is no end game for being a chef anymore, that it's 'cook for a while then find something else when you get burnt out or have a family'. I wonder if this is another reason why nobody can find good help anymore either, because why start a career in something you'll have to leave down the road anyway if you want a family or to not have health issues when older.
I see various industrial and cultural shifts happening. My first restaurant job started in 1999, after college and a few years of baking in bakeries and coffee shops, so it hasn't been forever, but it (the industry, the world) still seems to have changed in that time. Cooking school was not on my radar at all when I went off to college in 1988. I grew up watching Jacques and Julia on PBS, my dad was an avid gardener and my mom a skilled cook, we went out to restaurants for birthdays, and I liked to make cookies for my little brothers, but chef didn't seem like a career option.
Men are expected to spend more time with their children than a generation or two ago. My dad was the old school dad, go to work, pay the bills, read the newspaper after dinner and pretty much ignore the kids unless someone was in need of a spanking. Kids barely get spanked anymore, and spouses want to see their partner and share in childcare. Once people have kids, working dinner service hours upsets the work-life balance. The whole concept of work-life balance is relatively new - Americans are becoming more willing to sacrifice money for happiness. The factory jobs are gone, women have careers, and there is a lot more encouragement to follow your bliss.
It's great that food TV and chefs becoming celebrities have brought more legitimacy to the profession. But the explosion of cooking schools has not only sold thousands of people on delusions of grandeur, it has led them to believe that cooking professionally is a creative endeavor. I will not deny there being a creative element, but consistency and problem solving are probably more important. So you have all these cooks who think they are chefs and want to play and be creative. What happened to learning from the chef and executing as instructed? The same thing that happened to yelling and throwing pans? I think cooks have gone from working under a chef for at least a year at a time to working with a chef for as long as it takes to satisfy their curiosity. I don't know where the work ethic has gone. Even if you're only going to do a job for 5, 10, or 15 years, why would you not do it well? I think its more the special snowflake phenomenon, nobody wants to be told what to do or be uncomfortable. Everything is supposed to be fun and engaging.
But is there really anything wrong with evolving into a new career? You kind of sound like you wish you could be in the kitchen forever. Some people do make it work. I definitely want to stay hands-on, but my long-term chocolatier plan is to get machines to temper and enrobe and retail staff to do the wrapping. And after 10-15 years of that, I'll either retire or try something else.
