On Mar 23, 2013, at 2:27 PM, Stephen Mackey <[email protected]> wrote:
> Ray I just want to tell you how much I loved your response regarding > emotional attachment to your job. I encountered similar responses from people > when I left the culinary world. People often say "Wasn't cooking your > passion?" I often say "it still is! I love food and wine! But I worked 100 > hours a week, missed every holiday, missed every birthday, missed every > weekend, for $60000 a year!". The romanticized view of the restaurant > industry is similar to the writer world I assume. I left the last restaurant > I ran to pursue a graduate degree so I can make better money and hopefully > work better hours. If someone paid me 100k to run a restaurant and let me off > a few more weekends I'd leap at the chance today, but that's just not the > case. > I have this friend from college who is perhaps one of the best chefs I've ever known. He worked in restaurants for a little while out of college, but quit and went into other fields--he now is a QA/QC manager for a firm that makes water testing equipment to medical standards, specializing in all the overseas ISO stuff so it can be sold in the EU as well as the US. Ask him why he doesn't cook for a living? He'll tell you because he likes living. If he had stayed in the kitchen, at this point if he was still alive, he'd probably be working on his 2nd heart attack and/or 1st stroke. The hours are a bitch, the pay isn't that great, the frustration of running a good kitchen is like being a cat herder, and the times things go wrong v. go right about about 3 to 1. And, I have known five chefs in my life. One has a happy marriage; he's David Abella, the corporate chef for Roy Yamaguchi's and he's a very rare bird. The other guys? Divorces. pissed off girlfriends, and a lousy personal life. Not fo me, which is OK, 'cause basically all I do is grill meant and toss salads. Oh, I an boil rice, too. Best,R.E.F. ---- www.crydee.com Never attribute to malice what can satisfactorily be explained away by stupidity.
