Chefs can’t stay in the kitchen forever!

“Only Mad Dogs & Englishmen Go Out in The Mid Day Sun”

Believed to be coined by Rudyard Kipling, mocking the behaviour of in English men in hot countries.

I Can relate this to a chef’s profession? Its hot, its unsociable, its manic, its 100 mph

Is it our own fault for entering into the lion’s den? The day has already started breakfast is over or is it? Service staff & management trying to get late breakies in. Lunch is on the way, the kitchen is getting hotter, pressure is mounting and you still have to get to the evening prep. Then you’re slammed it’s like getting kicked around the octagon for hours upon end but you can’t take cover & roll up into a ball, it’s over then it’s clean down and the bad choices begin if you hadn’t been at them to get you through the day, no wonder we have a high rate of substance abuse & addiction within our craft.

Do hoteliers/restaurateurs/caterers play their part in the ensuing madness? Throwing us mere scraps at feeding time, with poor working conditions expecting us to be on best performance day in day out in “The Big Top” It’s like something out of Billy Smarts Circus. No wonder sometimes we snap & bite back. Thank god the days of the performing animals are coming to an end, it’s time we changed our industry.

We all can’t be elite chefs or restaurateurs but we all seem to have the same ethos & work ethic. Does our industry & craft get the credit it deserves? It only takes three to four years to get your papers but you’re not really a chef it’s a life time of ongoing learning that makes you what you are. Our pride our passion & our inbuilt conscience not to let the team down, this can lead to being prisoners to our employers.

We need to break the cycle of bad employers and plot our way forward as the years go so quickly to avoid broken bodies & tired minds with no lump sum payout and having to rely on the state pension & if the government get their way that will be abolished (pretty rich form them considering their expenses, pensions gained over a very short time frame) Seriously who wants a chef of 60 years plus in their kitchen their culinary mind started slowing 30 years ago their agility isn't what it was & are more likely to be off due to illness & the embarrassment of the young ones running rings around them. Not every chef craves the responsibility but they are still big team players for the ambitious ones who want to be progress the world seems to be their oyster, if you staying put you will need lateral transfer rewards.

I friend of mind said that they enjoyed my previous blogs but maybe I should consider adding some more positive aspects for this one. I thought & I plotted it out weeks ago I just had to tie it all together, then I got a call from a friend of mine asking for a bit of help for a few hours. Out the fecking window did my draft go for this blog.

I arrive at the venue, give me the menu and talk me through how you want me to deliver this & usually I’m pretty good to go. What I wasn’t expecting the place to be run completely on team spirit. Stress stress stress, stress everywhere no screaming or shouting & no falling out, just people talking faster than usual, expressing the tightness of the deadline, running everywhere & the fear in their eyes the tension was unreal. Short staffed, covid adding its part & 7 members down & the goodwill of other sections is digging them out (the same old story) with no help from the company hierarchy. When service was over you could feel the relief & the post mortem began, what could they have done better. In house management have to take some blame for this, not requesting help & trying to contain everything in house it only manages unintentionally to beat the staff into the ground & will through time will kill team spirit & drive them away. The company’s revenue stream, is sums I’ve never seen in all my years working in this industry. Asking for help is not a weakness. It also brought back to me that I had helped them out months back. Lots of their staff were working but suffering with the effects of booster jabs, team spirit in play again but I would imagine the financial costs of taking time off played its part. That was also a hard watch. If you had a dog in that much pain you know what the humane thing would be to do. (a example of the massive difference between public & private employment)

How do we keep chefs in the industry, retrain & transfer them safely to retirement?

This is what I think, we should have mandatory education on health & wellbeing, substance abuse & counselling & at least basic health care,3/4 day working week, access to continuous education with transferable options to change profession. We should have the same working contracts as the public sector to include end of term payouts & pensions.(after all we are contributing to theirs)

Nothing can been done without government supports & we can’t expect small businesses to be able to afford such changes & we can’t expect to transfer these costs onto the consumer. We can’t expect pay outs/breaks wily nilly like we seen in covid, it should be balanced and fair but controlled by revenue.

What do you think?

CHEFS LETS STAND UP TOGETHER & CHANGE OUR INDUSTRY FOR EVER

YOURS IN COOKING. DOG

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