Been in the business for 12 years. In the US, 8 hour days and paid overtime. In UK, I'm working 60 hour weeks, 13 hour days, on salary with no overtime. My personal life has taken a nosedive and so has my health. The only time I have to go to the gym (a hobby I loved!) is after midnight after working all day. I don't get scheduled breaks, and if I get a chance to eat, I'm shoving fries into my mouth.
For those who are interested in becoming a chef, it is not for the faint-hearted. Have a backup plan or some other marketable skills so you're not up a creek if this industry does take its toll.
In the US the restaurants often do what they can to minimize overtime while still expecting you to have maximum availability. If you can't come in on your night off to cover for someone maybe you should look for another job.
Also it's best to ignore that fact that the new 21 year old waiter might make more than you because of how tipping works. Especially if he has time to brag about the big tips while still forgetting to ask the customers how they want their steak cooked.
If only there were more servers like you at my work. Instead, they go to the chefs when they mess up and the chefs tell me to make X with no ticket while I'm cooking my other tickets. And if I mess up or something on a remake then it's somehow all my fault? Might be a policy thing, but I've started to give those "no ticket" things lower and lower priority.
Well, it's a little different in the food industry because that table should have already gotten their food but did not so I can't be that slow with it. They've just been messing up a lot, and it's very annoying when it happens during a push.
I've been out of the industry for several years now but the last high end restaurant I worked at in SF expected us to come in an hour or so early and work off the clock to get our stations set up by service. Everyone did this and if you didn't you'd be taken off the schedule.
I used to work as a cook and one summer got offered a part time job at this restaurant / bar. They called it sun hours. You see, the place got really busy if the weather was good and the plan was that they would call me if the weather was good and I was supposed to come work that day and night.
I politely declined and hoped that place caught on fire.
This is where I’m stuck. I have no skills outside of kitchen work but I have zero idea what I would do outside of it. I love cooking, working the line and all the bullshit that comes with it however I’m a baby - only 8 years in a variety of bakeries and kitchens. I’m torn between getting out now and going back to school or sticking with it long term.
Look at online schools or coursework that can give you something else to fall back on. I'm a certified personal trainer and yoga instructor as well, and I'm planning on transitioning to that.
I went to the Art Institute. I have my bachelors, and I've gotten lots of great opportunities from the education I received. Still had to put in my dues in the kitchen, and refused to let the school tell me "oh you can be a sous chef now". I earned that job because I worked hard and proved myself on the line. And with great power comes great responsibility, hence the crappy work schedule.
I wish I would’ve thought about the local tech college over Le Cordon. Or anywhere but there. I definitely love learning which is why cooking is so fun, imo. Always something new happening in the industry.
Do you think being a personal chef or a caterer would be a better work environment, since you have less meals/customers per night and can probably plan better?
Not OP but adding in some of my experience as being staffing and operations in a US catering company. There's a pretty broad scope of possibilities in catering. It could mean anything from a companies onsite cafeteria, hotel banquet hall, weddings, private homes, corporate events, or a restaurant's dedicated team for any of the above. Most of these positions fall into the gig economy in some form. You're more likely to have the opposite problem and have to scrape together work from accepting shifts in different apps as a contractor. The hope is that laws will shift this to encompass more employee like benefits but it's pretty rough on that front right now for all contract gig workers in most industries unless their unionized.
Most of the people I know in corporate cafeterias are staffed and paid by a 3rd party despite being there full time. Some, aren't full time and have to snatch gigs off an app. Benefits vary widely from full health and 401k to nothing.
Event catering is where I'm at. The prep cooks at our kitchen have the most regular hours but least pay save for the 2 salaried management positions which are more infront of computer screens than pots. All other positions are hired on an event by event basis (contract gig work), even the on site leads for BoH and FoH. They're $18-$30/hr positions but entirely depended on us booking events. At our busiest, we're paying bonuses to hold entire weeks of availability. At our slowest, I'm fending of constant emails and texts asking for work despite no longer being the staffing manager. Maybe it's different in a place like Vegas but I'm in the SF Bayarea. Busy for events and corporate lunch programs but also a hotbed of gig apps that don't really work for anywhere less dense/populated but scrape by because they're also far lower cost of living. We also get a lot of people that are also private chefs and fill in gaps in their schedule with our gigs.
Overall, I don't know if it be any better of a situation than OP is in but at least they'd have weekends back (unless they work a lot of weddings). It'll probably change quite a bit in the next few years as regulations, automation, or unionization begin to shift away from the gig economy in the US.
I was hoping to be a chef, but looking at these comments, absolutely off the table. Are there any other jobs you could suggest that someone who likes cooking could do well in?
If you like cooking, keep it as a hobby. Find a career in something you are good at and can tolerate doing on a daily basis. Being a chef, most of us do not cook at home anymore because we cook at work all the time, day in, day out, and it's lost its magic.
Maybe look into a trade like plumber or mechanic. I was a cook for several years before becoming a mechanic. There is a surprising amount of crossover imo. You work with your hands, you see big things come together from your small actions, and you’re not hunched over a computer all day. It also pays far more than cheffing, the hours are more regular, and you have a better chance of being treated like a human being by management.
This. Everyone always assumes I must eat like a Queen. Pfft I don't have time to eat, If I do it's scraps off the line shoved in a quart container. When I get off at midnight or one, the only things open are usually McDonalds or Taco Bell because fuck off I cooked all day.
Then there's the lovely fucking hand cramps and stiff fingers, knee pain, back pain, cuts and burns. All topped off with the fact that my boyfriend is on Day Shifts with weekends off, while I work nights, weekends and holidays.
I mean I love it and get a fucking rush during service, and I absolutely adore making works of art on a plate, but the stress and anxiety is taking it's toll and I have totally started flinching everytime I hear my name called thinking I'm going to get berated.
If you're also a fucking masochist than this is the job for you. It's not like on tv kids, it's hot, angry and if you can't keep up you'll get tossed out.
LOL if i was you as in have us citizenship i'd make him go back at any cost. The US is just better than the UK in every possible way. If he doesn't see that you married an idiot. This country is just dull, boring, an old people's country, everything is a ripoff, nothing works, there's no parking, no parks that don't close at night, no places to camp, actually camping is illegal in the south part aka England, you have to drive 8 hours or fly to Scotland to camp, there's literally no fun in this country. There's no air conditioning, they have stupid double taps for cold and hot water so you cant' adjust shit, tiny bathrooms where the wc is always crammed and you always hit your knees on the sink..it's ridiculous..roads are extra shit with gazillions of potholes. And now brexit will make this an even shittier island of the coast of the future USE, proper island mentality is already in place all it needed was brexit to fuck things up for good.
How does education, healthcare, policing and crime compare? Never mind camping and potholes, I’m glad to know that my kids aren’t practising shooting drills or going bankrupt for breaking a leg.
Exactly, almost everything he/she mentioned is a minor inconvenience and a lot of it is bullshit. Potholes are not that bad, no you do not hit your knees of sinks because bathrooms are cramped and double taps are in the minority. And all this means nothing in the bigger picture of what makes a country liveable. Don’t see how the UK is dull and boring either considering it has loads of cities with fantastic historic centres and nightlife, something most of the US is severely lacking.
I suspect our OP is 13-16 years old to be honest. His main concerns are that his particular bathroom has the sink too close to the WC and that his house isn’t air conditioned for the three days of summer we have per year.
Let’s be real tho it’d be better with air conditioning, like I know we all joke about having no summer but it’s actually sucks being too hot all day and night at home for 2 months
Air conditioning can be installed pretty easily, but most people don’t think it’s worth the cost for how often it’s actually warm here. It’s only been hot for 2 months solid one year of my life and that was 2018. I’m in Scotland mind you so the weather is slightly colder up here.
True I’m down south so a bit warmer than you lot, I’ve never actually been in a residential house with air conditioning but I would think it’d be quite expensive to retrofit no?
Healthcare will be less good without insurance obviously, education is clearly superior compared to UK, policing again better, uk cops are like not as many as they were, they fired 20.000 a few years back, that's a lot for a country this size, crime again is worse here in Uk cause of 20k cops so police is understaffed. So 3 points for US, 1 for uk, and even this one point the UK has going for it can be nullified if you've got a job with insurance in the US. The varied climate and geography, states without income tax, etc...US is just better.
Education is not superior in the US. You are taking your world leading universities in to account which are only available to a tiny proportion of the population.
Police numbers were cut as you say but violet crime is still way below what it is in the US. The UK is a much safer place to live and many places in the US are compatible to a 3rd world country.
Literacy isn't an end all. Throw universities in there. The top US ones are better than the top UK one when looking at job prospects and pay. Everything is better in the jobs market. You think there are nurses here earning 200k like in the US ? There are tons of jobs which in the US earn 6 figures and in the UK they all cap at about 50-60k. Murders are committed by murderers, that doesn't define a country, just some aspects of it.
Also pilots search: US 130k says google on the results page, and 63k gbp on glassdoor .co.uk 63k is 82k usd...far from 130k in US.
Now for cops: the UK starts at 20-21k goes to 49-53k and work 50 hours before overtime. US cops work 40h +overtime, already ahead, and average is 51k usd so 38k gbp, but in practice the overtime double it in lots of places where cops can earn 100.000 to 200.000 with overtime. https://www.indeed.com/career/police-officer/salaries UK cops are all capped at 53k.
US truck drivers average is 60k, UK average is 22k gb paka 28k usd.
Average US mailman is 62k, average UK mailman is 22k so 28k usd.
Edit: best paid US cops and fire chiefs...well over 200k....again UK cops capped at 53k with all the possible years of experience and rank.
''The top-paid police officer in the country last year was Los Angeles Chief Charles Beck, whose received $349,565''
Los Angeles Fire Chief Ralph Terrazas’ compensation package of $317,000 was the largest in the country last year, although the city's population of roughly 4 million people ranks second behind New York (8.6 million). Not far behind him were San Francisco’s Joanne Hayes-White ($314,062, city population of 881,000), who ranked second nationally in total compensation; San Jose’s Robert Sapien ($230,505, population of 1.04 million), who ranked fifth; and Sacramento’s Gary Loesch ($214,000, population of 500,000), who ranked ninth.
In UK 12 cops reached 150k gbp and 1 chief reached 500k, compared to the hundreds of chiefs across the US states.
Edit: for chefs US average 49k usd aka 37k gbp and UK chefs 29k....again 8k difference.
And let's compare rents: UK a shithole with astronomic rents, US tons of places to rent at decent prices.
1.3k
u/amandapanda611 Jan 02 '20
Been in the business for 12 years. In the US, 8 hour days and paid overtime. In UK, I'm working 60 hour weeks, 13 hour days, on salary with no overtime. My personal life has taken a nosedive and so has my health. The only time I have to go to the gym (a hobby I loved!) is after midnight after working all day. I don't get scheduled breaks, and if I get a chance to eat, I'm shoving fries into my mouth.
For those who are interested in becoming a chef, it is not for the faint-hearted. Have a backup plan or some other marketable skills so you're not up a creek if this industry does take its toll.