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Chefs talk about the toughest mental effects of their job

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Life as a chef in the kitchen isn’t always a bed of roses. Bizarre requests from guests, difficult dishes, huge frustrations in the kitchen… Their job takes a serious mental toll. (Former) chefs share even more things on Reddit that had a major impact on their mental state.

Foto van culinair journalist Jeske van Steen

You really feel sorry for them…

Sleepless nights: the ticket printer

Many chefs apparently spend a long time tossing and turning in bed, dreaming about their work. And one subject keeps coming back like a boomerang: the ticket printer. It continues to haunt them even long after they’ve switched careers…

  • ChefDezi: ”The ticket printer… it… just… won’t… stop printing…”
  • Upset-University-938: ”Dreaming about the ticket printer printing nonstop, everything in a language I can’t read, with people waiting for me to respond to what’s in front of them. I changed careers and the dreams stopped after that.”
  • bendar1347: ”The dreams were a major problem for me for a long time. They weren’t nightmares, just work dreams. Waking up from a dream about work, then going to work and dreaming about work again afterward—it just felt like I could never escape it. I’m not saying I didn’t have work nightmares. Those were about the classic things. The ticket printer. Not being able to read or understand tickets and orders. Not being able to find the item/ingredient/person. A body that doesn’t work properly. Equipment that keeps changing. Not being able to find the physical location of the place where you’re already late. I haven’t worked full-time in a kitchen for 10 years, but I still get these dreams or variations of them about once every two weeks.”

Long hours, poor pay

A lot of people will recognize this: you have to work long and hard, but the pay absolutely doesn’t reflect that. That really affects you mentally too, it seems.

  • classy_barbarian: ”Let’s make this perfectly clear: there is one main reason why this work destroys people’s mental health: the pay is just fucking terrible. Cooking is a difficult profession that takes years to get good at. Many people even go to school for it. And yet the average wage for a cook with several years of experience is… what, 12, 13 dollars an hour?”
  • practicating: ”Poor pay. Just enough to get by, not enough to get ahead.”
  • Anonymous: ”Working in a stressful environment for 65–70 hours a week would affect anyone’s mental health.”
  • Dolive90: ”If we’re expected to physically exhaust ourselves by working 60, 70 or even 80+ hours a week and still struggle to pay the rent at the end of the month, personal stress levels will undoubtedly rise. Combined with the stress people at every level of the industry have to deal with every day, this can lead to the alcohol and drug problems that occur all too often in this line of work.”

Unrealistic expectations

And there are plenty of other things that push chefs to their mental limits. From working alone during busy hours to an unwanted extra task: being a therapist.

  • SnausageLinx: ”7 years of kitchen experience here. I currently work as a cook in a hospital, for two years now, as the closer. The workload depends on the number of patients. Lower in summer, higher in winter, with peaks in between due to colds and allergies. I work during lunch and dinner, usually alone. I’ve had two major panic attacks at work, a year-long depression, anger issues, sleep problems, stress-related chest pain, confusion and a stutter. Like everyone else, I also have stress outside of work that contributes to these problems. I don’t like my job, but I don’t hate it either. It’s hard work, but it pays the bills.”
  • Redyellowredred: ”For me, it’s never about the food or the service, but everything surrounding it. Being on my feet for 9+ hours a day, staring at the same wall under harsh fluorescent lighting, seeing the same faces, hearing the same voices, dealing with internal drama, and being used as a therapist by the front-of-house staff. That last part is a really big problem for me. Something about my personality makes me easy to talk to, so besides having to listen to colleagues complain about other colleagues and customers, I also hear their personal life stories. I don’t need to know that you’re having an affair, I don’t need to know how you were manipulated as a teenager, I don’t need to know any of this shit. But for some reason, I know everything anyway. I just want to cook.”
  • PurBldPrincess: ”Feeling trapped when circumstances mean I have to stay for an unknown number of extra hours. It’s because I had a burnout once and don’t want to go through that again.”

(Former) chefs among our readers, does this sound familiar? Or have you experienced other things in the profession that challenge you mentally or challenged you in the past? We’d love to hear from you.

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Source: Reddit

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