I’m gonna have to disagree. Hell’s kitchen has been on for nearly 20 years now, Master Chef for over ten, etc. They’re on multiple networks and are popular in multiple countries and continents. To say they’re “designed” as a recruitment tool is just ridiculous. They’re “designed” as entertainment, and they are entertaining. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent by networks producing these kinds of shows in the past 20 years, they’re not going to spend money like that to advance some agenda of “getting people to work as cooks,” they’re gonna spend that money to advance the agenda of “I and my fellow entertainment executives want more money in our pockets.”
My wife loves that show, I was never able to fathom why it is so interesting to watch people being frustrated in you free time. Cooking should be so about fun and love, don’t shout with my food, please.
Ish. But it also shows the the tip of the severe amount of work you have to put in to be not just good but great at what you do. There’s something special about cooking for people. If anything those shows are more like watching professional sports for those that are in to sports. They can appreciate the amount of work somebody had to do to get there. Sure, anybody can make a meal, just like anybody can make a shot in basketball, but to be able to take the shot and get nothing but net many times over… That’s hard work and practice. There are those that will end up in that field due to misplaced notions and there are those that will end up there because it was the only way to earn a paycheck. But to get to that level it takes a lot of drive, passion, and willingness to learn from your failures. But, you’re right, there will always be that group of high school football players or kids that got A’s in home ec that watch that and think “That could easily be me”
Yep, and it sucks, even if you’re passionate about cooking.
Sincerely,
Somebody who flushed that career down the toilet 9 years ago and literally got a pay raise to clean toilets and now makes about 5x what I was making as a chef. And I work less.
Like I said, I got a pay raise to scrub toilets lol. That was in a power plant. Because that got my foot in the door there, I got an opportunity to get into traveling for refueling outages as a radiological decontamination technician at nuclear plants. That was mostly Swiffer sweeping floors, wiping stuff down, and taking out the trash, but one of the projects was hanging heavy lead blankets in high rad areas while wearing uncomfortable, hot suits with a PAPR to breathe through. From there I got into water chemistry as a service rep to treat the circulating water system at a nuclear plant and also visited a few other plants. This was about double my toilet scrubbing pay. One of the other plants was hiring a few years in when I was looking for greener pastures, so I got in as an outside operator. After almost two years of that, earlier this year I was promoted to operate the water treatment plant onsite. That’s at double my water chemistry service rep pay.
It took time, hard work, and a ton of luck, but I’d probably be dead by now if I hadn’t made that change. I’m glad you’re still enjoying being a chef and I’m not gonna shit on anybody’s dreams, but I found it to be a thankless job. Maybe you have more freedom and better help. I was doing 60-70 busy hours every week and I don’t think I ever got more than $12/hour, maybe only $11.50? Plus no benefits. Now I’m at $50/hour (and scheduled overtime) plus good (not great) benefits. The drawback is that it’s rotating 12 hour shift work, so I’ll do a set of day shift 0500-1700 and then have time off and flip to night shift 1700-0500 back and forth. But every 4 weeks I get 7 days off in a row. It requires pretty good knowledge and application of physics and chemistry, but only requires a high school diploma for some reason. Also, I’m in the US, so I’m sure the numbers and everything look very different elsewhere.
I’m often mad lucky and live in an area that I could probably do something similar but to be honest post covid many places pay different.
I work with two guys who like to brag about working in michelin star places, neither of them were paid more than 14.
Today hiring rate is probably 18 and as a Sous chef I make 22. Not amazing but compared to what it was like only a few years ago drastically different.
Still industry sucks and is predatory. Probably can’t do it long term.
Man, I hate that constant night/day rotation. I didn’t mind it when it was once per year, but when we switched to once per month, it sucked. I can’t imagine doing it every period.
I don’t think I agree. Who watches Hells Kitchen and thinks, “man, doing extremely complex and fast paced cooking in a stressful environment with a chef who’s verbally assaulting me at every moment seems very appealing, I should change my occupation!” Aside from people with a superiority complex and a ‘Can’t lose’ mentality.
I honestly think it’s more likely to drive people away from jobs in the food industry, especially if they’re not already interested in cooking. That being said the dramatization factor is definitely there, and I would hope that most people at this stage would recognize that “reality” tv and competitions like this don’t actually represent reality at all, at least in most circumstances.
The same type of people who watched Jarhead and joined The Marines.
Then again if you watched Jarhead and that motivated you to join The Marines, you probably were a perfect fit for The Marines because you already had a favorite flavor crayon.
I think you’re thinking too logically for humans. There’s definitely people who fantasize about doing whatever see on tv. Even if its a shitty low wage job or running drugs for the cartals under threat of murdering your family. TV makes us emphasize with horrible things all the time