Insights from the girl in the back
It’s been a weird year for hospitality. By weird, I mean awful, I mean tough, I mean stressful, I mean challenging. I think about what our lives used to be like and I think about how different they are today and the past is much farther away than before.
Right now in Toronto and most other cities in Canada, people in hospitality are unemployed or have switched industries all together. We haven’t had a busy night or day inside a full restaurant in almost a year. Most of us are wondering if it will ever end and if we can ever go back to the way it was. To me, I don’t think we can, and I don’t think we should.
Throughout this year, I’ve watched my friends with businesses struggle, pivot and make changes I don’t think we would have ever predicted. I’ve watched others like myself go back to school and focus on something else to see if we can broaden the tiny job prospect hole.
Has there been some good through all of this? From all the negativity, I think it’s nice to see some positives in it all. We’ve got to spend holidays and more time with our loved ones than we probably ever have. We’ve had a chance to take some well-deserved time away from work and think about what really is important to us all.
Maybe this pandemic has brought some good light onto the restaurant industry to the general public. The issues with low wages, debts, mental illness, sexual harassment, egos and the ideas of chef’s not really being rock star’s have all come to fruition. Now the secrets are out. The dirty laundry is out there for the rest of the public to see and gets people to wonder how it could have been going on for so long.
Am I happy that people now understand our lifestyles a bit more? I can selfishly say yes, because I think these issues have gone on for far too long. I’ve seen them and heard them all and when the comments still come, something still dies inside of me.
Many of us were burnt out and tired when the lockdowns started happening. We were overworked and mentally tired and couldn’t wait for our next vacations to arrive. You never want to be the cry baby around, but when things go south, you always think about leaving or what your next move will be.
Some people may ask why we would still want to work in working conditions such as the ones we have been exposed to and most of us would probably shrug and say we don’t know. Sometimes I think it’s because we all love the pain and love the business, but are scared to leave it or don’t know how to. You ask the guy smoking a cigarette on the milk crate in the alleyway if he loves his job and his response will probably be I guess so?
For an industry that employs so many people, I have always wondered why it has been so hard to move a career upwards.
At times it seems like the hospitality business is stuck in the past and sadly I think this pandemic has showed it. The public now knows our secrets and questions the reasons why we would even go back to working for something like this. For most of us, it’s all we know and don’t have any idea how to get out or turn it into something else. For others we won't want to go back at all.
I think some of us had great aspirations in the past of making it big and working hard when we were young to get ahead in the game. Did it happen? For some yes and other no. The superstar chefs and restaurant moguls we looked up to are now ageing and we are too. We now look around at the jaded and tired crew of staff around us and think about how different it could have been for us all.
Some people were left behind, while others blew past the pack and thrived, getting all that they wanted. So naturally this created rifts in staff, jealousy and toxicity. How can you thrive in an environment that was built on competition and resentment for mistakes? I can tell you, it's not the easiest thing to do.
I love hospitality and I always will. I have been a chef for over a decade and haven’t had much time out of a kitchen before this. It is truly a passion and something you fall romantically for, but is it a sustainable lifestyle? The more the pandemic goes on, the more I can see that it is, but not by very much. It’s a hard living at the best of times and your family and friends have to understand it, to understand you. I think from the past year, people generally understand the challenges a bit better now and have some sympathies towards us. I just hope when it starts to get busy again in the future, we can take care of each other more and have a little more patience to go around.
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