Quote:
Originally Posted by
SField 
Almost no one here knows first hand the pressures of any of the jobs being thrown around.
Yes, there are more stressful jobs than being a chef. However, consider a few things;
Restaurant owners are finicky and will fire you at the drop of a hat. For as little as a bad weekend. The constant threat of being badly reviewed, and there are now more ways for this to happen than ever before (with more blogs and food publications than ever). Quality control is difficult, you have to manage everything coming out of your kitchen.
You're always stressed about buying. It's very expensive, you're worried about being wasteful, and getting a halfway decent margin on the product you buy. Then there's the chef owner.
At this point, you've taken out massive personal loans to the point that if the restaurant fails, it's essentially a mortal wound. No, the world won't blow up and you won't kill anyone, but if you consider the kind of capital it takes, how little money you're making for a few years out of the block even if your place is HIGHLY successful, and how regularly and how easily even good restaurants fail, then you have to take it from the mindset of a small business owner who every day is walking a very fine line between staying afloat and dismal failure.
The yelling this is sort of part of the culture. It's a vestige of older times, like how famous conductors yelled at orchestras or other non-essential creative industries have histories like that as well. No the impact of failure is not on the level with some of the things mentioned, but you have to really understand what it takes to consistently put out high quality service and food every single night, while worrying about all the front/back of house stuff that doesn't have to immediately do with the food service at the moment. Yelling is not necessary, but there's a reason it's still there... basically just kitchen culture.
I understand all of that, and I never said there wasn't stress in a restaurant. Every job has stressful aspects. I'm sure librarians get freaked out about funding and inventory and competition from Amazon. But to compare being a librarian with being in a professional kitchen is ridiculous. The magnitude of stress in a library vs a kitchen is huge. Similarly, to act like a restaurant is in any way, shape, or form as stressful as many of the other jobs out there, is just as ridiculous.
1) restaurants are like any small business. Widget stores face heavy competition from either mega stores or the internet or other widget stores in the widget district. They worry about purchasing, they worry about how inventory can be perishable, about shrinkage, about paying staff, about mortgaging themselves to the hilt to keep it running, about the trendy tastes of the consumer. A restaurant is not special in that respect.
2) liability, government oversight, etc are all quite small compared to a variety of industries. A quick google search reveals a few cases where hundreds got sick from a restaurant. One of the facilities that I worked at would have killed thousands and injured tens of thousands very quickly if there was a release. I had to deal with all the oversight both on the state level and the federal level. Even the FBI would drop in for inspections. So, again, in comparison, restaurants are not special nor unique in that sense.
The sad face is because my mother is very high up in the administration part of a big hospital. Big issues come to her and I often get to hear of them to share the 
Like the time the operating nurse didn't like the cardiologist. And after the 20 minutes of soap scrub the nurse "oops" and touched the hand of the operating doctor with a firm squeeze. And the doctor, a superbly respected surgeon, proceeded to choke the nurse. In front of the patient right before lights out time.
