I’ve worked in the restaurant industry for over 17 years. Starting from the bottom of the dish pit to owning my own place, I have been through a lot of ups and downs. I still love the business, but I don’t love everything about it! Here are the 3 worst parts of working in a restaurant.
Cleaning
I’m not going to lie, I HATE cleaning. I don’t care for sweeping, mopping, scrubbing, you name it. Unfortunately, cleaning is near half the job when working in a kitchen.
Depending on the type of restaurant, cleaning can be simple or quite messy. One of my gigs was working in a seafood restaurant that primarily served fried food. Dealing with all the grease was a major pain. I still have nightmares of cleaning that hood vent system!
Filtering the deep fryers was easily the worst closing duty. This job generally went to whoever was on the low end of the totem pole. Its hot, messy, and the filter machine we had was heavy and a pain to maneuver. Advancing past that job was a joy.
Some restaurants are fairly simple to clean. I worked at a deli that was an absolute breeze. Breaking the place down after closing took 30 minutes or less.
Another factor that makes cleaning such a pain is that the bulk of it comes at the end of the shift. This problem is magnified when you work double shifts.
Working Nights And Weekends
Most restaurants make a majority of their money on their dinner service. The weekend dinner service, on Friday and Saturday nights, is generally the busiest. Being a cook means working a lot on Friday and Saturday nights.
As I grew older and got a family, working weekends became a nuisance. It’s one thing to miss a Saturday night out at the bar, it’s another to miss your kid’s baseball game. Working on Saturdays became one of my biggest gripes with working in a restaurant.
It wasn’t just the weekends though. Working a lot of dinner shifts means not having dinner with your family. As someone who is passionate about food and loves cooking for their family, this was something that bothered me more and more as time went on.
The longer you work at a restaurant, the better shifts you will get. If you are extremely lucky, you might even get all day shifts and a few weekends. However, if you are one of the stronger cooks, you are going to be wanted on the busy shifts. That means a lot of Friday and Saturday nights.
Covering For Co-Workers
It is well known that the foodservice industry doesn’t pay well for entry-level workers. A lot of restaurants start people out at minimum wage. With minimum wage often comes minimal effort and loyalty.
Low entry-level pay creates a lot of turnover in the workforce. When you work in a kitchen, you see a lot of people come and go. I remember seeing a stack of W-2s every year at the bigger places I worked at come tax time.
On top of that, low pay also causes people to often call out of work. When you work in a kitchen, it seems like you are always short-staffed because someone is missing. Every time someone calls out, someone else has to cover their duties.
Sometimes you are lucky and a replacement can be found. Sometimes that replacement is going to be you! However, smaller restaurants often don’t have a surplus of employees. Everyone on the payroll is there all the time. That means when someone calls out, you have extra work to do.
Top 5 Kitchen Tools For Beginners!
These are my choices for the 3 worst parts of working in a restaurant. I should point out that most of the time the good outweighs the bad in my opinion. However, these are things to consider when deciding if a restaurant job is for you. I hope you find this helpful!
