I was on the road with a national home cookin’ restaurant chain in the early nineties and on my first assignment I drove to a very small town in northern Alabama.
I would never have picked this place unless I thought this move was good for my career.
I actually lived pretty well for the six weeks I ended up staying there. The company put me up in a nice King Suite and not being during peak season, I usually had the big hotel pool and gym all to myself whenever I wanted. Being in a very “manager-friendly” company ensured I had two days off per week and I was not allowed to work more than fifty hours for the week.
I had moved to the front of the house after a chef career that required more like ninety hours per week. It is exactly how the woman who recruited me got me to switch from a very good career in the back of the house. Her opening line to me was something like “How’d you like to make more money in the restaurant business and you won’t work more than fifty hours a week?”
At the time I was working at a major hotel resort in the mountains just north of Tucson, Arizona. We were short-staffed as the company was evidently preparing to sell to another hospitality giant.
Good news/Bad news.
The good news was since I was basically doing all the work for three of the resorts’ six differently-themed restaurants, I received a check for each. I received three chef salaries and three General Manager salaries for a very profitable, but exhausting six months.
The bad news is that at my peak, I averaged about one-hundred hours per week (which included about seven hours in the freezer carving ice).
So when the recruiter waved a fifty-hour work week in my face, I was off to training in two months. I delayed my acceptance for two months for the big paydays and I was told the property had been sold and we were all basically done.
I was fortunate because I was a member of the Executive Committee due to the money I was making, so they were obligated to relocate me to a property that would pay me or pay me a crazy bonus.
The HR guy called me in to discuss my future with the company.
He was smiling.
There was one world-class resort property that wanted me.
Jakarta, Indonesia.
When I told the Domestic Despot, she uttered something about not wanting to find our dogs on some restaurant menu, so we quickly agreed on my new direction. We ended up taking a week off to Cancun before I started my new position.
I really enjoyed the ease and efficiency of a nice big institutional kitchen, but I also loved the intimacy of a small restaurant kitchen where I discovered the freedom to create and not just replicate recipes.
Here’s to the chefs still fighting that good fight.
Stay well.
