1. You work obscene hours. The industry standard for fine-dining is to work 60+ hours a week, and you're on your feet pretty much 90% of it. Also, you're only getting payed around 35k a year with minimal benefits, although this is changing somewhat in the last few years. Drugs and alcohol are just kinda needed by most people to cope with the stress.
2. You work odd hours. Most fine-dining restaurants close around 11 pm, which means you'd get out somewhere between midnight and 1 am. There's nothing else to do when you get out besides go to another bar or restaurant and get wasted. Also, since you work in restaurants, you know other people that work in bars/restaurants. Thus, when you go out to other bars/restaurants, you usually know people who hook it up in terms of drinks. I went to so many bars after work where we'd get "industry discounts" and literally pay like 20% of the listed price.
3. You're surrounded by it. This is one of the most important ones in my opinion. When I worked in restaurants, it was very common for wine vendors to pop in during our prep periods and say something like, "Hey, we just got a special shipment of wine from this fancy place in Italy. Here's the pricing and a free sample bottle for you guys to try out!" Or your boss comes in one day and says, "Hey, this beer isn't selling so you guys should just drink this keg before it goes skunk on us," and now suddenly, there's a free, half-full keg in the walk-in. A lot of what prevents me from drinking is that I'm just lazy and it's expensive, but if someone is going to bring me booze for free to me on a regular basis, you better believe I'll be getting drunk on a regular basis too.
4. The people it draws. Restaurants are known for being pretty lax when it comes to background checks so it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone when you get people who have more clandestine backgrounds.
When I worked in a kitchen at a popular thai restaurant in North America when I was a kid, I walked into the mini fridge to grab some noodles and the manager was in there taking a bump of blow, I kinda just froze and then the guy yelled at me. Then I got yelled at more for not getting the noodles fast enough. Quit that job and got into IT as soon as I could.
As a regular one in a bar which is frequently visited by the guys after hours[0] I can only confirm this anecdata.
> "Hey, this beer isn't selling so you guys should just drink this keg before it goes skunk on us,"
Yep, is a thing too.
> but if someone is going to bring me booze for free to me on a regular basis, you better believe I'll be getting drunk on a regular basis too
Of course. All other points doesn't help too.
PS guess where am I writing this?
[0] this is greatly depends on the location and the feel, but it is not an uncommon thing. If you are near this you would learn of such places pretty soon if you tend to be there after half of the midnight.
There is a complicated issue where some people thrive in an environment which is abusive to people who have much different needs. Only accommodating the most vulnerable does leave people behind. (And I say this having had to speak up loudly more than once for someone being mistreated in the industry)
> I’ve had to ask myself, and I have been for some time, “To what extent in that book did I provide validation to meatheads?”
> …I mean, I became a leading figure in a very old, very oppressive system so I could hardly blame anyone for looking at me as somebody who’s not going to be particularly sympathetic. They say something to me about someone I know, and maybe I would tell them.
> …And from the get-go, this system that I was, let’s be honest, celebrating and bragging about surviving, we’re talking about a militaristic, male system that goes back in Europe back to the guild system, generally populated in the classic example by abused male children who were abused in kitchens, worked their way up through this sadistic system of hazing, became chefs and then abused those below them in the same way. The traditional system was the male chef would abuse his male chef de cuisine. The male chef de cuisine would then abuse his sous-chef. The sous-chefs would take it out on all the cooks who would then physically hit, kick, torment, haze, and pressure each other as punishment for bringing this shit down on them yet again. And God help you if you were a woman in those days.
—https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/10/anthony-bourdain...
And:
> I’d put aside my psychotic rage, after many years being awful to line cooks, abusive to waiters, bullying to dishwashers. It’s terrible – and counter-productive – to make people feel idiots for working hard for you. Nowadays I still have a rather withering ability to be sarcastic and displeased but I’m not screaming at anyone.
—https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jan/15/anthony...
https://www.reddit.com/user/NooYawkCity/
[0] https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/anthon...
to put it another way, it's not that the kitchen turns people into alcoholics, it's that alcoholics find it hard to work anywhere else (since they can indulge their vice while gainfully employed)
As for abusers, they may find it convenient to fill their payroll with people who can't make it elsewhere (drug addicts, misfits), such that your employees won't quit the second you start sexually harassing them
(edit: a sibling comment to you makes a good point about the cycle of abuse, start as a misfit, get hazed, perpetuate the cycle of hiring people who put up with your abuse because they have no where else to go)
- landlords
- owners of the brand
I don't know what that is but it seems like something I would very much like to learn more about.
Sounds extremely petty compared to all of that stuff but I'm curious to know if I'm wrong about that
Former barkeeper here. The thing is, hospitality in general is an incredibly stressful job, it's not just limited to restaurants, but anything involving hostels, hotels, motels, restaurants, bars, discos or event venues:
- the wages usually suck, although the post-covid crunch has seemed to improve the situation.
- a lot of employers outsource the operational risk on their staff by having customers tip them instead of providing an actual living wage.
- in low-class places, the clientele is just trashy (think needles in the urinals or regular brawls levels of trashy). In higher-class places, the clientele is incredibly entitled. Think of "Karen complaining at Walmart" memes, make it 100x worse, and you get the expectations that customers have. Both can be incredibly exhausting.
- the employment conditions suck, many places are horribly understaffed, shift lengths are insane and breaks are rare. And in places where the designated smoking space for employees and customers is the same, customers usually seem to think that it is okay to order a beer while you're still out for a smoke.
- related to the two above points is anything involving alcohol. Many venues don't have dedicated security, which means you are the one who now either has to drag out a confrontational drunk moron, call the police or keep a crowd of people smoking outside quiet enough that the neighbors don't call the police on you. Not fun.
- anything with gambling present always has the associated side effects: thieves, robbers, people who lost their money and now want to trade their last possessions in the vain hope of winning the jackpot, or people who react aggressively to being out of money. Personally, I've been stolen from, I've been robbed, I've been offered anything from likely-stolen phones over marijuana to blowjobs, and I've seen someone bash in the screen of a one-armed bandit with his head, requiring an EMT and police.
- the equipment is often enough horribly complex (artisanal coffee machines), incredibly brittle to operate or requires excessive amounts of deep cleaning simply to keep it somewhat healthy (McDonald's ice makers). Unfortunately, customers aren't really accepting when stuff is broken down. They want their McFlurry. Like, right now. And they'll scream as long as they want until they get their McFlurry. And you're not allowed to kick these entitled arseholes out.
- moments of actual appreciation (beyond a tip) both by managers and customers are rare. For people who require external validation for their mental health, they are in for a hard time.
- managers are reluctant to give their poorly paid staff the power to eject people from the premises out of a fear of bad Google/Yelp/FB reviews. The results are Karen-meme people.
- Places with kitchens... oh well, these are a nightmare in itself. Everyone is shouting all the time, the machinery is loud, the cooking processes create a lot of noise, heat and smells, the ventilation is more often than not a joke which makes all the issues worse, you have a hard time moving around because everything is cramped, half the machines aren't really designed to be ergonomical, and a lot of stuff is inherently dangerous (sharp knives, pans, fryers, freezers, gas flames).
- The working hours can be a real kick in the nuts. Basically you work when everyone else does not: late in the evening, on weekends, on public holidays, at night. And unlike police, utilities, public transport or EMTs your average hospitality job is not unionized, which means employers get away with a lot of insanities: double shifts, day-evening-night-day-evening-night rotations that completely wreck with your sleep schedule, manipulated time sheets to avoid trouble when the authorities come to inspect, no healthcare or other benefits...
The result of all that stress is that people have to cope with it. And most do that by drugs. Some like me smoke, some drink, some use cocaine or similar stuff simply to have enough energy to make it through the shift. And some turn to sex, the industry is fucking like rabbits.
You're going to get this in any place where you have to deal with the general public--not just in hospitality. One of the first things that surprises you when you work in service or retail is how many customers out there are either trashy, belligerent, crazy, entitled, or multiple of the above. They might not be that way on the outside, but as soon as they walk into a business and become The Customer, they transform.
https://www.ft.com/content/a62a96b8-2db2-44ec-ac80-67fcf83d8...
But you were commenting on the use of drugs, which is not mentioned in the article? Is that correct?