Chef as job

anyone here work as a chef?
how stressful is your work day, what are your working hours, and what is your pay like?

No, but I used to talk to my old chef about this
Worked for a pretty nice Mediterranean bistro
He made a fraction of the front of house managers, which still grinds my gears considering the amount of work he put in and the fact he couldn't get more money despite just buying his first house at the age of 30 and getting married
>very stressful days, always between 10 and 13 hours 6 days per week (sometimes came in on off days to check in with the owners
>salary was around 30k/yr with no overtime pay, thanks to the food industry being able to avoid paying OT to workers

I myself was a pastry chef for a while
>Pretty much same as above, but instead of working from late morning to night-time, I'd work from 1 am to about 2 or 3pm, and I had a 5 day schedule plus two days I could elect to come in to get ahead on stuff if needed.
>work was very stressful but not as much as being exec chef at restaurant. Had a lot more time to experiment and stuff, as long as I could keep steady production in the meantime
>pay was exactly 30k/yr with no OT pay, same as above. Was pretty comfy while living on my own since I rented a little tiny apartment in the cheap part of town.

Also, if you're considering becoming a chef, make sure you have thick skin, anti-depressants, and try not to get addicted to alcohol.
You'll literally be at fault for everything at your restaurant, so be prepared for daily abuse by owners (unless it's your restaurant), and by customers (both online and physically). Since you're not a michelin star chef, it's wise not to go all gordon ramsay on the locals or else you'll be driven out of town very quickly. Also you're free time is going to be mostly spent doing work outside of work, like thinking up more recipes and going to events and stuff to try to get your name and business out there.

Don't chef unless you're some richfags personal one, the stress isn't worth it. You'd make more money waiting tables.
do not believe servers lies, they only bitch about "boo hoo i make less than minimum wage" because they make bank through tips, and if they admitted it, people would get jealous and stop tipping them so hard.

>long hours
>shit pay
>most ppl in the industry are whacked out of their heads on meth and dont work hard enough
only take it up if you plan on running your own place one day and have a passion for it. it's not an industry where you can get rich quick or progress that far, specially considering you have to go to TAFE for a few years to get qualifications first

I don't see what people mean by stress because I'm not a little bitch.

the hours are objectively long
the pay can be good but usually that's in bigger corporate restaurants, hospitals, nursing homes, etc. not the small artsy bistro or whatever of your dreams

is it worth it? not really but for me it is the only thing I want to do

how good at making eggs are you they say the 'key' in telling if a person is a legit chef or not is how he cooks the eggs and im a pretty good judge of egg cooking so until i try your eggs you are technically not a chef and i am reporting your comment for lying to me so cook me some eggs and i will decide if you are a chef and then you can comment here okay?

kk I'll mail you some eggs

>eggs may deteriorate in transit

I made eggs for a girl once, and I think she liked them

Like this user said if you don't plan on running your own place or enjoy cooking it's a shitty gig. I def abuse alcohol when I'm not working and I'm slowly starting to incorporate uppers into my work shift but that's gonna stop soon cause I can't afford that lifestyle. I also have a secret vendetta again FOH. Mainly because they always dick around which turns into food not getting to the table in time so it turns cold and have to refire the order. Do they get blamed? Nope kitchen does

Father was a chef at a really high end restaurant. Shit pay, stressful, physical. A job that fucks you up when you do it for decades.

Always told us kids to go to schools so that we don't end up as chefs like him.

Not a big time chef but let's be honest it's not worth it. You'll almost never get recognition and yes you are at fault for everything. We don't even have dish washers here. Chefs double as dish washers at the end of the shift

Yep, also if you're a head/executive chef in part of a larger thing, like a mining company or a hotel or something expect every other department to make cutbacks on the kitchen first.

I knew a guy working in a mining site as a chef, 2nd in command essentially. Head chef spent his entire time in his office doing coke and not working so my mate had to do head chef's job for free on top of his own. They averaged upwards of 18 hour shifts with no breaks, because taking a break meant falling behind in work.

Miners were getting paid $120/hour with 2 hour paid breaks twice a day while chefs getting paid jack fucking shit. Every time management needed to cut something somewhere to fix their budget it was always from the kitchen first and everywhere else second. Management needs to save an extra $5k a month? It's on the head chef to figure out how to feed everyone gruel while tricking them into thinking it's not gruel. You get the idea.

Literally any other field is better than cheffing unless you plan on running your own, chill, tiny relaxed little cafe or something one day.

this, fucking this.

there is a big difference between a chef and a lowly expendable short order line cook.
If you don't own your shop you are the latter and not the former

he is so cute

I only want a career in food and I so desperately want to make money from it so I can actually open my own place. But just the thought of working in a high-end place seems not worth it. The idea of having to do so much for presentation and the overwhelming pressure. The sickening feeling of serving a pitiful portion for a high as fuck price. Maybe it's because I'm poor and still have my "poor person palette" but I just don't want to end up some pretentious fuck that becomes repulsed by Taco Bell.

tl;dr I want to be a chef so I can save up for a restaurant while keeping in the food industry.

Is this a fucking meme? Pretty sure most places have food come out in courses and have a proper dinner, don't understand the "high end restaurant = a bite of pretty steak" gaff.
Also good luck starting a business in one of THE MOST volatile sectors when you can't understand basis demand. It's just bogus. You're going to be in hell for years until you hire a head chef.

>meme = delusion
Milleniel faggot detected.

I was in a bistronomique restaurant and traiteur, around 90h per week, only stress in high day and paid around 2.8/3k €

This board is so boring we don't even have our own memes, we have to steal them from other boards

we have like two memes

wala and the mcchicken

>10 to 13 hours 6 days a week
>30k/year
holy shit please be joking, that is offensively low

Nope
I never got the exact salary, but he said less than 40k/year so It could be as much as 39k.
The owner was taking home six figures, and all the FOH managers made at least twice as much as the exec chef at that restaurant. At LEAST twice as much.
At least they never made us compromise on the quality of ingredients we were getting. Our equipment was shit and decades old though, and we did all of the maintenance ourselves with our own tools.

I'm glad I left that place to become a baker, but it actually only ended up being marginally better and I couldn't get much pay even after becoming the pastry chef. the owner was a baker himself, so he understood the plight, but we had the best equipment and would only buy grains, vegetables and fruits from local farms and made everything little thing from scratch, so there wasn't much room for paying decent salaries. I'd take that over the restaurant any day though.