THERE IS A CRISIS IN THE RESTAURANT INDUSTRY.
FACT OR PERCEPTION?

Working in a restaurant is not the easiest job in the world. At least nobody is going to argue that. You've got long hours; it’s physical, it’s emotionally and physically draining, the pressure is in your face, and the working conditions are often rough. Heat, noise, a fast pace, and urgency are all part of our daily grind. Add the chainsaw lifestyle and the difficulty of maintaining a solid private life, and you’ve got the whole nine yards.

Those are fucking facts.

But that’s not the problem, and that is not what this article is about.
What I have a problem with, and the reason I am writing this article, is when there is a one-way narrative that becomes the single explanation for everything that is wrong with this job. and God knows it's a pain in the ass.

Allow me to explain: lately, every time I read something about hospitality, it’s about the restaurant industry being in a crisis because restaurants have a hard time recruiting. So apparently there is a decline in the number of people choosing this line of work.
And that reason is, oh, you are going to love this...it's too hard.
WOW.
Well, I agree there is a fucking major crisis, and it’s just the beginning of it. But not for the reasons you think about. So, let's take a breath and talk about it because it’s worth discussing. And mostly because it drives me fucking nuts.

Now, if you listen to the people who work in this industry today, everyone is singing the same fucking song. I will give you the lyrics; it's a rising level of complaint that is becoming systematic and ends up overshadowing every aspect of this profession. Now I am not judging that specifically, because when employees are complaining, it is legitimate. But there are limits.
If you are talking about working conditions, yes, it is healthy. Calling out abuse and refusing mistreatment? Again, it’s necessary and non-fucking-negotiable. But when bitching about this job becomes the dominant posture among employees, it stops being constructive; it becomes a posture. Because posing as a victim prevents you from seeing the bigger picture.
I’ve been doing this job for thirty years, and as difficult as it is, it’s rewarding. Still, I can’t come up with a logical explanation or practical reason why some people consider the job itself unfair. By the way, since when have high expectations and high standards been considered a form of violence?
So what the fuck is going on?

For those unfamiliar with hospitality's rules of engagement, working in restaurants is usually not a random choice. For most of us, it was a career choice. It might have been driven by passion, sometimes by strategy, other times by necessity, but it was our choice nonetheless.
What some have a hard time comprehending is that it comes with constraints. Duh, like anything else. You have responsibilities and duties; it’s a fucking commitment.
So when I see people take this job and refuse the harsh part of it and still somehow expect to collect the rewards, whatever the fuck they may be—fame, pride, prestige, creativity, excellence, and of course a salary—that is when I check out. So I will remain polite and measured and say that's quite a contradiction, to say the least.

Correct me if I am wrong, but any kind of work has a downside, right?
And if you are aiming for a certain quality in your work, or trying to reach a certain level in your craft, or even working for an established brand, you’ll be asked to maintain its standards and work hard to protect the reputation of the company and yours by extension.
So I apologize if I shit on your parade—well, in fact, I am not that sorry—but last time I checked, there is no excellence or achievement without discipline, hard work, and some sacrifice. That’s true in art, in sports, and in business—and it’s true in restaurants.

So you just can’t reduce those demands and requirements to a simple injustice, just because they don’t sit well with your schedule or your way of life. It’s not a fucking commodity; it’s a job. And in this job, standards are by definition uncomfortable; they are a pain in the ass, and yes, they put you on edge. But on the other hand, they push you beyond your limit to be better at what you do. So without them, there are no expectations, no pride, and you can’t learn anything.
And if you still decide to refuse everything that bothers you in the profession, you change the nature of it. You strip it of its meaning and its essence, because rigor, precision, techniques, and learning to satisfy the customer are part of it. There is no way to fuck around, sir. Otherwise, laziness will become the norm
Then you have the feeling of being a victim of an abstract system. You know what that is, right? You spoiled brat: that's entitlement. And in this business, you are not entitled to shit. Knowledge might save you, but even then, you have to keep a low profile, because nothing lasts forever, and there is always someone who knows more, who is faster, or who is more gifted than you.

So I keep hearing that this job needs to be humanized.
What does that even fucking mean?
You want to soften it? Make it easier?
Do you really think it will make it more comfortable?
You want to humanize a profession that is made by humans for humans. What kind of nonsense are we talking about? Ah, you want to make it effortless. Buddy, without effort and without pressure, can there be any excellence? And without it, is it still the same job?
If I follow your logic, the job may be more bearable, but it is no longer formative.
And if every demand of the job is framed as oppression, you create a culture of average, of minimum acceptable effort. Then you can forget about the quest for perfection; it just becomes a mix of approximation. Then the job becomes functional, it just pays the bills, and there is no ambition.
And “good enough” replaces “well done.”
After thirty years, I know for a fact that restaurants don’t and can’t survive on “good enough.” They survive on details, because nothing is secondary in this business. Everything counts.

Now, I am not comparing restaurants to other industries to deny that difficulty. I am just putting it back into perspective. This job is demanding, always has been, and always will be. This has not changed and never will. What has changed, though, is not this reality but the way it is increasingly interpreted.

There are professions just as demanding, some of them even more. But it doesn’t mean oppressive, and it is part of the work. So why pretend the pressure required by the job is some moral failure?
If you remove all discomfort, you empty the profession of its purpose.

Because even in those challenging professions—cops, the military, breeders, ranchers, growers, and so on—I have not heard the same level of complaining becoming the main narrative.
And why is that? Because those who do those jobs and have to face those difficulties know it comes with the fucking territory.

By the way, this doesn’t make working in restaurants easier. It simply reminds us that difficulty or complications alone do not define injustice.

And I find it particularly shocking that those complaints often come from the most visible roles with recognition, prestige, and exposure. It’s quite shameful that they are often the quickest to denounce the pressure, while the invisible ones, the ones facing the most physical and structural demands, keep the place running without saying a goddamn word.

Last but not least, I wanted to talk about another angle that is rarely addressed: the way pressure is actually distributed. Because the more I look at it, the more I have the feeling that it’s one-sided.

Today’s narrative sounds like it’s the employees who are carrying all the weight, while the owner is automatically labeled abusive or indifferent. That’s too simple, way too easy, and not fair.
Entrepreneurs carry a structural risk, and they are exposed to failure. It’s a different form of pressure. It may not be equal, but it is not opposed either.
Because they don’t just invest time or energy; they put their money into it, their financial security, and sometimes the work of an entire lifetime. Their risk is constant, absolute, daily, and not shareable with anybody. Because in the end, if the business fails, it’s not just a bad experience; it can be a complete disaster. You, on the other hand, can walk away and find another job, but for them, it’s game over.
Of course, that doesn’t justify the abuse and the concerns that have been raised in the past, but I think it deserves to be part of the conversation.

So my question is simple: Are we really talking about real suffering or about a mild discomfort that comes with high expectations?
Have we forgotten the meaning and the weight of words when we talk about burnout, victims, abuse, sacrifice, and oppression? Because if everything becomes abuse, what do we call actual abuse? If every difficult day becomes burnout, what do we call someone who is genuinely burned out? If every demanding environment is oppressive, what word do we have left for real oppression?
Words have meaning. And when we use them for everything, eventually they mean nothing.
And maybe that is part of the problem. We have become so obsessed with describing how difficult something feels that we have forgotten to ask what it actually is.

We live in a society that is so self-involved, so self-centered, that we make the mistake of comparing what is uncomfortable for us with what is truly hard to do or achieve. And maybe the issue isn’t the hardness of the job itself but the increasing denial of what it requires. Maybe the loss of motivation doesn’t come from the workload but from the slow disappearance of the old culture based on responsibility, effort, sweat, sacrifice, and pride in doing things the right way.
And the emergence of a new culture, one that refuses constraints and obligations, that is slowly replacing those values with the dogma of average and minimum effort.

To conclude, I’ll say that you can’t accept a job either in the restaurant industry or anywhere else for that matter and turn into a victim automatically. when it suits you. We must adapt to our jobs, not the other way around, especially since it’s a voluntary choice. The acceptance of what it demands is not à la carte. And whether you are willing to work hard to succeed in it and understand why it’s worth it is not an option. It’s mandatory.
Some jobs are difficult? Yes. Is that new? No.
So, what changed?
Our relationship to difficulty as well as the reluctance to overcome it and our understanding of what injustice actually is.

So in some ways the industry is going through a real crisis—labor shortages, declining vocation. But most of those complaints point to a bigger one, a philosophical one, an existential one; what is nowadays our relationship to work?
When difficulty becomes the dominant narrative, we miss the real issue: nothing comes easy in life, but I still don’t get this obsession of making it a fucking fairy tale where anyone can succeed in it and that is for everyone.
In the end, if you really can’t stand it, if it’s really that hard, again, we come back to free will, to choice. You can always walk away and do something else.
But if it is your choice, you have only two ways of getting out of this clusterfuck.
One, you keep complaining and will only get frustration and misery from it.
Two… you suck it up, get a fucking grip, and try to achieve something.
Because if you cave now, what’s next? What will you give up next? Your integrity, your hopes, your dreams?
Accept this once and for all: nobody rides for free, and if you think you are a victim of an unfair system, stick around and open your eyes; there are many real victims out there. And even there, those people don’t complain.
So tone it down, Cinderella, and stop complaining; you might even learn something in the process.

4/12.26

THERE IS A CRISIS IN THE RESTAURANT INDUSTRY.
Facts or perception?