Just Don't Do It!!!

"Don't do it!"

Far too often this is the rote response from a colleague or hospitality-food & beverage professional/expert when approached by someone seeking advice:
"Do you have any suggestions for someone who is looking to get into the restaurant industry?"
"Don't. Do. It!"

These are the same people that will usually lament that there are no good applicants for vacant jobs, whinging about staff shortages and the lack of training for the staff that do eventually show up at the back door. There may be an easy solution to this problem: we should work hard to make people want to join the hospitality industry instead of scaring and steering them away.

The number of people whose first job is in the hospitality industry is over 30%, and it is consistently one of the industries that employs the most people in this country. So why is it that we have staff shortages? It seems like the jaded old-timers are focused solely on the negatives of the industry, and won't even allow new employees the time and space to figure out if they like the work, and the culture, on their own accord.

I know that it is hard. It is hard work. It is hard on a person both mentally and physically. It is hard on sobriety. It is hard on relationships with anyone outside of the industry, including spouses, children, friends...acquaintances.But these same challenges can pay huge dividends as well: it is an industry that opens the world up for you to travel in, the typical hours of restaurant work open your schedule for other creative endeavours and taking advantage of the "gig economy" during your off-hours. You will learn valuable skills, (cooking, interpersonal communication, problem solving, critical thinking, inventory control, purchasing, merchandising, marketing, promotions, time management), many of which you will use daily for the rest of your life, regardless of your final career path.

Chef Gary Hunter, Vice Principal for Hospitality and Adult Learning at London's Westminster Kingsway College laments the lack of new entrants into the field despite the popularity of TV cooking shows. As a professional educator, he has a simple three-part plan to attract new employees which includes the embracing of apprenticeship programs, and putting potential employees into paid/real-world-experience positions. Get them into restaurants, hotels, and clubs and let them see, first-hand, how rewarding--and challenging--a career can be.

And just because someone isn't a "hard body," or they don't have that slightly masochistic personality, or they have a different career in mind doesn't mean that we should close the door to entry before they've crossed the threshold. In fact, some of the best cooks I have ever employed were merely "passing through," and were working to get through college, or figuring out what they wanted to be when they grew up. Yes! This was frustrating at times, hopefully they will look back on their time with me and say that it was valuable in one way or another (beyond a pay check or lift pass). These employees are just as vital to the continued success of the industry, and we shouldn't pass them over.  Hopefully, they will work for you and think, "hey! This is pretty cool" and end up spending more time than they had planned in hospitality, or even ultimately make it their career (which is exactly what happened to me!)

And I think we can all agree that there are some challenges to being a hospitality industry employee that are challenging; these shouldn't be exaggerated to hyperbole or sugar coated. And the benefits are myriad, and these too should be delivered in a realistic and measured way. This honesty and transparency will both attract and repel, we just need to be collectively smart enough to welcome those that are attracted into the fold.

Yes, Chef! No, Chef! I don't know, Chef!

Moving from the Northeast to the Southeast was certainly a culture shock on many levels. One thing that struck me immediately, and has lingered, is the ability of two perfect strangers to strike up a conversation. This struck me, but did not shock me. This easy-conversation style was everywhere around me growing up in NY; so ubiquitous that my father, (a self proclaimed hermit), would strike up conversations with neighbors if they stopped by, or when he was at the local store.

Recently I have been more than a little jealous of this ability, and question whether or not I ever had this ability. When I spend time with childhood friends my storytelling ability is not up to snuff. Of course as I scrutinize my memories, I can recall many instances of stopping in people's driveways and chatting, spending hour upon hour on the phone, indulging people in mindless-directionless discussions...all willfully and gladly.

What the heck happened to me?!

Of course, this didn't take nearly as long to figure out: I started cooking for a living.
(Finding speaking on the phone absolutely detestable and loathsome is the subject of another post for someday in the future).

As a young cook, it was my ability to verbally spar with the chef that actually kept me employed. As I progressed up the ranks, expectations grew, and the tolerance of Beers "the kid who talks a lot" absolutely evaporated. Before too long, your conversations come to a halt.

Chefs want a SITREP, so that they can quickly evaluate the current situation, put out existing fires, and prevent future fires from flaring up. On the line/during service time-is-money and every second you use to tell me extraneous and extemporaneous information is a second that my vegetables are dying, the guest is waiting, the service staff is getting antsy...no bueno! To economize time and words, every question in a good number of kitchens gets answered in one of three ways:

"Yes/Oui, Chef!"

"No, Chef!"

"I don't know, Chef!"

Working in this compressed sense of time has certainly curtailed my verbosity. I have needled many a cook and fellow chef with the admonition, "I don't want a story, I just need an answer." For it seems that my tolerance of the wordy, has been diminished as well. I cannot blame this entirely on being a "chef." Like much of the highlight reel of eyebrow knitting "what was I thinking/that was the exact opposite of what I should have been doing," this gnaws away at me. Primarily because it eroded the part of my mind that generates/tolerates small talk. Parts that I consciously work at improving with every, 'hello."

Knowing now what I should have known then, I would have bailed on the the following philosophy when dealing with my team:

Be bright.
Be brief.
Be gone.

Procrastination and Perfectionism and Creativity (or lack thereof)

I spend a LOT of time in my car, a 2011 Subaru with almost 290,000 miles. I do a LOT of thinking while driving. Much of what I think about is accompanied by the notion that "this is something I should write about."

The end result has been a LOT of thinking and NO writing: ZERO WRITING in almost a year, actually.

In the last couple of weeks, I have found myself referencing a famously quotable passage by Hunter S. Thompson regarding his use of writing to really, deeply-profoundly think about a subject.

That was my "eureka!" moment: I was thinking things through so thoroughly, doing mental rewrites to hone my cranial blogpost, that I was completing the process. The final rewrite was done.

Signed. Sealed. Delivered.

I was exhausting my material, setting it free from my thoughts. Not to be recalled, let alone written about at a later time and place when I was able to put pen to pad.

And then yesterday, I found out there is an actual psychological effect to explain this: The Zeigarnik Effect. In 1927 Bluma Zeigarnik conducted experiments about memory and the ability of people to remember incomplete tasks better than completed ones. She found that people were actually 90% more likely to remember the details of a task that was interrupted than one that was completed.

Adam Grant of the Wharton Business School has actually linked this forced procrastination, and procrastination in general to greater creativity. In fact he cites Da Vinci's 16-years to complete the Mona Lisa and the last minute edits to The Gettysburg Address and the "I Have a Dream" speech as proof positive of the benefits of procrastination.

(It is taking me forever to write this...)

Obviously there is a time and place for everything:
Defusing a bomb? Precrastination will serve you well. Trying to write the next Star Wars prequel for Jar-Jar Binks? Procrastination won't help with that, but procrastination may help you compose your first/next single, or land you an article in the New Yorker, or finish your next script for your television show.

"You call it procrastinating. I call it thinking."
- Aaron Sorkin