There was the time at CBD Provisions, an upscale restaurant in The Joule hotel, when his small mistakes in food prep were met with lacerating criticism from his coworkers. One seemed to have made it his mission to belittle Clayton at every opportunity, often getting in his face and demanding to know why he was still working there.
"I went to theater school, and restaurants are basically drama,” Belmore says. “It's basically theater, which was very attractive to me. Big personalities, high tension." “If you have a good guy, they can do anything and you'll take 'em back,” she says. “I let guys ride the clock all the time. I had a brunch guy who was late, and when I called him, he said, ‘I'm in Royse City.' If you're in Royse City at 6:30 a.m., I know you’re either doing rails or shooting up. He was two hours late, but he still whipped out a great brunch.
Interviews with chefs, owners and staffers like Clayton and Belmore indicate these problems are linked. Until the industry shakes its reputation for toxicity, employee and customer experience will suffer. Smaller, independent restaurants will struggle the most as they're hard-pressed to find a consistent flow of qualified candidates. It’s incumbent upon overwhelmed chefs and managers to help people struggling with the burnout that’s become synonymous with the industry.
“I try to supplement that raise when I can,” Gardner says, and the employee also takes out loans regularly. “I’m very understanding of his situation. He works literally seven days a week. He works a day job at one place, then comes to us for his night job. He’s got two kids in college and another in high school.”“A lot of people in my kitchen are working two to three jobs,” he says.
Bigger restaurants like Whiskey Cake have a revolving door, he says. Employees will leave after a month or so because another place is offering 30 cents more per hour, but a restaurant with that size, budget and name recognition will be able to replace people much easier than a restaurant like his. Smaller places can’t afford revolving doors; for the place to stay open, the door can really only go one way.“At small places, there’s only so far people can go,” Gardner says.
“Troy is the main reason why I like it,” she says of her work. “He’s one of the most caring and talented chefs I’ve come into contact with. I’m not afraid to go to Troy if I feel like one of my coworkers is being disruptive or rude, and I trust he will handle the situation.” This is a common sentiment among the people interviewed for this story, but once again, there appears to be no single remedy. The consensus is that chefs and owners must be out in front of the complaint; letting their people bear the brunt of a customer’s abuse is a surefire way to make burnout worse. Chefs are equally vexed about how to handle toxic employees — those people who follow the archetype of the “fucking psycho.” Staff shortages compound the problem.
“I have to tell him, ‘Hold on, don’t get burned out,’” she says of the hard-working Orsini. “But I think he’s the unicorn; he doesn’t get burned out.” “We like to promote from within,” she says. “The fact that I was able to have female mentorship when I was so green had a major impact on my career, so I want to do the same.”Van Meter, whom Provost cites as one of her mentors, says women have not received enough credit for the work they’ve done to shape Dallas’ culinary scene.
“The U.S. has a lot more mental abuse than physical abuse in kitchens, but it’s gotten a lot better by far,” she says. “We have to compete with companies that are paying more than us,” Van Meter says. “So, if you’re not mentoring at some of the culinary schools, you’re not going to get people. Apprenticeship used to be the model, but now people want mentorship. You want someone to be kind; I don’t think that’s asking for too much, and I don’t know why it’s always been so hard. It doesn’t have to be.”
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