The Dark Side of the Culinary World

Addiction, Depression, Insanity, these are all aspects of the Dark Side of the Professional Kitchen

It’s Tuesday morning, and you’re the Executive Chef at a random mid-level bistro concept. You’ve gotten there early because Tuesday is inventory day. You’re waiting for your Sous Chef to arrive as inventory is his responsibility.

5 minutes go by, you’re watching the clock, then 10 then 20, it’s been half an hour already, and you’re getting a bit irritated by now, but this is out of character for your trusted right-hand man or woman.

As you’re line cooks start to come in you assign prep tasks for the day, and you bring one of them in to help out with the inventory. As you go through the mundane task of weighing and recording the various proteins and prepped items you can’t help but wonder where is your Sous Chef?

Your mind speculates, maybe they had too much to drink last night, or maybe they were playing in the powder until early this morning. Maybe they're sick? They would call or let you know somehow right?

After a few hours of texting, Facebook messages, and the dreaded phone call, still no answer. The day has been slow but you have 50 guests on the books for tonight already and it’s only noon, so you can deduce that it’s going to be a busy night.

By 2 PM you and your entire staff are beyond angry, you are worried, after all, you work with this person every day, and you have come to care for them. You start asking if anyone saw them last night, but nobody did.

Guests are set to start arriving at 4:30 PM and it’s now 3 O’Clock, you should send one of the line cooks or servers to go check on them. They only live a few blocks from the restaurant, just a short walk away.

You scrap that idea and decide to go yourself, after all, you are their fearless leader, right? “I’ll be right back”, you call out to your staff. By now the gossip wheel has begun to turn at lightning speed, and speculation runs wild.

You head down the sidewalk and a few minutes later you arrive at their apartment. You walk up the stairs and knock on the door, no answer. They have told you before to just come in, the door is always open, so you do.

You walk in and call out their name, no answer. You make your way through the kitchen into the hallway, you check their room, but still no sign of them. Finally, you peek your head into the bathroom, you push open the door only to find them on the floor. You kneel down only to discover that they are cold and breathless. What could have happened?

Although this story didn’t happen to me personally, this is a true story.

I have written about mental health in the kitchen and in general. How burnout is a real thing but I once again would like to call attention to mental health and how it’s important to take care of your mind as well as the body.

Although the scenario that I laid out at the beginning of this article is a work of fiction there are many possibilities as to what led up to the Sous Chef being found on the floor.

I imagine that this is a case of someone who seemed to be okay or to have it all together mentally on the outside but was struggling inside with something, either depression, anxiety, drug addiction, or worse.

We are discouraged from bringing our problems to work with us, but I think that is an attitude that was cultivated out of corporate greed, suggesting that employees not let any of their issues affect their work performance. Essentially putting everything aside including their mental health, to better perform their work tasks efficiently with no interruptions. Until that mental breakdown happens that is.

Employees have been putting their imperative health issues aside for far too long.

For example, my very good friend and hetero-lifemate Terry (also a chef) was working in a nursing home as a cook. His boss was one of these 50-60-something guys who was an over-stressed executive chef. Terry walks outside one day, lights up a cigarette, and finds his boss dead in the car, he had suffered a massive heart attack.

Sadly this has been the fate of many a chef, and the corporation that he worked for replaced him about an hour later giving my buddy the position, good for Terry bad for his dead boss. This guy left behind family and friends, people cared for him and his death affected many.

My whole point here is to pay attention to your health, someone will miss you if you aren’t around, trust me. Chefs are under a lot of stress and some don’t have the tools to mitigate that level of stress properly, sadly this also was Terry.

Terry was one of these people who couldn’t deal with the stress in a healthy way, he drank way too much and was a chronic alcoholic. Being a chef didn’t help him out at all but at work to those who didn’t know him, he seemed fine.

He wasn’t fine at all, the drinking and the unhealthy lifestyle coupled with a horrendous work schedule and very little time off led to his untimely death in the summer of 2020, he was 36 years old.

Take care of yourself and each other pay attention to those around you even if you don’t know them personally, we have to look out for each other.

Thank you for reading, I appreciate you all more than you will ever know!