Having had an ex-wife and a sister who were pretty serious into serving to pay for school, I can tell you that the volatility in income was astounding. They could work a full shift and make $250, and then work another full shift and make fifteen bucks.
Given the OP’s child is male, I think it’s also worth noting there’s a big difference between the tips given to each gender. At least at the ordinary schlub level; I imagine things are a bit different at the hoity toity places catering to the rich & famous.
Yes and the above article also showed studies proving the prettier the waitress the more money they make.
WatchTHIS VIDEOwhere they prove a womans larger breasts equals more money in tips. Heck even women give more money to larger breasts!
FWIW, I’ve never heard of an education in culinary arts translating to a career as a server. Not sure how serving is germane to the topic, to be honest.
With some kind of degree in the broad area of food service there are a number of ways to turn that into a good career. The best opportunities are in management, at the chain restaurants managers can do quite well and they can also move up the corporate chain above the restaurant level. There are plenty of food service industries outside the final stage of preparing and cooking food as well, food service suppliers also need management and sales people and there are good jobs there. Throughout the industry any kind of degree and food service experience is seen as beneficial.
The end point jobs, cooking, serving, etc. are not as good as prospects. A few people excel in the art and can sign up for good gigs as chefs but even then the jobs are not all that stable, even the restaurants that qualify as successful will not last a lifetime, turnover can be high, and the there’s no room to move up in position or pay.
There are plenty of good jobs in institutional food service. Not what the typical culinary arts student is aspiring to but public funded institutions pay better than average, usually carrying better benefits packages than found in the private sector for the same job. The job security will be there also. There are some large private service providers in that category also.
Finally, there’s security in having food service experience. Not real great security, but you can always find some job. Better than can be said for someone with a degree in South American Art History.
My ex husband tried to work in food service and he has ADHD and it’s was horrible for him he couldn’t keep his mind on one thing long enough and he got fired. Then he got a job working at a Market Basket deli and someone
reported him for eating slice of cheese and he was fired for this. I could care less how big a woman breast are, I am more concerned in how good the service and food is and the service is polite or rude. And if a women breast are so large and hanging out I don’t want the person body sweat in my food !
[quote=“purplehearingaid, post:46, topic:801217”]
My ex husband tried to work in food service and he has ADHD and it’s was horrible for him he couldn’t keep his mind on one thing long enough and he got fired. Then he got a job working at a Market Basket deli and someone reported him for eating slice of cheese and he was fired for this.
[quote]
ADHD and food service don’t interact well. Of course it depends on the person and the job but most of food service is repetitive action and an attention deficit will be a problem.
If you watch the video you’ll see her breasts were completely covered. Women were tipping higher than the men when she had giant cartoon breasts. Satisfaction is tied into this and not just in a purely sexual manner.
At the end of August, no less. Prime, late-summer restaurant time. That’s crazy.
But much of that story probably isn’t too different from a lot of the stuff faced by restaurants and other small businesses. It’s easy to say he’s crazy for having done it, but if a few pieces of bad luck go the other way, and if he makes a few different choices, he could now be the financially-secure owner of a well-respected and successful Toronto restaurant. Thing is, though, it’s often those little decisions that constitute the difference between success and failure in an industry known for its competitive and unforgiving nature.
If you listen to (or read) that Freakanomics podcast, you’ll see that a lot of the servers at the high-end restaurant under discussion went to culinary school, but wound up waiting tables because they couldn’t pay off their student loans at $9 an hour.
Ah, thanks. I did not listen to the podcast.
[quote=“TriPolar, post:47, topic:801217”]
[quote=“purplehearingaid, post:46, topic:801217”]
My ex husband tried to work in food service and he has ADHD and it’s was horrible for him he couldn’t keep his mind on one thing long enough and he got fired. Then he got a job working at a Market Basket deli and someone reported him for eating slice of cheese and he was fired for this.
I know I tried to tell my ex that he took too long to make a meal that home and I didn’t want to wait 3 hours to eat . When I told him to get help for his ADHD he thought I was saying he was stupid . I didn’t watch the video , I am one woman that not turned on by other women big breasts.
The big difference is that they drug test most construction workers and oil rig workers in my neck of the woods. Cooks, not so much. (Also, you probably shouldn’t lump the guys who run oil rigs as a low wage job. A toolpush will make between $1000-$2000 per day with equipment charges depending on experience. Even green roughnecks can make 100K a year with the crazy overtime.)
Also, in my experience as a former drug dealer, cooks do use drugs at a noticeably higher rate than similar jobs. Part of it is the hours, working evenings can leave one quite bored with minimal entertainment options after midnight outside the larger cities. There is also a “work hard, party harder” culture that I have noticed that contributes to it as well.
I’ve not worked in food service for decades, but back in the day I never worked in a place where drugs didn’t flow freely, especially in the kitchen.
My bro works skilled construction, they are regularly drug tested for safety/insurance reasons.
I worked in food service for 10 years and indeed drug use is rampant, cigarette use even higher.
That being said, it’s a good career choice if you like it. It’s probably the best way in this country for someone to rise from the poor to the middle class short of joining the armed forces and using that to go to college. You don’t have to be a major achiever to rise into a middle class income in that industry. Most people in the industry don’t plan to make it a career and many that do stay are too screwed up to be effective competition. If you work reliably and don’t fall into a lot of the pathologies food service workers fall into, then you’ll become a manager. What’s more it’s a recession proof industry where layoffs almost never happen and where there’s always demand for experienced staff.
Aside from management, some talented individuals are great at generating tip income and can get into the middle class on those talents alone. This also requires choosing a location where people actually tip, of course.
And if you work really hard, and are really good at your job, then you can advance to make really good money in a big food service corporation as upper management. Then you’ve got a genuine career going on.
Oh, I’d also add that you’re not more likely to abuse drugs or turn to smoking or drinking because you work in food service. In my experience, it’s more that this job choice is attractive to these types. The jobs are easy to get, they don’t care much about your background, they usually don’t test, and the culture is permissive. One of the biggest transitions for me moving from food service to office work is professionalism. You can’t talk to your fellow employees in an office the way you talk to each other in a restaurant.
[quote=“purplehearingaid, post:51, topic:801217”]
[quote=“TriPolar, post:47, topic:801217”]
You really should watch the video. There are whole industries behind studying human behavior and giving salespeople and customer contacts a certain “look” that bring in sales. All the Mythbusters people were doing is trying to confirm or not a persistent myth (big breasts equals bigger tips).
So in the real world a restaurant owner would hire a consultant to design uniforms, menus, lighting, background music, even the color of the walls - all to increase sales.
In my experience, there are two advantages to this career path:
- Manual labour of this type is difficult to replace with technology. This should be a safe lifelong career.
- Manual labour means that there is a very low barrier to entry, which means that folks who have a true passion, an education and treat it as a career tend to rise faster.
There are many downsides to the job, but it never pays to ignore your passions.
I would give pause before recommending someone to enter the food service industry (we’re talking about being a chef, right?). My younger brother started university in economics but had cooking in his blood and after a year shifted to a food college. Since graduation he has worked at chain restaurants, done apprenticeships in France, worked on oil rigs, on luxury yachts in the med sea, at New York high end restaurants, and has been a live-in personal chef for a couple of famous entertainers. He has always been working but there have been a lot of systemic problems that just keep coming up: drugs, as have been mentioned, is a problem, so have the crazy hours, so has the lack of stability of where you live so putting down roots is hard. The money also isn’t great. Sure, he is middle class but like me he was born middle class so I think he may be just working to keep his head above water.
Here’s just one example I remembered of the kind of drug problems that are rife, problems that most people would never expect. On the Mediterranean super-yachts that cost about 200,000 dollars per week to charter, the crew usually get a ‘tip’ at the end of the charter. My brother told me about the time they were tipped in big blocks of cocaine. Not safe, not economically viable.
The above 3 posts are the three things I would highlight about the restaurant industry. In no particular order:
*Honest work is always good; but it can be difficult.
- The lower levels pay poorly, which makes sense because they’re low skill jobs; as such the job attracts a lot of less-than-desirable people; the drug addicts, the unskilled, the unemployable (convicts).
*The hours suck; one of the many messages I tried to drill into my kids, and they all worked at restaurants in their lives, is that you don’t want to make a career out of a job that requires you to be working when most other people are socializing (i.e. weekend and nights).