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Comment by amalag | Hacker News Reader

In his scenario the servers make $22, the cooks $14. Is that typical? There does not seem to be much incentive for a long time occupation as a cook.

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The food service industry is supported by a huge mass of people who just do their jobs, a small group of people who want to be stars but probably won't, and a tiny group of stars who can actually earn enough money to live well.

Any of the recent food star autobiographies will tell you that life in a kitchen is a 60-80 hour grind, every week, and that investing in a restaurant requires only slightly less foolish optimism than buying a boat.

I think it's more about supply and demand. A good server is harder to find than a good cook. Let's also not confuse a "cook" with a "chef" (who is responsible for purchasing, menu design, teaching the cooks, etc).

It's possible there are other factors at play here, but I don't know enough about the situation to bring those up.

I was also shocked by this. Surely your servers aren't worth almost twice what your cooks are! And with the "no-tips" model , I don't understand why pay wasn't more even.

It sounds reasonable in a racist society. The cooks are probably immigrants, possibly illegal, and can be paid low wages to perform a rote task. The servers have to smile and be nice and handle customer complaints, and will determine whether people come back more than the food. (Just look at Yelp reviews... people don't care about the food, they care about the service)

Or could it be simple supply and demand? After all people care a lot about the quality of service, as you say.

Let's not play that game. As a former cook, I can tell that yes, there are lots of immigrants. Most of them work unbelievably hard, and really, really depend on these jobs to survive.

There are also a _lot_ of addicts, psychopaths, morons and other assorted human detritus, of ever conceivable hue competing for these jobs, which also depresses wages.

Furthermore, restaurants don't have any damn money. Restaurants are on razor thin margins always. Usually a bad week or two from going under.

Qualifications for working in the kitchen consist of:

1. will you work for very little money? 2. can you work ok when you're high and/or drunk? For fancy places: 3. can you safely handle a knife? 4. will you toil endlessly for no apparent reason?

That's pretty much it.

Yeah, what is it with drunks and addicts going hand in hand with cooks? All the chefs i've known would down a bottle of vodka a day, if not more. The Betty Ford Center would probably get 3 Michelin stars.

There's hardly any other place that will hire a known drunk, addict or felon. Even garbage men and roughnecks get random drug tests these days.

Yes it seems that cooking takes a lot more skill than serving. But in a fast-food society, they have taken all the skill out of cooking, it is just an assembly line of prepackaged ingredients.

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