Do chefs work long hours.
Introduction
If you are considering cooking as a career and want to be a chef, then you might be wondering whether how many hours you are supposed to work. Many of you will be knowing that it is not a 9 to 5 job and all chefs are working seven days a week, fifty hours a week and nights, holidays, and weekends respectively. In all leading restaurants, you are expected to work seven days a week for twelve to fourteen hours a shift. The minimum work in a majority of the restaurants is around fifty hours a week.
Work Environment of a Chef
The work environment of a chef is completely difficult whether you are working in a restaurant, five-star hotel, cruise ship respectively. The typical work describes the schedule which consists of standing over a hot stove, cutting vegetables, and stocking shelves in the cold refrigerator. If you are in a senior position, such as an executive
Chefthe position requires paperwork hours, inventory and scheduling, budget planning respectively. Some chefs require you to work up to one hundred and twenty hours. If you are new to the restaurant industry then you might have to undergo this story repeatedly.Often cooks are expected to work nine hours daily and six days a week. Unfortunately, many cooks are expected to work on weekends. Imagine all your friends are enjoying on weekends, watching movies and you are working like a sweatshop in your kitchen. As expected as a cook you might be required to work on weekends and stay very late until your job gets completed. It might also involve staying up late to cover up for other colleagues. Consequently, you will be working in six to eight hours and also overtime of two hours and you can approach fifty hours a week.
The strange thing to notice is that inexpensive places like California many cooks are working two to three jobs additionally. For example jobs of a chef in Orange County pay around 12 to 16 USD per hour and many people take up these second jobs. In a place like Orange County rents are around 2000 USD per month so you will find many cooks are working two to three jobs and doing as many overtime hours.
This kind of work schedule is suitable when you are young but as you become old gradually the long hours will become a drag upon your body. So you will find hundreds of positions for part-time cooks. But the starting salaries for chefs and cooks do not exceed 50000 USD in a year even in an expensive state like California.
Another very important issue is that as a chef you have to clean your restaurant or workplace along with cooking the items. In every kitchen mostly the cook does the cleaning himself and the cooks are cleaning cutting boards, floors, counters, walls, flattops, ranges, knives, utensils, and pans, pots. If you are working as a chef and spend lots of time cooking and saving some money for yourself by working as a dishwasher. As a cook, you are expected to clean your items.
Conclusion
In this article you will come to know as a chef you will be expected to work extremely high hours even exceeding fifty hours a week. Besides your regular working hours, you are expected to work overtime which will come to around ten hours a week. Also unlike other professions, there are no weekends off. You must have observed that unlike other offices where Saturdays and Sundays have mostly light work eating places and restaurants are much busier on these weekends.