ABSTRACT
When you are starting a career in the culinary arts, you will look for a break to get into the game. Someone somewhere has to take a chance on an upstart with little to no experience. Once in, you will most likely have a string of jobs that are just to get some experience, find your strengths and weaknesses, and learn how the whole power structure of the industry works. Once you have built enough of a track record, you will become an established commodity such as a line cook or sous chef, and you will now have more leverage when seeking out jobs. A hotel or restaurant job will usually have some room for upward mobility, and you may spend years in one location climbing the ladder. Someone once told me that it is important to be where you are supposed to be in your career and that if you are not fitting in, happy enough, or passed over for promotion you will need to be brave and make changes. It is important for you, as a chef, to keep growing. Growth in knowledge, experience, and power are crucial throughout your career. Being stagnant can kill a creative person. I believe that to become a great chef you will need a varied collection of experiences to draw from and to base decisions on. You do not need good or bad information-you need all information. It is important to work in a failing business or two on your way up. It is also important for you to work for a bad chef or two. This
will give you the perspective to see when things are going south and to either get out early or help make changes. Working for great restaurants will show you how things can be if enough smart people are making good decisions. I know a group of petty criminal/ con artists from a bar I used to visit in Florida, fun likeable guys who would buy the beers just to have an audience to hear their stories of how they got the better of people with their well-thought-out scams. I learned more about how to avoid getting ripped off from them than I did listening to most successful people talk about how to be successful.
