4.6 • 7.6K Ratings
🗓️ 27 October 2021
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Five current and former food service workers reflect on their career changes and the future of their industry since the start of the pandemic.
For more from Cara, Lesely, and on navigating child care in the pandemic, listen to last year's episode here.
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0:00.0 | There's something about the restaurant industry that is so much fun until it's not. |
0:07.2 | And then once you hit your burnout point, it's like falling off a cliff. |
0:12.3 | This is Death, Sex, and Money. |
0:19.7 | The show from WNYC about the things we think about a lot, I need to talk about more. |
0:26.5 | I'm Anna Sale. |
0:35.6 | Melissa Montero had been cooking in New Orleans restaurant kitchens for over a decade. |
0:40.8 | When late last year, she decided to leave it behind for good. |
0:45.2 | I think I'll always miss the comradery of line cooks together. |
0:51.6 | I mean, I still keep in touch with line cooks from my first restaurant job, or lifelong |
0:57.8 | friends. |
0:58.8 | Some of them I'm closer to than I'm closer to my own brothers. |
1:02.1 | But I don't miss the hours. |
1:04.1 | I don't miss the relatively crummy pay and by coming home smelling like the fryer and |
1:13.4 | my beat up old dance go shoes in the corner. |
1:16.7 | I don't miss anything about that. |
1:19.2 | Melissa is just one of millions of restaurant workers who re-evaluated their career since |
1:24.4 | the pandemic upended their work. |
1:27.0 | I wasn't able to pay my life in gas. |
1:29.4 | I was not able sometimes to even get diapers and milk from my son. |
1:33.4 | It was like why am I working for a job that I might provide for my child? |
1:41.1 | Nearly 7% of hospitality workers quit in August alone this year, according to the Bureau |
1:47.0 | of Labor Statistics. |
... |
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