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If you have to ask, it probably aint for you, sorry. I worked full time in kitchens while going to culinary school. I worked as an executive pastry chef for four years, and cooked in hot food for a few more. Once you fight your way to the top, it only gets harder. You can count on 60 hours a week, more if you are salaried. Every weekend when your friends are having fun? You will be working. Every holiday that your family is enjoying? You will be busting your hump. Hope to have a relationship outside of the restaurant? It wont be easy. Hope to stay married? Very hard with waitress/hostess coming around all the time. It's hard, dirty work. What do you do when you get off of work at midnight? There's not much else to do but drink, so watch our for the bottle. Did cooking shows lure you into this idea? Go work in a kitchen for at least a year. Make it up to at least a sauté cook and work a few Saturday nights. You wont need to ask anyone if cooking is the right career path for you. I wish someone would have bitch slapped me and made me stay in college. Eight years of cooking, I ended up in debt, divorced, and depressed. I switched careers to high tech/ network geek. I work regular hours, and make literally twice what I did on my best year cooking. If you factored in the hours, I make three times what I did cooking. Yeah, now I can still cook my ass off, impress people with fancy cooking, and that is the best thing I came away with. People always ask me if I miss cooking; Hell no! I can cook what I want, for whomever I want, whenever I want, and I really enjoy it. It's the business that sucks. If you have to ask, it really isn't for you. I swear. Sorry if that sounds harsh.
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