How did abuse get baked into the restaurant industry?
SalonWhen the The New York Times and The Boston Globe recently published exposés in which employees of award-winning chef Barbara Lynch described their abusive work environments, we weren't surprised. As sociologists who study the culinary industry and its workers, we recently published research showing that many kitchen staffers come to view mistreatment and abuse as a mundane – and often inevitable – part of working in restaurants. For example, pioneering French restaurateur Auguste Escoffier wrote in his memoir that his first chef "believed that it was impossible to govern a kitchen 'sans une pluie de gifles'" – without a shower of slaps. Others admitted that they've come to expect as much after seeing the ways in which abusive chefs are glorified in the media – think Gordon Ramsay's entertaining tongue-lashings on the show "Hell's Kitchen," or Ralph Fiennes' recent portrayal of a homicidal chef in "The Menu."
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