Posted by Francois on January 26, 1999 at 08:55:15:
In Reply to: Workaholism in the food service industry. posted by Glenn Messick on January 05, 1999 at 23:04:49:
I happy that you found the proper balance in your life. The key words being "your". In the early days of my short cooking career I would say "you can't hate it, you can't like it, you gotta love it". You sound a little burnt out. We all get to that point sooner or later. I have considerably reduced my hours since my last post. But I still fill my time around food related pasttimes (i.e. starting an 80 acre organic farm that someday will include a dairy, poultry, grist mill, foie gras production, etc.; collecting rare 19th and 20th century French cook books; menu collecting; eating in restaurants; cooking dinner parties in other states; etc.). But food is my reason for living. My outlook is different from yours. I do not look down upon people, such as yourself, who have a different passion. I also believe you get out what you put in. I think the term "workaholism" reflects when someone has a problem with something they truly don't love. I compare it to alcoholism in that the work starts to destroy your life. BUT I hardly consider the person that embibes upon too much 1985 La Tache and 1967 Chateau d'Yquem an alcoholic. They are wine geeks.
To paraphrase Rudolph Chelminski in his excellent book entitled "The French at Table": The men and women who compose the industry of the stomach today, are an extraordinary bunch of people, as endearing as they are admirable. "That I find them commendable far, very far, beyond the common range of mortals - how infinitely more estimable is a man with a reputation for a special touch with green beans than a senior vice president of Megalo Motors or Imperial Toilet Tissue (ITT) - is not just for their constantly bubbling inventiveness, which has carried French cuisine to an apogee of creation probably unmatched at any other time in history; not just for their instinctive intelligence, which, with the best of them, matches that of any company director, politician or scientist I have met; and not just for the astonishing professionalism that allows them to keep from sinking with enterprises that any business analyst would qualify as pure folly: labor intensive, unmechanized, inefficient, agonizingly subject to public whim, low in profit margin, generally mistrusted by the tax authorities and demanding work hours that are so absurd that any other trade would reject them out of hand." What separates Chefs from almost all other people is the conviction and passion and joy with which we conduct our profession. As Alain Senderens once said "You've got to have le feu sacre to succeed in this business"
I hope I die the way my grandfather's best friend died. He hunted deer in the morning; came home for a wonderful lunch; and did a face plant into his foie gras. What a way to go!!! Please lord let me go that way...
Francois de Melogue