So context: I'm a relatively young (early 30s) dessert chef, a cook, and an otherwise experienced hand at preparing delicious things to eat. Problem is, I've had another surgery and the pay ad benefits at the restaurant cannot sustain me any longer; medical bills are consuming my life and being paid mildly above minimum wage isn't cutting it anymore.
Now, the business has been good for me; the owners and managers all took pay cuts during the Pandemic to keep the back and front of house paid, they did everything they could to get everyone shifts, and went above and beyond to make sure the money flowed and everyone got enough to survive.
Things are way better now, of course. I got a pay raise recently, before I had to make a trip to the ER and have a subsequent surgery to remove an extremely infected and partially dead gallbladder.
And as most know, hospital bills are terribly expensive, even with the benefits from employment.
And as I look at other jobs to make a better living, I'm seeing retail places offering a base pay slightly higher than mine, upwards towards 22 to even 24$ an hour… then I check over here and find out those same places have a history of union busting, of shitty cult-like management, benefits packages that get revised and cut down…
Now I'm not so sure about leaving. My folks, my sister and her fiancé, are encouraging me to change careers. They're right in the sense that I'm not earning enough to survive on my own, the benefits aren't enough to help me because I am certain to be need medical support in the future.
But all the options I find, while initially promising, all seem to turn out to have serious downsides hidden from the public eye.
All this seems a bit hopeless. Any advice for a burned out chef?