I mean those of you, I'm sure there are several, who put yourselves through culinary school and work in a nice-ish restaurant under a “brigade system.”
I was a dishwasher in college for a while and it didn't last long. I decided pretty soon that working in a kitchen was Hell on earth. The smell of the same 4 or 5 foods every day for 8+ hours, constant rushing, on your feet all day, scorching heat, getting cut or burnt every few hours like clockwork, and probably an unspoken hard drug culture depending on a few factors … All for extremely tenuous job security and marginally better pay than a fast food worker unless you live in one of 2 or 3 cities where there are enough rich people for food to be “an event.”
Don't get me wrong, I like to cook, and I understand how one can be quite passionate about what they create, but I see these ads all the time for 4-year culinary colleges like the Culinary Institute if America that costs upwards of $40,000 of you do the whole thing, and I wonder “are people really so enchanted by celebrity chefs on the Food Network that they're taking out a year's salary in loans to train for what is essentially a blue collar job, or is there an element I'm not seeing?”