So as the title suggests I quit my job via just kinda quietly getting in my car and driving away. That's what those dicks should call “quiet quitting”, by the way. Blocked numbers/e-mails, full ghost. We are talking about the 27th restaurant I've cooked for over the span of 15 years. I wouldn't be the first to point out how shitty it is for seasoned restaurant workers getting poorer as wages just don't rise above the cost of living. Entry-level positions are more enticing than they were 5-10 years ago by a wide margin, and I think this really was related to Covid's impact on the industry.
Take my word with a grain of salt if you will, sure I've clearly had my share of short stints in places but if you spend a decade or more in a single profession but a lot of different environments you see what is the same and what is different, patterns, trends, etc.
2020 was a fucked year for a lot of reasons, but one thing that did happen was restaurants either closed or found out a way to weather the storm, so to speak. This meant cutting labor, among other things. They dropped a lot of people, and its probably fair to say that at that time the more experienced restaurant workers were the fortunate ones. Not only keeping their jobs, but benefitting from an industry-wide rise in wages. I personally started making about 25% more, since in the situation I was in I was able to negotiate a higher wage by taking on multiple roles in a time when business was very slow.
Then, restaurants bounced back. Short-staffed. They framed this as a positive sign of recovery but we all know that there is not shit in recovery three years later. To get more staff, they started to just offer more money for entry-level positions. Effectively, anyone would be better than no one. This was personally insulting to me since it indicates that even in a year when the industry itself shrunk about 6.7% in the US, they could pay marginally better than they could when times were at least not terrible. (I graduated high school in 2008 so I don't have any idea what “good” is, for reference).
So now, what I do is basically just quit a job like at the drop of a hat. They don't even have time to check references, nor do they care if you have any experience. The restaurant I just quit was paying me the same as what they paid high-school-aged kids with no experience at all. I learned how to cook in a AAA-rated five-diamond restaurant, and at a one michelin-star restaurant working for a chef with a James Beard Award, just to give you some idea of where I am coming from on the value I see in my experience.