I worked at a very prestigious, Michelin-starred restaurant. The food was art, but the restaurant was inside of a very prestigious hotel and budgets were very tightly managed. The chef was a very charismatic leader and we all followed him into “battle” each night - the kitchen brigade system is militaristic by design. Anywho… We were told that the restaurant couldn’t afford to pay us to do the amount of work needed to meet the very high standard of food we prepared, but we were committed to the mission. So, as hourly workers, we arrived each day and worked 4 hours without clocking in. When it was time to “start work” the first person who noticed would bang the heel of their knife on their cutting board. This non-verbal signal then saw us all silently pause our prep, we’d file into the hall one by one and clock in. We’d then work for our 8 hour shift and clock out… And then go back into the kitchen to clean and prep for the next day for another 4 hours.
8 hours on, 8 hours off. Each day.
This is a bad story. I have more and some that are especially violent. It’s an objectively bad industry, a part of me loves a lot of it, but it’s abusive, exploitative and overall bad for humanity.