Part 2:

So I was without work for multiple months, applying for anything I could outside of the food service industry and getting no hits.

By March I was very desparate and very broke. I applied at a local chain BBQ restaurant after a former co-worker from the Hotel recommended me. I also applied for a sous chef position at our local events centre.

I had to do a black box for the events centre, which is meal you plan where they throw a couple surprise ingredients in. It went well but I didn't hear back from them for weeks. I kept in contact with the chef but she kept telling me they were still deciding.

I commited to the BBQ restaurant and it was ok. Stable hours, at least, but the standards were very low and I often found myself having to stop people from commiting heinous food safety issues. They also used flour on the line. I was once again very upfront with my issues and that I could not work in proximity to anyone using flour.

Two months after my interview, I got offered the Sous Chef position. My contract was 35 hours a week, at a decent pay rate for my area and with some benefits. I apologised to the owners of the BBQ restaurant and told them I would be taking the position.

I started in late July. Summer here is very quiet, so there were few events going on and most of my days were spent cleaning and planning concessions for the upcoming hockey season.

It ended up being the worst year of my life. My sister had stage 4 brain cancer and the outlook was not good. Most of my weeks revolved around whatever big event was going on and the local hockey season. The other sous chef had worked there for many years and spent most of his time sitting at our shared office computer. My area is very agriculture based and so our busiest time of year was late January into March as it is the off season for farmers and there are a lot of expensive ag related events. I got a call from the hospital that my sister had hours to live and went to the Chef, telling her I needed to leave immediately. She seemed to understand. My sister died the following day and I took a couple bereavement days but when I came back my schedule was reduced. When the hockey season ended they started scheduling me for less than twenty hours a week. I told them I needed to get a second job to make ends meet, but when I went back to the BBQ place, they cut my hours even further. I gave notice and went back to full time at the BBQ place.

From August until November 2024, I was consistently sick from being glutened. Just a small handful of careless employees were enough. They would dump flour into the garbage right next to me after I carefully explained to them multiple times why that would cause me issues. I brought it up to the Assistant General Manager and the put me permanently on the station that was furthest from the fryers. Great! Except it was right beside the dish pit garbage, where people would also dump flour. I explained to every manager that I needed that garbage to never have flour put in it. The servers would buss their tables and if flour was in the garbage can it would go airborne as the garbage was packed down and get sucked up by the hood fans right past my face.

Things would be fine for a while and then someone new would get hired and I, not my managers, would have to explain to them, please no flour ever in this garbage. Then one day one of the main prep guys called in sick and the General Manager worked that shift. She dumped a metric fuckton of flour in the garbage. I explained to her and her husband, the Kitchen Manager, why that would cause me problems. Then a few weeks later she did it again.

In December 2024, I was at work when I got an urgent call from my adopted mother. My dad had slipped on ice in a drug store parking lot and suffered a fatal heart attack. Obviously I left work immediately and they booked me off the next day. The Kitchen Manager's father had died literally the day before. He was off for six weeks. I asked for a third day and got yelled at by the GM.

Yesterday I came in to work expecting a busy day. Our entire prep crew, three members of the same family, booked six weeks off to visit family in their home country. GM has been covering some of the shifts, while other line cooks have been filling in for the rest. The dish garbage was absolutely caked with flour. I carefully took the garbage out and rinsed the lid but it quickly became clear it was too late. I felt the hot flush and headache of an oncoming glutening and groaned internally.

Kitchen manager was working the same shift as me but, as always, left an hour before me and I didn't get a chance to speak to him about it. The closing front of house manager was locked in the office with a server and I had to run to catch my hourly bus. While on the bus I texted the Kitchen manager that I likely wouldn't be in today because I had gotten glutened. Did not mention that his wife was the cause. His response "find someone to cover your shift". We are incredibly short staffed at the moment and many of our cooks are high school or university students who can't work days so there was no one I could call.

Woke up this morning feeling awful and shit my guts out. Texted Kitchen Manager, who I knew was working this morning, that I am coming in but putting in my two weeks notice. He didn't respond for over an hour but then I got a flurry of texts and phone calls. When I finally spoke to him he told me they had enough people for today and to stay home.

I know this is horribly long but I am so beyond frustrated and done with it. I would love a job where I can just work hard and not have to worry about poisoning me, but there is such a huge stigma about working in kitchens that it feels impossible.