It’s midnight, and the manager of a packed bar rallies his troops during a brief moment of calm on a Saturday night. Not for the first time tonight, the manager whips out a bottle of Wild Turkey, and pours a shot for each of his frazzled staff. They down the shot, and after a round of high fives, the staff get straight back to work.
These so-called “staff meetings” took place every few hours, where crouched behind the bar with a bottle of Wild Turkey and a bar of thirsty customers, Hassel Aviles and her coworkers could take a moment to calm their nerves before heading back out into the trenches.
Aviles, 38, has worked in the food and beverage industry for over 20 years and is no stranger to the partying, drinking, and drugs that run rampant in the business. The nature and hours of the restaurant industry has led to a work culture centred around partying, one that is inherently damaging to the staff that get caught up in it. For many, this lifestyle can lead to a host of personal problems including mental health and substance abuse.
“Sometimes when I get off shift I don’t want to think about work anymore,” said Kimberley Moriarty, a third-year journalism student at Carleton University. “I want to think about something else. And a lot of the times, you and a couple other co-workers got cut at the same time you were and you’re all done your shifts at the same time.”
“So you’ll grab a beer and decompress together and then maybe that turns into something else which can you know, obviously escalate.” – Kimberly Moriarty, third-year journalism at Carleton
Not 9 to 5
As a response to this, Aviles and Ariel Coplan founded Not 9 to 5, a Canadian organization focused on creating awareness about mental health and addiction in the restaurant industry.
“The biggest issue is how easily partying fits into our lifestyle,” said Tyler Da Silva, chef de cuisine at Sidedoor Contemporary Kitchen and Bar in the Byward Market, who has been in the industry for 15 years.
“When you’re working for a government job you work 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. or 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. What happens is after work you have your happy hour, you go home, you wind down, and then you start it again,” Da Silva explained.
“You find reasons to party, you find reasons to drink.”
Aviles said this is a huge problem in the industry, because people need a way to come down from the after-work-high, and the easiest way to do so is by drinking.
“After a shift the energy is buzzing and you’re supposed to go to sleep? It’s kind of an impossible act,” she said.
Moriarty said that the high energy of working affects her physically and mentally.
“If I work a shift and then come to school, my legs will be bouncing in class, because I kind of just need to get up and move. But in terms of like mental health is it’s just a lot of stress and anxiety that it puts you through,” she said.
Partying affects everything
Laurier Lamontagne, 26, a chef at Sidedoor, used to go out a minimum of three nights a week in his early 20s. Debilitating four-day hangovers have since persuaded him to practice moderation.
“You have the fun first, and then you feel bad after. So going out always seems like a good idea at the time, and then you wake up and you realize it really wasn’t,” Lamontagne said.
He said the constant drinking, partying, and hangovers probably impeded his progress as a chef.
“There’s not a direct correlation, but a lot of the time the higher skill level cooks are less likely to go get fucked up when they’re done working,” he said.
After he stopped going out as often, he began taking on more responsibility at work and is currently researching menu modifications, something he said he couldn’t have done before.
Now, Lamontagne can put more time into his research and helping Sidedoor develop their new menu.
Party culture is so deeply entrenched in the industry, and has historically been romanticised by celebrities such as in Anthony Bourdain’s book, Kitchen Confidentials.
“It’s a huge factor in promoting this image we have of ourselves as these rock star chefs, that we can go out, grind it out and do it all,” Da Silva reflected.
Because of this, he said he believes some people see it as a badge of honour to be able to go out drinking, slam a few beers in the morning, and still function at work.
Though Lamontagne himself doesn’t buy into the glorified rock star-chef lifestyle, he said when he first started in the industry, he had chefs tell him, “It’s all about getting busy, going out, getting wasted, and then doing the whole thing over again.”
“I feel like there’s still a shift that needs to happen in this very male-dominated, patriarchal industry that we work in, where being strong is toughing it out, pushing yourself to the max, and rewarding yourself with substances post work shift,” Aviles said.
Combining work with school led Moriarty to reduce how much she drinks after work. “I’ve pulled away from you know, having a beer after a long day at work or, doing this stuff because I’m like, okay, I have to go home and do some school work.” she said.
“But in the summer definitely when I didn’t have school, I was drinking a bit more. And I think that came along with the whole mentality of work hard play hard kind of thing. Like being in a high fast-paced, high-stress environment takes a lot out of you.”
“There’s also such an isolation that happens,” said Aviles.
“I know more people who go out on their days off just to not be alone. So where do you go to not be alone? A bar. And it all starts with one.” – Tyler Da Silva, 15 years in the industry
Da Silva said he will also see coworkers come into the restaurant on a Sunday when it’s slow, simply for company.
Aviles sees this loneliness as an integral part of the mental health and substance abuse problems many people in the industry develop. Not 9 to 5 collects industry-specific data on mental health in the food and beverage industry, and out of 400 respondents, when asked if they suffered any challenges with mental health and/or addiction, 87 per cent said yes.
“It’s so heartbreaking, but not at all surprising,” said Aviles.
Aviles started work as a server when she was 17 and has over 20 years of firsthand experience with both mental illness and the restaurant industry. She has suffered from anxiety and depression since high school, but it wasn’t until her mid-30s that she began talking more openly about her illnesses–something she said is vital to her healing and recovery.
Aviles said the gritty work culture doesn’t cultivate any real conversations about these issues.
“Over the years I’ve realized that this is a fatal problem,” she said. “If more of us were talking about this then we’d realise that eight or nine out of 10 people in the room feel similar things.”
Speaking up and finding solutions
Aviles’ work with Not 9 to 5 focuses on exactly that. She said the first step is to simply acknowledge the high which results from the hectic, strenuous nature of their work, the impact of the hours, and the amazing things that the back and front of house manage to accomplish every single shift.
“I would also say anyone in any position of authority or leadership has a huge responsibility to influence the work culture.” – Hassel Aviles, co-founder of Not 9 to 5
For example, rewarding staff with substances is something many restaurants do.
Aviles said owners should shy away from offering staff free or discounted beer post-shift, because it encourages the party culture by putting alcohol directly into their staff’s hands.
“Something that I would definitely change would be the accessibility to alcohol or to other substances as a coping mechanism to deal with stress and stuff from work because clearly it has negative effects on people,” Moriarty said.
Instead, restaurant owners could give back to their staff in constructive ways.
Ariel Coplan, co-founder of Not 9 to 5 owns and operates several restaurants and said he has negotiated discounted gym memberships for all his staff. He has also implemented a four-day work week, in which staff are not allowed to work more than four days in a row. This, along with his strict no overtime rule, helps combat the toll of working long, hard hours.
Aviles said one of the most important things is to work on having honest conversations in the workplace around the reality of the restaurant industry and the struggles that a majority of people face. Supporting one another through good and bad services, whether that means a post-shift rant, or a five-minute conversation about mental health, is the first step towards growing the conversation and moving towards a healthier work culture.
Moriarty also said that finding coping mechanisms and talking to other people in the industry can help.
“Coping mechanisms are hard to come by, especially when you’re in [an] industry that has a culture of a party around it, but it’s definitely talking to people that have stayed in the industry through that, like their partying phase and have now come out being like, this is just a job,” she said.
Feature Graphic by Sara Mizannojehdehi. With files from Marieta-rita Osezua.
