Service itself is addictive

415 meals left the kitchen pass today. I know it for a fact because we counted the dockets at the end of service. Four hundred and fifteen individual meals sent out into the dining room, all with different requests, modifications, allergies, complaints, expectations and time limits attached to them. It’s honestly hard to explain to someone outside hospitality what that number actually feels like when you’re the one standing in the middle of it.

It’s always such a bittersweet and almost melancholy feeling serving that much food. Sure, the work got done, the customers were happy and we all got paid for our labour. But at what cost?

Of course we expected a busy day because it was Mother’s Day, but 415 meals? That number doesn’t even sound real when you say it out loud. It sounds exaggerated, like one of those bullshit stories chefs tell each other out the back while chain smoking cigarettes and arguing over who survived the worse service.

But it was real.

Every burn, every docket, every plate wiped and sent into the dining room was real.

Service itself is addictive in a really strange way. It’s fun and hard and fast and violent and exciting all at once. One second you’re laughing at some dumb joke yelled across the line and the next second six dockets print at once and everybody goes dead serious. Your brain stops functioning like a normal brain after a while. You don’t even think anymore, you just react. Hands moving faster than thoughts can catch up. Throwing salt into pans without measuring. Flipping steaks without properly looking. Grabbing hot plates with fingers that have been burnt so many times they barely register pain anymore.

During service, when everybody is communicating properly, it genuinely feels like being in the trenches at war, the enemy being long wait times and unhappy customers. The docket printer doesn’t stop screaming. Someone’s yelling “behind”, someone else is yelling “hot”, pans are smashing onto burners, oil is popping onto your arms and somehow, in the middle of all of that chaos, the food still leaves the pass looking beautiful.

That’s the weirdest part of kitchen work to me.

The customer only ever sees the final plate.

They don’t see the cook running on four hours sleep and caffeine. They don’t see the burns hidden under tea towels or the panic building in somebody’s chest because table thirty-four just sent back a medium rare steak for being “too pink”. They don’t see chefs destroying their bodies under fluorescent lights while trying to keep up appearances long enough to get through another service.

All they see is dinner.

And somehow despite the chaos, the whole operation starts moving like an orchestra. Everybody knows where everybody else is standing without looking. You hear “corner” and instinctively move. Someone reaches behind you for herbs and you already know what they need before they ask. For a little while the rush becomes the only thing that exists. Nothing outside the kitchen matters anymore. Not bills, not relationships, not exhaustion, not your own problems. Just the next docket. The next pan. The next plate leaving the pass.

Honestly, that rush becomes a drug.

The restaurant industry is a drug to many people, myself included. Not because it’s healthy, but because it gives you moments where you feel completely locked in and alive. Your entire nervous system gets rewired around chaos until calmness starts to feel uncomfortable.

Most people think an eight hour shift is a full day and would recoil at the thought of working every Saturday night, but for us Saturday may as well be a Wednesday. Mondays and Tuesdays become our weekends because our lives operate completely backwards compared to everyone else’s.

Over the last several years of my life I’ve spent more time under fluorescent kitchen lights than actual sunlight. Running up and down kitchens. Throwing salt into pans. Flipping steaks for strangers. Burning fingerprints off my hands on oven trays and sauté pans. Living off caffeine, nicotine, staff meals and adrenaline.

And each year that goes by, chef life becomes more and more romanticised.

Everybody loves the tattoos and knives and fast paced social media clips of people screaming “YES CHEF” while dramatic music plays over the top. More and more people take the plunge to learn the trade and sacrifice their freedom for their sanity without fully understanding what they’re signing up for.

Imagine missing birthdays, weddings and even funerals because the restaurant is fully booked.

Imagine finishing work after midnight every weekend while the rest of the world is asleep.

Imagine being so physically and mentally exhausted after service that the idea of cooking yourself dinner at home feels borderline insulting.

It’s not for everyone.

Part of me wonders sometimes if it’s even for me.

Then service ends.

Not dramatically either. The tickets just slowly stop printing until eventually the docket machine falls silent and so do your nerves. The adrenaline starts wearing off and suddenly you notice how destroyed your body actually feels. Your feet are throbbing. Your lower back feels tight as concrete. Your clothes stink like oil, smoke and sweat.

Then you finally look around the kitchen.

The absolute shit fight left behind.

Floors covered in grease and water like somebody turned the place into a skating rink. Dirty pans stacked into unsafe towers. Squeeze bottles everywhere. Garnish stuck to chopping boards. Towels soaked through. Someone’s abandoned Red Bull sitting in the corner like a relic from six hours ago when everybody still had functioning brain cells.

Now comes the bitter part.

The pack down.

The scrubbing and wiping and mopping and reorganising and bleaching and resetting everything just so the same destruction can happen all over again tomorrow.

And somehow during all of this you still end up laughing with the boys.

That’s another thing people outside kitchens probably wouldn’t understand. There’s something strangely intimate about surviving a brutal service with the same group of people over and over again. You see each other at absolute breaking point. Angry, exhausted, stressed, burnt out and barely functioning, yet somebody still manages to crack a joke that makes everybody lose it laughing for ten seconds before going straight back to cleaning.

Eventually though, it’s finally time for that post-service cigarette.

You sit down on your milk crate throne out the back of the restaurant and light your little cancer stick. That first drag after service honestly feels spiritual sometimes. The cold air hits different after standing over grills and fryers for twelve hours straight. You sit there in silence with everyone else equally destroyed, staring into space like war veterans returning from battle.

And that staff beer waiting for you inside?

That thing is going to hit like a train.

But eventually even that moment ends too.

Now your brain starts realising you still have to go home and somehow figure out how to make food for yourself after cooking for hundreds of strangers all day. So you settle for some lazy creamy pasta because it’s easy and you can make it half asleep.

Then finally it’s over.

You shower off the smell of oil and smoke. You collapse into bed exhausted knowing full well your body still hasn’t properly calmed down yet.

And before you can even mentally process today, you realise something horrible.

In less than twelve hours, you’ll probably do it all over again.

Author

Mac

About the Author

I'm a chef with nearly a decade in hospitality and a deep passion for storytelling. My writing is shaped by kitchen culture - the pressure, the creativity, the human connection, and the small, overlooked moments that make up a working life. I'm drawn to honest, immersive writing that feels personal and real, whether I'm writing about food, work, identity, or what happens behind the scenes.