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Any man in any profession you date will come with his stuff. Some industries have a way of infiltrating every corner of the lives of the professionals who work in them. There are some jobs that require people to bring work home with them, whether that means literally working late hours in a home office, or just thinking about their job long after they’ve clocked out. Doctors are certainly in that category. Firefighters. There are some jobs that stick with you, long after you get home. There’s rarely a perfect job for a romantic partner that won’t cause some stress that finds its way into the relationship. Even a successful entrepreneur who doesn’t have to go into any office is taking phone calls and emails at all hours. But I will say that there is one job that is particularly trying on a relationship, and even more so when it’s the man in the relationship who has it. And that’s the job of chef. That is one high-octane job that has a way of really getting to a man’s head. And I mean particularly a man’s head. Here is why dating a chef is nearly impossible.
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They’re used to being in charge
Chefs are used to being in charge. What they say goes. They have this unique job in which, even though the owner of the restaurant is technically their boss, they don’t even really have to answer to that boss. The owner usually defers to the chef when it comes to decisions that take place in the kitchen. So they really feel they have total authority, which can make them impossible romantic partners.
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And yelling orders, aggressively
Chefs are also used to yelling orders in a very aggressive and rude manner. Think about how strange that is. In a quiet office environment, the boss doesn’t come out, yell orders, grab people’s papers, and throw them out. But in a kitchen, a chef yells, swears, grabs food that’s been mishandled, and throws it out in front of his employees’ faces. The conflict resolution skills are not there. Tantrums are tolerated.
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They’re regularly called geniuses
People call chefs geniuses all of the time. They’re always, excuse me, but, on their dicks. People love food, and if someone makes great food, they will swoon over them. Do you know what it does to someone’s ego to be told, all day, that he’s a genius because he put mac and cheese inside of a burger?
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They have groupies
There are women who particularly and only date chefs. They have a thing for them. They are restaurant groupies. They’ll find a chef they like, and be at the bar at his restaurant every night, sitting around, hoping to flirt with him. Think about that. Your accountant or software engineer boyfriend won’t have groupies. And even if he did, they couldn’t just show up at his work any time they liked.
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Their schedule is crazy
Chefs have insane schedules. They need to be the first ones at the Farmer’s Market at 6am and the fish market at 5am. They have to work weekends and holidays and long nights and early mornings. Their shifts are twice the length of the shift of a 9-to-5 worker. It’s hard to just lead a regular life with a chef. You’ll eat a lot of dinners and go to a lot of events alone.
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They’re in a special club
They feel they are part of an elite club. Only other chefs truly understand them. They feel that they are out there having a very difficult experience that nobody can relate to who isn’t also a chef. It’s like dating a brooding teenager with all the declarations of, “Nobody understands my pain!”
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They think they’re doing the lord’s work
Everything is an emergency. If the wrong meat order comes in. If the oven is broken. If a sous chef didn’t show up. It’s always a very volatile, very stressful environment. And that comes into your home, too. You can be enjoying a quiet evening at home and then they get a text and go, “I have to go. Now.” If you dare try to ask why, you get in trouble for interfering with this critical event. As if they’re off to perform heart surgery.
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Your kitchen is his kitchen now
You can kiss goodbye any authority you had in your own kitchen. If you want to make your partner dinner, it isn’t going to happen. He’s going to take over, and do everything himself. He’ll never understand the sentiment that you want to make the food. Or you have a special recipe you’d like to make. He’ll always feel the most important thing is that the food is perfect, and he’ll take over.
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They’re cranky on their days off
On their time off, they’re cranky. And their time off is so limited that they’re very picky about how they spend it. They deal with personalities they can’t stand in the close environment of a kitchen all week, so they don’t want to have dinner with your friends who they don’t like very much.
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They ruin restaurants for you
You’ll never enjoy another restaurant after dating a chef. Everywhere you go, he’ll criticize everything, from the dishes they put the bread butter in to the speed at which the salads show up to the density of the ranch dressing. They’ve had to train themselves to pick up on these things for their job, and they can’t turn it off.
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You can’t take them to dinner parties
Everything they do at restaurants – the critiquing and the judging – they’ll do at your friend’s dinner party, too. And then you have a real problem on your hands because they insulted the host. Your partner isn’t a paying customer at your friend’s apartment. He has no place to make a comment on the dryness of the roast. But he will.
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They’re always in some fight
Restaurants are full of drama. Every person needs to work together with every other person in the line of command, so there is a lot of tension. Your partner is always in a huge fight with his sous chef or one of the servers or the owner of the restaurant or the cheese supplier. And he carries that anger home with him. You feel like you live with a teenager who is in a fight with his frienemy.
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They mostly work with men
The restaurant industry is a male-dominated one. So that means that your boyfriend mostly works with men. And a very particular type of man: a man who also works in a kitchen. They just yell and curse at each other all day. They don’t finesse anything. They don’t require diplomacy from each other. He’ll have some very rough edges.
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They like to drink…
Fight me on this if you want, but I’ve worked in a lot of restaurants and…your chef back there, the one searing your salmon, he has five beers hidden behind a fridge. Chefs like to drink. And then, when they get off work, they get drinks with their coworkers, instead of coming home when they said they would. Or they come home, drunk, and there goes the nice evening you had planned.
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They can only talk food
Their brain is always on food and the restaurant, and you feel they’re never fully listening when you talk. If you can drag your boyfriend to a dinner party, he sits mostly silently unless someone brings up food or restaurants. He doesn’t even know what they’re referring to when they talk about anything else.
