re: Questions for those who have worked in the service industry or as restaurant kitchen staff

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The restaurant industry essentially acts as an alternative institutional framework for rehabilitation because its hiring structure minimizes friction

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Of course I do. Half the people I’ve worked with in kitchens have been felons. But the key word in your question is “work.”

Yes, felons work in the restaurant industry at a high rate. And a large percentage of those people are there because they’re trying to lead a law-abiding life. Hence: they are at work and not a corner.

Sure, there are recidivists. I’ve fired more than a few cooks and dishwashers who couldn’t leave the gang or prison bullshite behind. But if your point is supposed to disparage restaurant workers because a lot of them have records, I’d argue the exact opposite.

Kitchen work is one of the few purely meritocratic professions left in this country with a path to the middle class. Somebody can walk in with a felony, face tattoos, hand tattoos, a gang history, no degree, and nobody gives a shite as long as he shows up, works hard, learns, and can do the job.

Restaurants hire people that much of the rest of society has already decided aren’t worth taking a chance on. And I’ve watched that opportunity turn former gang members and ex-cons into respectable, hardworking, taxpaying adults with real careers and real lives.

The dish pit is usually the first place those guys land, and it’s a shite job. It’s also where the truly unredeemable tend to self-select themselves right back into crime. The ones who can actually leave the gang and prison bullshite behind keep showing up, work their asses off, and eventually earn their way onto prep or the line.

Does that happen with every one of them? Of course not. But some of the finest, hardest-working cooks I’ve ever known are felons who built legitimate lives because a kitchen gave them an opportunity when almost nobody else would.

And if I’m putting all my cards on the table, and I am, a lot of those guys strike me as finer human beings and harder workers than half the jerk-off accountants and sales douchebags on the OT who were practically railroaded into a middle-class life by their parents and now strut around acting like they hit a triple.

So what exactly was your point?

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