it may be the case that i can only work in food service. i mean, there's not much out there for me with a psych degree that i'm interested in. i guess ideally, i'd like to be one of those guys who work in test kitchens for large food corporations like heinz or nabisco and just playing around with food and trying to create new recipes. or those cooks that publishing companies hire to test out all the recipes in a cook book that's coming out so they can be sure the results are consistent. and ideally, the pay is more than 30k a year.
as for this other place i'm looking at, i'm not sure there's much to learn other than efficiency. the restaurant does about 1500 covers a saturday (breakfast lunch and dinner) as opposed to my 200 covers i do now at the fine dining place i work at.
in many ways, this new place offers me a lot of what i'm looking for. legit work hours and pay, opportunities to move up, health benefits, PTO and OT. new kitchen equipment an a guarantee that the place will be clean and up to date. 30% off the entire dept store's merch. and most importantly, the flexibility to make my own hours so i don't work just nights and the dinner shifts so i can go home, have a social life, and commit to my religion.
the bad part is that i lose out on the "name". right now, the kitchen i'm leaving is a big part of why other kitchens are giving me a chance when i apply. there's a presitige or respectability that comes from the kitchen i work at, and other restaurants know it. they know the cooks over here to be hardcore. my chef basically told me that if i stayed for 2-3 years, i could've probably made "sous" at the place i'm going to now. i just don't know if i can take 2-3 years of the abuse.
the chef is kinda making my life hard for me since he knows i'm leaving. i get blamed for a lot of stuff i didn't do, i get "last minute" jobs right when i'm about to leave that makes me stay another hour or two. no pay of course. worst of all, the guy has just taken a malicious attitude towards me and doesn't even recognize me as a cook in the kitchen. i just hope everything gets better before he gets calls because i listed him as a reference on my resumes.  | 
