A cook at my old job said to me as a joke "the city is going to eat you alive." Its just killing...

well life is tough, use that as a motivator to keep going and moving up. best advice i can give you is look for another job. try different places and it doesnt have to be a fine dinning  place, just a place where you can work to get experience and hopefully like working their. you have to start somewhere even if its at the bottom.  work hard and someone will notice you but dont work hard to impress someone, work hard because of your passion and wanting to do well. someone will notice you and will help you out. dont let this get you down, keep your head up and good luck.

Pretty easy solution. If you hate your job, find a different one. Finding a sweet job in the food industry is not always easy. By sweet i mean good people, a creative environment, decent compensation, potential for advancement.

Be creative in your search. Find a good chef to work with.

If your good at your job, its possible to smell like a Rose in an Outhouse. The first step out of this job starts with your right foot, quit your bitching and get moving. Always remember that a good Chef doesn't measure his/her success by the size of the restaurant they manage, they measure their success by the amount of self satisfaction they get from the position. ......................Good Luck, enjoy the journey...........Chef BillyB

Make a pate' en croute tonight when you get home from work.  Make the pate feuillettee yourself.  Everything from scratch.

Tomorrow  night, make a chicken gallantine.  I assume you can completely bone a chicken slick clean and practically blindfolded right?  Can you fabricate every piece of meat and fish a restaurant might be expected to serve?

When you get bored with these little projects, print the Bouchon menu (or buy the cookbook) and cook the entire thing over a series of evenings.  Blog and photograph the whole process and send it to Thomas Keller.  Then ask him if you can come out and do a stage.  If not California then Vancouver.  Walk in the door ready to impress.

Get off your ass and cook and quit waiting for some third rate hash house to make all your dreams come true.  Walk in the door ready to tell the chef what you've been cooking during your off hours.  If he or she doesn't ask then tell them anyway.  Who needs a cook who can't cook, right?

I've said it on this board before - there are avid home cooks that are in a better position to cook a serious restaurant's menu than somebody who has been cooking cheap steaks on the line in an off-off-off Broadway shoeshop.  Working in $hitholes qualifies you to keep working in $hitholes.  You'd better be cooking serious food in your off hours and you'd better be doing it well.

After having done all of this, maybe you'll discover whether or not you aspire to be a culinary artist or whether you really just want a slightly better job in a slightly better craphole.  The two, obviously, are worlds apart.

As long as there isn't an immovable wall between you and your stove at home then there is nothing stopping you.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChefBillyB 

If your good at your job, its possible to smell like a Rose in an Outhouse. The first step out of this job starts with your right foot, quit your bitching and get moving. Always remember that a good Chef doesn't measure his/her success by the size of the restaurant they manage, they measure their success by the amount of self satisfaction they get from the position. ......................Good Luck, enjoy the journey...........Chef BillyB

Billy B hit it right on the head here.
I am sure there are more than one restaurnat in Vancouver. Come to the US and work for me LOL.
 

C'mon now your a big girl . Stop feeling sorry for yourself . You say you do t he same 25 things every day ? well sit down and figure out a way to do them better and do it that way. People will notice, at least normal people will. They will give you good comments and thats what you need at this point. Take the things you did better to the next place and learn more their , then just keep going . Don't go back or look back, and never say I can't do it. Everything will fall into place Good Luck

Start with some off-the-side work.  Check out/google "Cooks for hire" for some p/t work.

Big rambling post.  Feel free to p.m. me, I'm in Vancouver too.

Cooking is NOT easy. It's one of the hardest jobs you can get into. But there are certain things no cook should have to put up with. In spite of how hard it is, you should want to go into work every day to cook. If you don't feel that way, then cooking in a professional kitchen is probably not for you. As far as your coworkers are concerned, kitchens certainly attract a lot of sh***y people. Bottom line is you need to like the people you work with because it makes it easier to get through the day. Also, no one should have to deal with sexual harassment, that's really f***ed up and is never appropriate, no matter where you work. If I were you, I would take some time off from cooking and relax, and find a place with better people.

Remember creatively preparing food does not mean having to work in a restaurant...

There is a tremendous amount of posts in the archives talking about various culinary options...this is a great private vs personal chef thread

http://www.cheftalk.com/forum/thread/7124/personal-chef-panel-report 

Depending upon your strengths and weaknesses you can:

become a private chef

personal chef

teacher of cooking classes, or culinary instructor

food stylist

photographer

caterer

baker

writer

editor

publist (sp?)

stage help/director

work in a grocery store

line up demos, preform demos

cook food for adventure groups or travel groups, ie rafters, climbers, shroomers, etc

teach culinary camps

work in school food systems

Do combinations of some of the above....

For example, when i was starting out it was important for me to work school hours (3 sons, divorced, youngest son has autism), it was important to cook creatively (it's a strength), it was important to make $$$....I had been an attorney's wife, was starting with NOTHING in a new place.

After working out a pros and cons list, it became obvious that restaurants wouldn't work....I'd not worked for $$$ in 15 years.

Thus, personal cheffing was in it's infancy in 1994...there were very few people doing it and none I knew of in MO area....it made sense.

But, along with personal cheffing I joined a Wild Mushroom group and started bringing food to various forages, then started cooking for their 3 day weekends.  The boys were in nature and it was a great fit. I even taught a cooking class at the national conference.

During this timeI joined a local professional culinary group, and after a couple of years became program chair which was a cool because you have a huge learning curve as a volunteer....and pros will give you help.

Teaching classes on how to fill your fridge, morphed into cooking classes for groups out of state, then became private cooking classes for CSA holders....

About that time (1998) I met some farmers and learned they needed help connecting with restaurant chefs....thus became the formation of MO. Chef's Collaborative and farmer-chef dinners, Clayton Farmer's Market, farmers-chefs-RD's in schools, many many events.....

From there Culinary Stage directing and managing, recipe writing, article writing, off-site catering, etc....

So MissMM....envision what you'd like to be doing day in day out...explore the various options around and volunteer or stage....make contacts, ask for help and JUMP in.