The best advice given to me by my father after graduating college was to “Use your brain for a job, not your body. Don’t break your back like I did.” My father literally fractured bones in his back after all of his years of labor as a baker. A short example of the daily routines of a baker would consists of hundreds of repetitive movements to roll dough balls for various breads, lifting 50 pound bags of flour and moving them, and then bending down and lifting sheet trays hundreds of times a day. His back had a herniated disk and he was forced to retire from his baking career. The operation left him with six screws, two rods and two plates implanted into his back. My father actually had multiple surgeries due to his labor intensive job but this was the most major one. He didn’t want me to follow in his footsteps in a food service career for a good reason.
He knew this career could support a family but at the cost of ruining a body. I didn’t listen to his advice for almost ten years. I chose to be a cook after I graduated college because I grew up in the food service industry. But his advice stuck with me and changed my path drastically and eventually in my life.
My father immigrated from Cairo, Egypt to Syracuse, New York. He took English classes at a community college and at a government funded learning center and learned fast. After all his hard work and dedication to English, he got a baking job. This lead him into a management position at a bakery in his early years in America. He established his life in America as a baker and he was a damn good baker. In his working years he was either managing a bakery for a big chain grocery store or owned, worked and managed his own bakeries with a second job of a custodial side hustle as well. The man was always working hard for the family.
He always kept busy before the surgery that made him retire. For example, my father made massive quantities of pies and pastries on holidays and also made extravagant cakes for family birthdays while having two jobs. I’m talking fifty to eighty pies for thanksgiving dinner and about a third were for people to take home. Baklava, a super time consuming pastry, was one of his specialties and was the most loved sweet treat from people visiting our home. He made them into little bite sized rolls that you addictively popped in your mouth and he made them by the tray. For our birthdays, I would ponder up a ridiculously decadent cake, maybe along the lines of a peanut butter chocolate cake. Then he would make it happen plus more. He would have to top my idea by adding a cheesecake layer or a chocolate ganache top layer dripping off the sides with chocolate chunks spiked on top, just to show me up.
He always showed his love with food.
He’s the reason that my family members were healthy fat people (is that a thing?). He heavily influenced the beginning of my food snobbery. I could no longer easily settle for boxed name brand baked goods anymore. He also taught me my kitchen fundamentals. Food safety and kitchen etiquette became an early skill of mine. I grew up watching him in the kitchen regularly. So knowing what to do, what not to do and who to respect with some necessary playful banter became natural to me.
My path naturally headed into a similar direction as his early in my life. I worked at the same chain grocery store as him as my first job when I was fifteen. My cashier job was dull and with time I met the wage cap. So I eventually went to the pizza department for more money and excitement. I continued making pizza until I finished university. While in college I studied fine art painting with a dream of being an artist. I was told just like all young students “You can be anything you want to be.” I surprisingly sold some landscape paintings when I was at university but it wasn’t enough to live off of and I couldn’t paint fast enough to sell many of them.
After that the American educational system didn’t really prepare me for the real world market of becoming an artist after promising “You can be anything you want to be.” I wasn’t able to creatively figure out a use for my art degree after university …or maybe it was laziness. So I continued to cook out of college.
Fresh out of college I moved to sunny San Diego, California. I wanted to escape my hometown of Syracuse, New York. For those that don’t know, it’s the area that gets the most snow in America, outside of say, Alaska. I had no real solid money making plans other than what I did part time, making pizza. So that’s what I decided to do in California. I was from New York, I was a “respected” pizza guy because of that. I learned the art of hand-tossing pizzas and Chicago deep-dish pizza at a busy gourmet pizzeria. I also learned some basic Italian dishes and eventually became a manager. I lived the high life in an extremely expensive city of America and racked in the debt.
The pizzeria owner was a tough boss but mentored me and I gained my basic cooking and knife skills at the pizzeria. It was an amazing learning experience but it didn’t work out and I reluctantly moved back to Syracuse, New York. I had to live with my parents again and felt like I failed a bit.
A high school connection lead me to Syracuse University for another food service job. Cooking was the best way I knew to make a living. But this cooking job was different. It was a cushy union job. I don’t know if you’re familiar with union jobs. But they have some of the best benefits and this job gave free education at one of the most expensive and at the best private school in the area. This lead me to stay at my parents house with very little joy although with a promising, thoughtless and repetitive job but with amazing benefits. It was a kind of win-lose situation.
I honed my knife skills while working as a temporary worker in the catering dept. by making countless fruit and veggie trays before getting into the union. Then I slowly returned to the idea of taking art classes and continuing my art education with a masters. I took one class with the director of the painting department. Then the idea of getting a masters in painting ended with one meeting with the director. He was pompous and really just a big douchey art teacher. He pissed on my work and told me I was like everyone else that applied and got rejected but I had a free pass cause I was in the union. Just after taking his class I slowly figured out a more interesting path.
Then after a couple years of cooking at this cushy union job with summer and winter breaks off, I realized my future path. I knew I wanted a job that allowed me to travel more, one way or the other. Then BOOM! One day I was discussing this idea with a very intelligent student worker that I befriended at work and she said “Why don’t you become an ESL teacher? You only need a degree.” That blew my mind as if it were that easy. Would they really trust anyone with a degree from an English speaking country to teach kids in another country? Yes!… Yes they would. And they pay for your housing in some countries. I was sold.
Next thing I knew, I was looking into the process and realized my school I was working for just started to offer a TESOL program. I finished the program with some struggle. It wasn’t easy at all. I taught English at a learning center that teaches English to immigrants as a practicum. As a result I received a Chancellor’s Award for that. Kind of a cool side accomplishment that made me feel super proud. Also, later on my father told me, he also went to that learning center when he immigrated to Syracuse. Then I felt even more proud.
So I eventually followed my father’s advice and became an English teacher in South Korea after ten years of cooking. I have been teaching for over four years now and jumped around some of the South Korean cities. I even lived on an island for 3 years, Jeju Island. It was the most rewarding and satisfying decision I’ve ever made. I finally got to use my degree and my brain for a job instead of a laborious cooking job.
Changing from a cooking career to another has given me some valuable skills. Cooking in a busy kitchen has given me the sense of urgency. Knowing what needs to be done and when it needs to be done. It allowed me to assess the situation and make a fast mental priority list of things to do for short moments of time. This can help a cook to survive a long time in a kitchen. Also when you’re a cook at busy restaurant you also learn to read people. Understanding how to please people like coworkers, bosses, and customers is absolutely necessary to make it in the service industry. Most importantly it has given me the ability to work with all types of different people. I’ve worked with Mexican immigrants, high school dropouts, weirdos, drug addicts, religious mothers and fathers and experienced and weathered chefs. The service industry is full of interesting and unusual characters. I can now easily tolerate many situations and people that cooking has prepared me for.
The ten years of cooking was the best training to become an English teacher in another country. Thanks Dad!
