"Passion" Is the Wrong Word for This Job

 

Every hospitality job ad says it. "Must be passionate about food." "Looking for passionate individuals." It's on every listing, every careers page, every induction pack. And every time I read it, I think the same thing: passion is not what gets you through a Saturday double.

I'm not saying passion doesn't matter. It does, somewhere in there. But it's not the thing doing the actual work, and pretending it is has done real damage to how this industry treats people.

Passion doesn't survive contact with a bad shift.

 is what gets you into the industry. It's the reason you signed up for culinary school, or took that first kitchen job instead of something easier. It's real, and it matters at the start.

But passion doesn't clean the grill trap at 1am. It doesn't stand you back up after you've burned your forearm and there's still two hours of service left. It doesn't get you through the fifth split shift in a row when you're running on four hours of sleep. Something else does that. Not passion — discipline, professionalism, and a decision you've already made about who you are at work, independent of how you feel that day.

The industry loves talking about passion because it's a nicer word than the truth. The truth is this job asks a lot of people, and it should be upfront about that instead of dressing it up as a feeling.

"Passionate" gets used to justify a lot.

Here's the part that actually bothers me. "We need someone passionate" is sometimes code for "we need someone who won't push back on being underpaid, overworked, or asked to do things a reasonable person would question." If you're passionate enough, you're supposed to just absorb it. Question the roster, the pay, the conditions, and somehow you're the one who "doesn't really love this."

That's backwards. Caring about your craft and expecting to be treated fairly aren't opposites. You can love cooking and still think a 70-hour week is too much. Those two things live together just fine in a healthy kitchen. In an unhealthy one, "passion" gets weaponised to make you feel guilty for wanting basic decency.

What actually makes someone good at this job.

If I'm hiring, I'm not really looking for passion. I'm looking for:

Someone who shows up on time, every time, without it being a personal victory.

Someone who tells the truth when they're behind instead of pretending they've got it.

Someone who can take a correction without making it about their ego.

Someone who treats the job seriously even on the days it doesn't feel exciting.

None of that requires you to be "obsessed" with food. It requires you to be reliable and professional. Plenty of people who'd never call themselves "passionate" about cooking are excellent, steady, trustworthy cooks — because they show up and do the work properly, day after day, whether they're feeling inspired or not.

To anyone who's felt guilty for not being "passionate enough" —

You don't owe this industry your identity. You're allowed to do this job well, care about doing it well, and still have a life outside it. That's not a lack of passion. That's just being a person with boundaries, which the industry could honestly use a lot more of.

The best cooks I've worked with weren't the ones talking about passion in interviews. They were the ones who just kept showing up, doing the work right, long after the feeling of it would've worn off for anyone relying on that alone.

— The Chef