My Journey from Tech Sector to the Kitchen
By Kevin Em

PART 1: Tech Origins of a Cook
My name is Kevin Em. It’s been eight months since I was laid off from the tech sector and began cooking professionally. Until a few weeks ago, I thought of myself as a temporary cook and recovering tech junkie. My wife says she thought I was happy and satisfied working in a tech start-up, but I’m happier now working in three commercial kitchens.
I was traumatically let go from an automobile cyber-security company, without notice and after seven months of positive affirmations. Unhappily unemployed, not collecting unemployment because of pride, sitting in a favorite local café, I was desperate and walked across the shopping complex to the first restaurant I saw. I applied and was hired on the spot after deciding I’d prefer cooking to waiting tables on the floor. I’d gone to a cooking academy in Korea and loved to cook.
Getting put to work, another body in the machine, at the speed of doing many things at the same time, and getting used to the grind, was jaw-numbing at first — I’d get this “face” where my mouth sags down and I look as if I may drop any second. But I quickly got used to it and became less tired by each week. Straining to focus on the banter and be quick with my replies was essential to getting along with the other cooks. I learned my best assets were wit and polite deference — soon my kitchen mates were helping me keep up with order tickets. While I was working with Chef Maurice Richardson, my manager at the contemporary Italian restaurant, I asked him to talk about his work in the kitchen.
Chef Maurice described a memory of his youngest child when his son was two years old. While reminiscing, he gushes about how smart and creative his son is. His child always asked to be held above the counter so he could see the cooking action. One day, Maurice’s uncle came to his house to test the prowess of his seafood gumbo. Anticipation filled the kitchen. Maurice’s son ran to the corner of the living room, upended his toy-box, promptly bringing the container over to the counter. He stood atop the box to glimpse what the adults were preparing and tasting.
I’ve tasted the seafood gumbo in question. It is immaculate, a perfect harmony of Louisiana and Californian sensibilities. I’m told the recipe was pioneered by Maurice’s grandfather, who taught his father, and now whose mantle has fallen upon Maurice. On that day of gumbo-making in his house, Maurice’s uncle had no idea that Maurice had prepared this dish hundreds of times when he was in culinary school. The uncle tasted each step of the hearty, briny soup’s preparation and his expression gradually turned from pitying looks of doubt to fanciful derision, to looks of pleasurable recognition, to utter disbelief. Sounds of busy chewing and chairs scraping while getting up to refill bowls are interspersed with chef Maurice chuckling knowingly.
Maurice’s face breaks into a golden smile as he uses this anecdote to illustrate why he loves cooking so much. It’s power to bring people together.
PART 2: From the Restaurant to the Hospital World (Literally)
As a cook at an Italian restaurant, it was liberating and freeing to cook with misfits, sometimes alcoholics, and former drug addicts. You try timing the perfect profanity while “spidey sense” avoiding the clink of a dropped knife, grabbing hot pans without hot gloves, and sticking your arm in flame-bursting ovens to rescue half-burnt pizzas from being thrown out the back. It’s difficult to cart a tower of used, red-hot sauté pans (higher than your head) past the entire line while avoiding towels snapping menacingly, tit-for-tat insults growing more outrageous.
This environment was a sea-change compared to the open office of the tech company where I’d formerly worked. A sea-change from the supposedly flat organizational structure and the self-aggrandizing culture of tech start-ups. There, everyone had a one-page bio and was expected to be on call 24/7. At the restaurant, cooks ask where you’re from (the rest is up to what you can do with your hands) and the shift ends at clock-out. In tech, a corporate boilerplate can take days to be approved by management (the phrase “too many cooks in the kitchen” is frequently used to describe this obsessing over minutiae). In the real kitchen, your own favorite tasting spoon has the final word: if your soup sucks, you won’t spend hours on a tri-continental video call until someone tells you it does.
But the wages in the kitchen were so low that my spirit was breaking. Compared to tech marketing, the short-comings of a cook’s pay was unconscionable especially because of the amount of damage I was doing to myself (burns, bruises, blisters, and brutalized lower back). I was not sinking financially or mentally, just barely treading water and coasting by at this reputable restaurant. I still felt the pull of the tech unicorn, of brand name value, and the comfort of being in the fold of an institution. At the least, I wanted more compensation for this physically-demanding work so I applied to the university hospital kitchen, thinking that it would be more automated but the same outlet for my newfound passion, even if it was just a temp position.
And there, I met the beautiful combination of races, beliefs, social classes and under-appreciated individuals that showed up on the cooking line each day to feed other people, this time the infirm. Some of our patients deal with chewing or swallowing disorders, so we’d evenly chop up chicken or whisk scrambled eggs. Other customers were suicidal, so no silverware or bamboo skewers would be given to their trays. Cooking without salt, butter or wine was a chore, but I loved getting creative with it. The assembly line, shaped like the letter T, is an engineering marvel in itself. The true force behind it all were the people (more than 7 different languages being heard at all times) who would kindly move out of your way while holding armfuls of salads, and always ask you how you’re doing. I liked the feeling of belonging, even among people who had worked the same positions, stored their things in the same locker, and showed up on time every day for decades.
I enjoyed creating fragile, time-limited, and fragrant works of art on-a-plate where my signature is a muffled shriek “hot plate!” through the kitchen double doors. Cooking as my newfound art form was truly humbling.
Fe Victorio, a prep cook at the University Hospital told me
“I think patience is the most important quality in the kitchen — you work with so many people of different cultures who communicate differently and believe different things. You have to repeat yourself or change the way you express a request until the message gets across.”
Arion Silmon, a chef’s assistant at the University Hospital put it this way,
“There are days where there’s so much to do and you are constantly busy but once you go home and you think back on all the things you’ve completed, you realize you can accomplish a lot. You feel good about yourself after a busy rush.”
PART 3: Cleaning Others’ Mistakes
The most humbling experience of my life working in the hospital kitchen was when I was asked to cover several hours for the dishwasher. In a matter of seconds, I was drenched from head to toe as I obediently soaked each pan in soapy water, cleanser and sanitizer as trained. I had not noticed the fan sitting in the corner and would frequently spray the high-powered faucet into a spoon, pushing a burst of water into my eyes. I became paranoid that I would be injured and forgotten in this large space, and started singing ditties, like “row your boat,” loudly. Garde mangers and prep cooks would look at me with sympathetic eyes or knowing laughs when they dropped off cartloads of burnt mac and cheese or containers half-full of chicken noodle soup. It dawned on me — the most patient, humble, hard-working people on this earth are kitchen staff, most especially dishwashers.
I was relieved after 5 hours and resolved to cook as well as I can to avoid dish-washing duties. I recognized the rigid hierarchy between chefs or doctors (white coats) and those workers thought to be less-skilled and invisible (blue shirts). Now, each time I visit the dish tank with dirty pans, the thank you’s come tumbling out of me. I’m compelled to ask if there’s anything I can lend a hand with. I’m urged and nervous at the prospect of asking Ira J. Trussell, a dishwasher at the University Hospital, for an interview, to ask what his life is like.
I came to Michigan looking for a job and back then I had three choices: work in an auto plant, work for the city, or at the hospital. When Ford, GM, Chrysler started laying people off, I didn’t have enough seniority to get called back. I missed my interview with the city so I’ve been dishwashing at the hospital for 32 years. It’s the steadiest job in the state and, now that my age has caught up with me, I don’t have the time to follow a company to another area. I learned to stretch my money and decided to stay in one place until God tells me I can’t work no more. I grew up on a farm in Alabama so I know what hard work means.
In each huddle, or cooks’ meeting, two Chinese women were present, one translating for the other. I snuck over to ask, in Mandarin, if they’ve had a meal or eaten, which is a proper greeting. (I took Chinese language courses at NYU, then attended graduate school at Tsinghua University — the Harvard of China.) They asked if I was Chinese and I answered “No, I’m a Korean-American,” and gradually my education came up. Their eyes lit up and they asked: “What?? What are you doing working here?” and “What do your parents think? Are they okay with this??”
Sometimes you have to step up to clean others’ mistakes, no matter how unpleasant the task or whose fault it is. I’ve resolved myself never to be late because my tardiness means shortening another worker’s break time. An “old school” cook took time out to walk over and correct my knife cleaning so it’s not dirtier than before. A simple tip to hold the bowl in your other hand to make it easier to ladle soup. Friendly, non-judgmental reminders of where ingredients or seasonings are stored. You cannot feel ego; you are constantly lowered. Humbleness of accepting feedback turns me into a better cook!
It’s been eight months since I was laid off from the tech sector and began cooking professionally. I’ve had jobs in three different kitchens, and now I’m finally a full-time, union card-carrying cook for the University of Michigan.

