In his memoir Setting the Table, restaurateur Danny Meyer recalls telling friends in the 1980s that he was leaving his high-paying job for restaurant work. Those he told would shift uncomfortably in response to Meyer’s surely downwardly mobile plans.
Consider the times while contemplating the discomfort of his friends. In one of Denzel Washington’s first movies, 1981's Carbon Copy, his character hides his Northwestern University background by claiming he’s a “short-order” cook. In the popular television show Alice, Vic Tayback played Mel Sharples, an often loathsome short-order cook at the diner he owned. On the similarly popular television show Love Boat, the fictional cruise ship’s theoretical chef didn’t even rate a character on the show. What are the odds of that today?
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