If you're a Chef who wants to keep his job...

Don't allow yourself to get sick - ever. Getting sick is the worst thing you could ever do to your "loyal" employer. You have the sniffles? A fever? You've lost a limb to accidental amputation? That doesn't matter one bit - if you like your job, get your ass in to work right now! How dare you get sick! What the hell were you thinking anyways?! Getting sick on company time... what kind of employee are you?!
Unfortunately, this attitude exists among some restaurant owners, and getting punished for being sick is a likely possibility. If you work as a key employee for a busy restaurant, you cannot afford to be sick because your ass will get replaced in a New York second. Don't believe me? Listen to this story...
I had been working for a year at a nice nieghborhood Italian joint where we tossed our own pizzas, broiled some great steaks and ran authentic weekly specials such as Osso Bucco and Cartoccio Tutta Mare. I ended up as the Executive Chef very quickly and decided to do whatever it took to build my name up. Unfortunately, the Owner had plans of her own and sold the place to a shady Armenian guy who made it his life's mission to make my life pure hell. First thing he did was to fire my entire kitchen staff under the guise of bringing in more experienced cooks from Italy. Guess what? They never showed up. Problems with thier geren cards I guess (if they even existed in the first place). In the meantime, my workload increased from a mere 50 hours per week to having to fucking live there. Six days a week, I was working from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m. - alone!!! Needless to say, it got old really fast. Where were these fucking Italian OTB's?! Every time I asked, the new owner had a new excuse but kept assuring me that they were on their way. So I stuck it out... Three months of this bullshit and my life had become an unhappy blur. Here I was, a first time Executive Chef trying so very hard to build a reputation and I had everything working against me because of this jackass's greed. He was literally working me to death. I was expected to do everything! And I gladly did!!!
The point I almost gave up was when he decided to change the concept of the restaurant from Italian to Armenian cuisine. Nothing against Armenian cuisine but WTF?! Seriously?! Now I was expected to spend 90% of my life making schwerma and kebobs?! Again, not putting down Armenian food but... WTF?!
I wasn't the only person who felt strongly about the menu change. Within a week, our customers were falling off faster than Jay Leno's Facebook fans. Regulars who had been coming to us for years to get the same calamari friti, gravy, minestrone and brick-oven fired pizzettas were all the sudden told that they couldn't get those items anymore. However, the eggplant and cous-cous appetizer was good... Bye-bye business! We'll miss you!
Still, I stuck it out though. Why? Hell... I'm not even sure. I hated my job by that point, hated the menu and was tired of being forced to work 90 hours a week. Now, here's the REAL point of my story folks. Do you know what happens when you work an entire kitchen by yourself for 90 hours per week for the duration of more than half a year? First off, you start to look like one of those experimental lab monkeys they pump full of heroin and cancer cells. Second, you start to get punchy... real punchy. I had more than my share of fights during that time and started to "self-medicate" just to appear normal. I lost more than 20 pounds during my last month working there and eveloped a very nasty chest cold. I ignored it the best I could for a few weeks until it literally almost killed me. The week before I had to be taken away to emergency was a complete and total blur. For more than four days, my fever was more than 102 degrees and eventually I passed out on the line. Yep, right during the middle of a busy dinner service I got dizzy, tried to grab the counter and went down like a ton of bricks. I don't remember anything between passing out and being in a hospital bed with tubes in me but when all was said and done, I was severely dehydrated, my electrolytes were completely out of whack, my insulin levels would have made a diabetic cringe and I turned out to have bronchitis and pneumonia. I was in horrible shape. Overworked, malnourished and generally exhausted, the only thing I could worry about when becoming coherrant again was whether or not I still had my job.
I called my boss and told him the Doctor had informed me that I would be out of work for a month but I would be back in a week, and he told me not to worry about it. He said that he would put on the Chef's jacket and work through it while I got better and I believed him. I did show up in less than a week (against Doctor's orders) to find that a new face was in the kitchen. I had been replaced...

That entire experience was a real wake-up call for me about employer loyalty. I had compromised my health for this jackass who couldn't even wait a week while I was busy trying not to die. After that whole experience, I took a year off cooking because I was so sick and tired of the bullshit I'd experienced, but I eventualy did return to cooking. I returned to cooking for some people who actually did treat me like a human and not a worn-out machine so I still have faith in humanity. I recieved some good news two months after I was replaced though - the shady Armenian owner who had replaced me went bankrupt and had to not only close the doors, but skip town because of the creditors who were on his ass. When I heard that news, I lifted a glass of pinot to toast the possibility that he might have had developed a terrible chest cold when he was chased out of town. If so, I'd like to think I gave it to him... prick.