Growing up, being a gynaecologist was always so important to me but life happened and now we are here.
But if I'm still alive and struggling, I was thinking it'd give me a lot more joy and fulfilment if I can find my way back, at least as close as I realistically can, but I don't know where to start.
I'm 28. And I'm lost. And I need help.
Please help me.
I (26M) have been in the hospitality industry my whole life. Started at 14 working the front desk for a dry cleaning chain, made my way to a pizza joint, worked my way from dishwasher to delivery driver to prep chef to pizza chef to server to bartender, where I then took my leave to work the oil pipelines in the northern Midwest for the better part of a year. Came back to the dry cleaners, made my way into a nightclub to Barback and bartend, then on to a rather well known restaurant in my current area, where I barnacled, bartended, took a lead bartender role, and then left for another well known restaurant doing what I thought was bar management. Ended up getting abused as essentially a glorified lead bartender and had to fight for a bar management position and more pay before I fully realized ownership just sucks and I needed out.
Conveniently, the restaurant I was at prior gets the ownership share bought out from the group it was under and is now owned and operated by a single chef. The woman I trained to take my position and is a good friend of mine was actually the one to offer me the bar manager position.
I was hired under the impression I would be given a trial period, working the weekend as lead bartender and the other half of the week as bar/floor manager, which started great up until the past few weeks, where I seem to do what is asked of me by chef, and we agree upon something, only for him to make the opposite decision and announce it in an email chain a few days later.
This has made me felt generally underutilized/what am I even here for if you go the opposite direction of what I advise anyways.
Combined with my personality shifting to where I’m enjoying waking up early in the morning and getting on with my day as opposed to my current schedule of mostly starting the day around 2pm and wrapping up at midnight, I’m really having intrusive thoughts about changing careers.
Primary issue is I’d be starting over, again. Plus I don’t necessarily have a bad thing going, I’m just generally unhappy with a job I expected I would love.
Has anyone done this kind of career change before?
Any advice?
Theoretically, I’m making just short of 4k/month hourly now, 40-45 hours a week, and would love to keep that going, just on a more traditional 9-5 or 10-6 schedule.
For a little more context, most of my experience is self taught, I deal with a lot of logistics and number crunching currently, and practically no education. I dropped out of college 3 times in various design fields just because I couldn’t handle the workload in addition to working full time to make a living.
TLDR - stuck in the bar management pipeline, practically no other experience, do I have any options for getting out?