Avoiding,Resisting and Enduring: A New Typology of Worker Responses to Workplace Violence

Abstract

Drawing on research on chefs and aspiring chefs in commercial kitchens, this article typologises workers’ strategic responses to violence and illustrates how these responses are shaped by occupational status and work experience, as well as industry structures. While previous scholarship indicates that workers actively avoid or resist violence in the workplace, this literature largely neglects ways in which workers endure violence in strategic ways. Based on ethnographic data and in-depth interviews, this article explores three key responses to violence – avoidance, resistance and endurance – and argues that while these reactions may complement workers’ occupational self-interest, they ultimately serve to reinforce, normalise and even exacerbate violence within commercial kitchens and other similar workplaces.

Keywords

bullying endurance kitchens violence workplace culture

Introduction

Interpersonal violence, whether physical or symbolic in nature, remains a characteristic element of many workplaces today (Belardi et al., 2021; Burrow et al., 2015; Harris and Giuffre, 2015). Prior research suggests that violence emerges from distinct organisational contexts (Rainey and Melzer, 2021), and is often the result of power imbalances between supervisors and workers (Berlingieri, 2015). Rather than treat violence as an exceptional outcome, such research frames violence as integrated into work practices and labour relations (Roscigno et al., 2009). This study examines cases of such behaviour in commercial kitchens, because, as Mathisen et al. (2008) note, restaurants are distinct incubators of violence ‘in that bullying and other negative behaviours seem to be embedded in the work culture of these organisations’ (p. 59). In short, violence is a ‘routine activity’ in commercial kitchens, an everyday aspect of labour that workers must contend with.

Following Einarsen et al. (2011), this article defines workplace violence as unwanted and recurrent acts of physical, sexual or psychological harm that create a distressing workplace and affect worker performance. This includes bullying, ostracism, aggression, incivility and other less overt acts (Zhou et al., 2021). Much has been written of the causes, antecedents and cultural norms of workplace violence (Zhou et al., 2021), but less is known about the coping strategies that workers use or how these strategies are mediated by one’s environment and status within the workplace. Thus, this article asks, how do individuals respond to the everyday violence they encounter in the workplace?

Djurkovic et al. (2005) note that workers try to avoid or resist violence where possible, such as by filing formal complaints or asking for a transfer. This tailored flight or fight response, however, risks overemphasising overt responses to violence that workers may be unwilling or unable to engage in for a variety of reasons, including their relative status, financial needs and cultural norms within the workplace.

Drawing on ethnographic research in commercial kitchens in the United States, this article finds that chefs and aspiring chefs also strategically endure violence, rather than take steps to mitigate it or reduce their involvement with it. In the sections that follow, this article first provides a description of existing research on workplace violence and how workers are thought to react to violence, then highlights the context of commercial kitchens and the authors’ methodological approach. After detailing findings, the article concludes by offering a more general framework for understanding how and why individuals respond to workplace violence, especially in settings where violence is rooted in workplace culture and norms.

Characterising workplace violence and workers’ responses

Scholars argue that violence is closely related to power and control in that it reinforces broader status inequalities between members of different groups in society (Berlingieri, 2015; Lopez et al., 2009). Typically, those of higher status use violence to control, take from and exert themselves on lower-status individuals. In the workplace, Roscigno et al. (2009) note that such violence can occur in ‘lateral and bottom-up dynamics’, as well as by external actors (e.g. customers berating staff) (p. 1562). Berlingieri (2015: 347) argues that violence should be viewed along a continuum to emphasise ‘how multiple forms of violence are interrelated in ways that (re)produce and sustain each other’, with one form of violence bleeding into another (e.g. structural violence into symbolic violence into interpersonal violence).

This continuum of workplace violence reflects and extends the ‘cycle of violence’ theory established by Widom and Maxfield (2001), who find that experiencing interpersonal violence can lead one to enact it on others. Cyclical violence can also be shaped by a shared culture within an industry that normalises violence (Meiser and Pantumsinchai, 2021) and values toxic hegemonic masculinity (Bourdain, 2000; Burrow et al., 2015; Harris and Giuffre, 2015). In commercial kitchens, for example, scholars and industry observers note that several other psychological, cultural and physical forces encourage violent behaviour, including heightened displays of aggression and intense occupational stress (Bourdain, 2000; Meloury and Signal, 2014), physical discomfort (Griffitt and Veitch, 1971), use of war and military language (Murray-Gibbons and Gibbons, 2007) and the glorification of violent representations of chefs in popular media (Meiser and Pantumsinchai, 2021).

Understanding how and why violence perpetuates in workplaces, as Berlingieri (2015) explains, ‘can help us understand and make visible practices used by organisations to naturalise bullying as part of certain jobs so that it is accepted by workers’ (p. 346). Therefore, by studying how workers respond to everyday forms of violence, scholars can uncover the organisational and cultural influences that protect and perpetuate routine violence.

Responses to violence

How individuals perceive and react to violence – and how these responses are met by others – depends on the instituted social order within a setting. Violence between workers stems from how a ‘group defines the boundaries of legitimate action[s]’, which eventually ‘shape the concerns of each participating individual’ (Fine and Harrington, 2004: 346). How workers respond to violence both reflects and reproduces group norms instituted by overarching workplace structures, as well as the underlying idioculture of its members.

In kitchens, as well as many other workplaces, hierarchies, status and culture impact responses to violence. This leads some workers to rationalise violent behaviours and other undesirable characteristics in highly individualised ways, such as evidence of having a ‘passion’ for the craft (Belardi et al., 2021) or, alternatively, being a ‘genius asshole’ (Harris and Giuffre, 2020). In these situations, violence loses recognition by perpetrators, targets and witnesses as ‘violence’, consequently minimising the damage ascribed to said behaviour and rendering violence ordinary. This pattern of normalisation makes the culinary industry an opportune site for inquiry, as individuals react to what most consider a normatively negative phenomenon as, instead, an everyday phenomenon in their workplace.

Drjurkovic et al. (2005) argue that responses to workplace violence fall in three categories: (1) formal help-seeking, when a perpetrator is reported to an authority figure; (2) assertiveness, when a target confronts the perpetrator, asks them to stop and/or threatens to report them; and (3) avoidance, when a victim ignores the perpetrator, engages in absenteeism and/or asks for a worksite transfer. The first two responses (i.e. formal help-seeking and assertiveness) are forms of resistance, putting up a ‘fight’, whereas the last reaction (i.e. avoidance) can be characterised as ‘flight’. Workers are thought to toggle between strategic responses as the situation dictates: avoiding a perpetrator one day and verbally resisting the next. These three strategies have been observed in commercial kitchens: Zhou et al. (2021) find that targets in the hospitality and tourism industry often utilise avoidance as a coping strategy, disregarding perpetrators as much as possible; Burrow et al. (2015), too, note similar avoidance behaviour, as well as the use of verbal assertiveness to halt violence; and Harris and Giuffre (2020) write about formal help-seeking by targets of sexual violence.

Djurkovic et al.’s (2005) framework emphasises the steps workers take to either confront or mitigate their involvement with violence. However, this framework neglects the ways in which workers may strategically endure and tolerate violence and weave aspects of endurance into other responses. Thus, endurance reflects a cognitive and behavioural process to bear workplace violence rather than evade it. While other scholars note that individuals endure workplace violence in passing (Belardi et al., 2021; Burrow et al., 2015; Harris and Giuffre, 2020; Zhou et al., 2021), it remains largely absent from existing typologies of strategies. Additionally, existing descriptions of endurance do not explicitly theorise why workers may engage in endurance over other possible responses.

This article argues that enduring violence involves four elements: (1) a perspective that violence (social structural, symbolic and interpersonal) is an embedded facet of a workplace; (2) the belief that an individual cannot prevent or deter violence through personal acts; (3) continued rationalisation; and (4) sustained acts of behavioural coping. Scholars have described these elements in other workplace studies (Hollis, 2017), but have not clearly isolated and identified them. For example, Burrow et al. (2015: 676–677) provide an autobiographical account of a chef who early in his career worked in a violent kitchen that cues each element of enduring violence:

The abuse stayed the same, but it was my way of dealing with it that was different and helped me advance in the kitchen. The advice was pretty much, shut up and take it, let him think he’s right, even if he’s not . . . looking back, I never felt comfortable in that kitchen. During that first six months I was upset all the time, but I couldn’t have quit – what would I have done? If I couldn’t work in that kitchen, what could I have done? If I’d quit that kitchen then, I’d failed because I knew the other restaurants would be harder. If I couldn’t do the easy one, how would I cope elsewhere? So, I stuck with it.

This excerpt highlights the thought processes of enduring violence, and indicates – as will be further described in this article – individuals may behave in ways that might be interpreted as meek, shocking or deviant in other social settings, but within the context of their workplace, these actions make sense and reflect careful decision-making. As this study will show, the complex ways workers respond to violence, including using personal strategies that involve endurance, ultimately serve to reinforce and normalise workplace violence.

Research context: Kitchen work in the United States

In 2021, over 2.3 million Americans were employed as chefs or cooks in commercial restaurants, roughly 2% of the national workforce (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2022a). These workers tend to be organised in a ‘brigade system’, a top-down hierarchy led by an executive chef who directs a cadre of cooks, each assigned specific tasks within the commercial kitchen’s division of labour (Lane, 2014; Wilson, 2021). Scholars have found that hierarchical relationships, such as these, influence perceptions of violence (Lloyd, 2020).

Gender dynamics, in tandem with status, also impact workers’ understandings of what is (and is not) appropriate behaviour (Harris and Giuffre, 2015, 2020). In a setting where roughly 68.5% of executive chefs and cooks are men (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2022a), Harris and Giuffre (2015) find that women kitchen workers view sexual violence from men co-workers as such if the perpetrator is of higher status than the target. However, if both parties are of the same status, the act is taken as a workplace annoyance.

Also influencing workers’ perceptions is kitchen culture, a collection of shared values, structures and customs transmitted from chef to chef, site to site and across cuisine-type. Kitchen culture is most visible in the norms and taboos that govern workspaces and the stereotypes of those who inhabit them. Norms include a pressure for constant productivity, territorialism and a male-dominated raucous atmosphere that includes raunchy sexualised humour and prizes hegemonic masculinity (Bourdain, 2000; Burrow et al., 2015; Harris and Giuffre, 2015; Meiser and Pantumsinchai, 2021). Stereotypes of these workers are of the rough-and-tumble, portrayed by chef-writers, like Anthony Bourdain (2000), as transient and unreliable in nature, but stoic in their ability to withstand the stresses and discomforts of their jobs. These factors, alongside social rituals, such as hazing and normalised hostility, promote violence in commercial kitchens (Harris and Giuffre, 2020; Porter et al., 2017; Thomas and Meglich, 2019). Thus, throwing plates, yelling, groping and shoving operate as relational norms among kitchen workers. This culture, in addition to low pay, long hours and minimal autonomy have led kitchen work to be objectively and subjectively deemed a poor-quality job (Belardi et al., 2021).

Despite many studies identifying violence as a salient feature of commercial kitchens, few have quantified such behaviour on a national scale. The most relevant statistics come from a 2019 survey by Unilever Food Solutions (2019), which finds that one in four surveyed kitchen workers report experiencing physical violence at work. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is another helpful source regarding sexual violence. In 2014, the EEOC reported that 37% of all national sexual harassment claims were filed by restaurant workers (primarily women), a population that only comprised 7% of the national workforce at the time (Restaurant Opportunities Centers, 2014). This rate of complaint was higher than any other industry.

EEOC data indicate a gendered pattern in sexual violence in kitchens, which corresponds with recent public accusations (Harris and Giuffre, 2020). Spurred on by the #MeToo movement, public resistance to kitchen violence has largely repudiated powerful men for meting out sexual violence against less powerful women. These claims have brought down famous chefs, such as Mario Batali¹ (Harris and Giuffre, 2020). Gendered violence in the industry is attributed to the ‘pervasive set of conditions that normalise sexual harassment’ in commercial kitchens (i.e. kitchen culture), as well as ‘its history, workplace organization and definitions of success [which] combine to create work environments where harassment can thrive’ (Harris and Giuffre, 2020: 23). While women are the most publicised targets of this particular form of violence, there is clear evidence that in this homosocial environment, men are also subject to lateral and top-down sexual harassment (Bourdain, 2000). Violence is, therefore, a ubiquitous phenomenon that men and women working in commercial kitchens must negotiate. Therefore, this article asks: how do individuals respond to the everyday violence they encounter in the workplace?

Data and methods

The data presented in this article are part of a wider ethnographic study on the lived experiences, occupational identities and notions of professional success in commercial kitchens. Data were gathered in 2019 using in-depth interviews and participant-observation – methodologies well-suited to assessing worker perspectives and interpersonal interactions in situ (see Anteby and Bechky, 2016). These qualitative tools also allowed investigation into different aspects of study themes: in-depth interviews identified how workers made sense of key features of their jobs – including violence – while participant-observation captured how workers respond through experiential action and interaction.

This study deployed supplementary analysis (Heaton, 2004) of emergent aspects of the data not fully addressed in the primary study. Analysis revealed that subjects frequently and organically discussed their experiences of and responses to violence. Among the 50 participants interviewed as part of this Institutional Review Board-approved study, 27 (54%) referred to violence, indicating its salience within this line of work, and, consequently, its need for further analysis. This study draws data primarily from these 27 interviewees in order to observe the common ways in which kitchen workers respond to everyday instances of workplace violence.

Semi-structured in-person interviews with chefs and aspiring chefs were performed by the first author in California, New York, Arizona, Florida and Alaska.² These locations were selected due to the first author’s existing social networks in these culinary marketplaces, and for the analytical purpose of assessing the patterns and variations of themes across market-type. The markets in Alaska and Arizona, for example, are considered by industry professionals to be less competitive than those of California and New York. Therefore, patterns that emerged from interviews across all sites reflect broad themes relevant to the US culinary industry as a whole. Interviewees were recruited via snowball sampling or through online advertisements (i.e. personal emails; postings to social media). Questions were open-ended, flexible and focused on how workers characterised their identities and perceptions of occupational success. For example, participants were asked, ‘Can you tell me about a chef who you think of as “failed”?’ and ‘Have you ever felt like your identity as a chef was not respected or recognised? Can you describe the situation?’. These questions opened a space where numerous interviewees chose to discuss routine instances of workplace violence in the industry and how they chose to handle this violence. The length of interviews ranged from 45 to 150 minutes, and all were audio-recorded and transcribed. Participants were provided a $20 gift card incentive.

Interviewee demographics are not representative of the US kitchen worker population, which tends to include far more people of colour (particularly Latinx/Hispanic people) and fewer women than the study sample. Table 1 displays the interviewee summary demographic data and Table 2 displays national demographic data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2022a) for comparison:

Table 1.

Demographic data of study participants.

Total interviewed		Percentage of interview population
Total interviewed		Men	Women	White	Asian	Latinx / Hispanic	Black
Chefs and head cooks	39	23	16	28	5	4	2
Cooks	11	7	4	7	2	0	2
	Total = 50	n = 3060%	n = 2040%	n = 3570%	n = 714%	n = 48%	n = 48%

Table 2.

National demographic data of employed chefs and cooks, United States, 2022.

Total employed^a (in 1000s)		Percentage of employed population
Total employed^a (in 1000s)		Men	Women	White	Asian	Latinx / Hispanic	Black
Chefs and head cooks	402	77%	23%	63%	20%	23%	15%
Cooks	1905	60%	40%	73%	6%	36%	16%
	Total = 2307	Mean = 68.5%	Mean = 31.5%	Mean = 68%	Mean = 13%	Mean = 29.5%	Mean = 15.5%

Note: ^aAge 16 years and older.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2022a).

This study’s interview sample is also skewed towards formally trained chefs and aspiring chefs, as 64% of interviewees attended culinary school. Compared with less formally educated workers, this group holds distinct power in commercial kitchens, including the ability to shape idiocultural norms within this workplace. Oversampling this population was a strategic choice by the first author to better understand these dynamics.

Interview data were supplemented by 120 hours of participant-observation by the first author at a moderately priced, typical full-service restaurant called The Tiki Bar, located in Alaska.³ According to ownership, The Tiki Bar dishes out roughly 700 plates of food on weekdays and 1200 plates on weekends during the peak summer season. Appetisers average $11 and entrées average $15. Food operations at the site are run by three employees during dinner service: Scott, a biracial college-educated man in his mid-30s and owner of the establishment; head chef Jesus, a Latinx man in his late-40s who has been employed at the site for 10 years; and Garett, a white man in his early-20s. Field notes were recorded during and after shifts. Participant-observation was overt and received approval from ownership prior to data collection.

Upon reaching the point of data saturation (Small, 2009), field notes and transcriptions were thematically coded using QSR NVivo12, a qualitative analysis software. Codes were generated principally from the interview guide, as well as from topics that emerged inductively from the data, following grounded theory (Charmaz, 2014), a method that produces robust findings specific to the study context and subjects’ lived experiences, and which works to impede preconceived biases of researchers. Participant narratives surrounding responses to workplace violence were then categorised. Guided in part by existing literature (Djurkovic et al., 2005), responses were sorted into one of three possible categories: (1) avoidance, when a targeted worker evades a perpetrator; (2) resistance, when a targeted employee confronts a perpetrator (through informal and/or formal channels); and (3) endurance, when a targeted worker bears workplace violence. Each response category was then evaluated for commonality and significance, which are highlighted in this article.

All participants and locations have been de-identified for confidentiality.

Findings

Workers in this study perceived violence as a core part of what it meant to work in kitchens rather than an aberrant phenomenon. A majority (54%) of interviewees framed violence as something that had to be contended with on a daily basis as a function of their jobs. Targets of kitchen violence displayed three primary responses to it: avoidance, resistance and endurance. Each of these possible responses were shaped by workers’ occupational status and career considerations, as well as adherence to the norms of kitchen culture. Table 3 displays detailed information on participants and their individualised responses.

Table 3.

Participant responses to perceived kitchen violence.

Pseudonym	Gender	Age range, years	Location	Current job title	Response type
Pseudonym	Gender	Age range, years	Location	Current job title	Endure	Avoid	Resist
Eric Sherman	M	30–39	Alaska	Exec. chef
Ruth Price	F	50–59	Alaska	Chef instructor	X
Natalie Long	F	30–39	Alaska	Chef instructor	X	X
Grant Swann	M	30–39	Alaska	Private chef/caterer	X	X
Rich Cabell	M	60–69	Alaska	Exec. chef/owner
Alex Weisert	M	30–39	Alaska	Exec. chef
Cate Nevins	F	40–49	Alaska	Chef instructor
Jacob Keough	M	30–39	Alaska	Exec. chef
Chrissy Silverman	F	30–39	Alaska	Line cook	X	X	X
April Williams	F	40–49	Alaska	Exec. chef/owner	X
Austin Cabot	M	20–29	Arizona	Line cook	X	X
Brian Collette	M	30–39	Arizona	Ex-line cook	X	X	X
Austin Muller	M	20–29	Arizona	Prep cook		X
Stan Riedlmeyer	M	60–69	Arizona	Ex-exec. chef
Lara Hynes	F	20–29	Arizona	Line cook	X	X
Ty Kennedy	M	60–69	California	Exec. hospital chef
Dan Mercato	M	30–39	California	Exec. chef	X
Carsen Moore	M	30–39	California	Personal chef	X	X
Marilyn Holt	F	30–39	California	Private chef	X	X	X
Jim Andersen	M	50–59	California	Exec. university chef
Sammy Klein	M	50–59	California	Exec. convention centre chef
Laura Stanton	F	50–59	California	Private chef
Katherine Perloff	F	50–59	California	Exec. chef/owner	X
Luis Henriquez	M	40–49	California	Exec. chef/owner	X	X
Kara Wallace	F	30–39	California	Personal chef
Jay Reynolds	M	30–39	California	Exec. chef	X
Matt Newton	M	50–59	California	Exec. chef/owner
Justin Faucher	M	40–49	California	Exec. university chef
Evelin Lee	F	30–39	California	Food stylist	X
Kiana McGreggor	F	20–29	California	Line cook
Hannah Victor	F	40–49	California	Ex-chef, sommelier	X		X
Chloe Maas	F	30–39	California	Sous chef/private chef	X		X
Brad Selman	M	30–39	Florida	Exec. chef/owner
Josue Flores	M	50–59	Florida	Chef instructor
Michaela Caldera	F	40–49	Florida	Chef instructor
Ruby Marcos	F	30–39	New York	Line cook	X	X
Jayden Avery	M	30–39	New York	Line cook	X	X	X
William Holiday	M	40–49	New York	Private chef consultant
Will Ocampos	M	40–49	New York	Sous chef
Brenden Hyunh	M	40–49	New York	Exec. chef
Zaire Hollick	M	20–29	New York	Line cook	X
Liz Mattinson	F	30–39	New York	Exec. chef and food scientist
Will Weiss	M	30–39	New York	Exec. chef	X	X
Tobias Leitner	M	60–69	New York	Exec. chef/owner	X
Leah Nakata	F	30–39	New York	Exec. chef/owner	X	X
Ilana Mosse	F	30–39	New York	Exec. chef/owner	X
Alex Katzman	M	30–39	New York	Caterer/owner
Chris Sperazzo	M	50–59	New York	Line cook	X
Chiyoko Saito	F	50–59	New York	Exec. chef/owner	X	X
Makhi Jones	M	40–49	New York	Exec. hospital chef

Table 3 shows a clear gendered pattern among those who discussed violence in commercial kitchens: 70% of women (n = 14) compared with 43% of men (n = 13). This difference does not necessarily indicate that women in this study were targets of violence more often than men, as violence was not overtly asked about in interviews. However, it does indicate that women are more inclined to raise the issue of violence at work, a trend also evident in relation to caregiving among chefs in commercial kitchens as discussed by Belardi et al. (2021). Gender differences were less marked when workers were asked about their specific responses to workplace violence: avoidance was used by 61.5% of targeted men and 50% of targeted women; resistance by 15% of targeted men and 28% of targeted women; and endurance by 92% of targeted men and 100% of targeted women. Thus, while there are gendered patterns in discussing violence in kitchens, this difference is less marked when considering how workers sought to respond to it.

The following sections centre on how workers in this study strategically responded to everyday violence through avoidance, resistance and endurance, and how each is shaped by the organisational context of commercial kitchens. Ultimately, this article shows how workers’ reactions to violence can inadvertently reproduce norms of violent kitchen culture.

Avoiding violence

Over half of interviewees targeted with violence responded by using avoidance, most of whom were junior staff at the time of abuse. Two primary avoidance strategies were employed: (1) ceding territory to the perpetrator to create a protective spatial barrier, and (2) quitting and finding work in a different kitchen. The basis of these approaches was primarily to avoid violence. However, as will be shown, endurance can play a veiled role in these substrategies, which are discussed below in more detail.

Ceding territory

Many targeted workers described engaging in territorial yielding in response to violence. Within the kitchen, physical space is delineated by fixed work areas commonly termed ‘stations’. Station perimeters are drawn along one’s hierarchical standing and the requirements of one’s tasks. For example, a sauté cook’s station is the stove, a fry cook’s the fryer. With a finite amount of equipment and space, trespassing on others’ boundaries must be cooperative to maintain productivity, respect and co-worker relationships, while uncooperative trespassing disrupts these factors. Workspace can also be relinquished to show deference, particularly in the context of workplace violence, where spatial ground can be ceded to a perpetrator publicly in the hope of stemming the flow of violence and to create a cautionary spatial barrier.

For example, when describing a kitchen run by an ‘authoritarian’ abusive sous chef, Brian, an ex-line cook in Arizona, remarked that when it got ‘crazy’, co-workers ‘walk away and they’ll hide’. The first author, too, observed and performed similar behaviour to what Brian described. At The Tiki Bar, the head chef, Jesus, regularly ostracised staff, threw items, refused to call out orders and sabotaged their abilities to successfully perform tasks if he felt the bounds of his workspace had been encroached upon or somehow disrespected. In response, the first author and dishwasher would retreat as far physically from Jesus as possible, ceding workstations to him and finding refuge in the dishwashing area, an area reserved for the hierarchically lowest workers. Ceding territory was effective at assuaging Jesus, as it confirmed his status and ability to dictate spatial bounds. Thus, navigations of space allow lower-status workers to prevent or at least mitigate the violence afflicted upon them.

Responses to violence involving spatial interactions can be better understood from the perspective of a perpetrator, such as chef and owner Tobias. As a means for self-preservation and power, Tobias described how early in his career he intentionally ‘distanced’ himself from staff rather than ‘abused’ them:

[In] my second job, I was the opening chef of a bistro in midtown Manhattan. I was 25 years old. I was so scared that I was outrageous! I said things to people [that] they were like, ‘How can he say that to me?!’. Just to shock them! To get them to create a distance between me and him, because (laughs) . . . I had to push an agenda forward. I said, ‘Okay, I don’t care. I don’t care what you think of me. I have a job to do. This is all that matters.’ My success is the only thing that’s important.

New to the job, Tobias was overwhelmed. His concern for personal success led him to ‘outrage’ others in an effort to control the spaces and people around him and create a protective barrier. Later in his interview, he also described engaging in a ‘prank’ involving sexual harassment of his dishwasher and other violence disguised as humour as a way to build camaraderie and fortify his status as chef. Chefs like Tobias and Jesus become adept at using domineering attitudes, harsh moods and manipulation to fuse spatial bounds, reinforce their positions of power and get workers to respond to violence in ways they desire. In this case, avoidance.

Leaving for another kitchen

For those who find that ceding territory or creating protective spatial boundaries do not yield enough protection, a second – and more active – strategy is to seek opportunities elsewhere, the culinary equivalent of Djurkovic et al.’s (2005) tactic to ‘ask for a transfer’. Quitting is an oft-used and reliable option for workers, as the industry is transient in nature (Bohle et al., 2017; Fine, 1996). For example, after detailing past experiences working under a tyrannical chef and recalling a peer who was ‘pranked’ by having hot oven doors closed on his forearms, an ex-line cook named Grant explained:

[Violence] led me to quit. It led my friend who had the oven doors closed on him, he also quit. Leaving is often . . . the extent of the power of the junior employee in that sort of circumstance.

Low in hierarchical status, Grant felt that transferring workplaces was the best solution to the violence he and his peers experienced – an approach used by many interviewees with structurally disadvantaged statuses at the time of violence.

Other interviewees, such as a chef named Leah, performed mental calculations to determine if the violence was worth enduring or not. If it was not, she left. She explained, ‘Some of the other people that I’ve worked for that were not [passionate about food] or were abusive or were whatever, I was always looking for my out’. For workers like Leah, endurance was not viable in environments perceived as providing limited career benefits or limited culinary creativity (due to being led by chefs lacking vision or ‘passion’).

Taking an ‘out’ is commonplace among kitchen workers. In 2021, the US accommodation and food services industry (which includes hotels and food service operations) saw the highest workforce turnover among all industries with a non-seasonally adjusted rate of 86.3% (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2022b). For comparison, the national workforce turnover rate across all industries in 2021 was 47.2% (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2022b). Industry norms have adapted to and capitalised on these steady departures. As one interviewee explained, ‘It’s a high turnover industry and [chefs and owners] don’t care that much if they burn out a cook in 18 months or two years, ‘cause . . . they’ve built in for that’. In this interviewee’s eyes, not only did managers expect high turnover, but they exacerbated it by overworking staff to extract as much labour as possible. By wearing down cooks, chefs exact another form of violence on workers (see Mayhew et al. (2004) on overwork as abuse) that pushes some to leave.

Resisting violence

The second common behavioural response to interpersonal violence is to resist and fight back, an active strategy that roughly one-quarter of targeted interviewees utilised. Of these individuals, most had structurally advantaged statuses within the workplace at the time of victimisation: they were culinary school graduates, of high occupational rank, or had extensive industry experience. This allowed these workers to confront violence in more overt ways, such as by filing formal complaints, talking back to the perpetrator, resorting to physical retaliation or sabotaging restaurant operations. For example, Chloe, a sous chef with notoriety from well-publicised stints in food media, described her use of this strategy:

I got hired as a sous chef . . . When [the owner] hired me, I was like, ‘Look, I don’t tolerate being called, “babe”, “sweetheart”, “sugar”, “honey”, none of that. Respect is huge for me . . . We’re a team, that’s it. I don’t take anything.’ Like, I worked too hard and too long and I’m too good at my job to be berated and belittled by anybody on staff.

Chloe actively stemmed misogyny and violence at the outset of employment by dictating to her superior her behavioural expectations. By standing firm against sexist comments, she underscored how respect and civility were key to a productive team, as well as reaffirmed her own occupational status, skills and professional experience.

Hannah, previously a sous chef with Michelin-starred experience, emphasised this need to draw behavioural boundaries to resist workplace violence, but in a manner that abided by gendered norms. ‘I was always “one of the guys” . . . but if I ever felt uncomfortable, I would say something. [If] I thought someone else was being made to feel uncomfortable, I would say something’, she explained. Hannah’s words tellingly allude to collective resistance that protects other vulnerable co-workers, as well as the hegemonic masculinity of kitchen culture. She straddled being ‘one of the guys’ with being a resister.

As mentioned previously, the restaurant industry has long been a site of formal workplace violence complaints, particularly regarding sexual harassment (Harris and Giuffre, 2020). Many interviewees referenced both the violence they had experienced and growing industry-wide efforts to confront this violence:

Look what happened to [Mario] Batali, look what happened to Anne Burrell.⁴ Look [at] what happened to a lot of people in the business getting sued . . . People can’t treat people like that and expect to get away with it anymore. You could literally sue now . . . No one’s tolerating that . . . That’s changed, you know? (Chris, current line cook, previously a chef)

The state of th[e] culture has changed as evidenced by . . . people go to jail now for sexual harassment, and people like John Besh⁵ and Mario Batali [are] getting convicted for things that 10 years ago, honestly, nobody batted an eye at. (Natalie, chef instructor)

As Chris and Natalie note, formal complaints are perceived as a relatively new way to resist victimisation, as opposed to continuing to avoid or endure it. If lawsuits and criminal complaints were able to bring down famous chefs, interviewees viewed these tactics as viable methods for everyday perpetrators, too. Notably, however, this new view of the effectiveness of formal complaints did not always overcome underlying perceptions that violence is an inevitable element of kitchen culture. Natalie, quoted earlier, followed her description of the industry’s shift with a contradictory comment:

I’m just going to say it: I think a lot of people are namby-pambies now, and I’m not saying that being in a sexually harassing environment is a positive thing, but it’s also like, ‘Dude, you need to grow up . . . Yeah, these things are going to happen, but you also have 40 covers in the dining room that need to be fed’.

Natalie’s ambivalence to these strategies shows that norms dictate that the immediate occupational demands of workers outweigh the damage being inflicted. Workers must ‘grow a pair’, as she later remarked. This attitude indicates that while formal resistance is an option, many view it in opposition to the basic elements of the job. Additionally, the same people aware of the utility of such strategies also undercut them.

Furthermore, formal complaints may not yield immediate interpersonal improvements or long-lasting structural change. Therefore, some turn to informal methods of assertion. For example, those with enough status and job security talk back to abusive superiors: one sous chef, who after an owner called her a ‘dumb whore’, quickly responded with, ‘Excuse me? You don’t talk to me like that.’ In emotionally charged situations, cooks may ‘get physical’. Jayden, a line cook, detailed one instance where his chef ‘got belligerent’ and ‘spat on the food’ Jayden had just produced, unhappy with the quality. ‘I got off my nature and I kinda got, like, physical’, Jayden said, puffing out his chest, sitting up tall and leaning in. The cook’s brawny and hyper-masculine body language signalled to the chef that continued violence was not acceptable, foiling the chef’s aggression.

Workers with high status were more likely to clearly assert themselves in response to violence. The men who did so were able to perform their authority through physical displays. A lower status is perhaps why overt resistance is not the most prevalent response to workplace harassment among study subjects. These workers cannot confront their perpetrators over fear of lost income or simply because they do not know how. As one cook explained:

If [violence] happened to me at a restaurant that I worked at I would’ve gone to the manager or the owner, because at the places I’ve worked at, I’ve felt like I could escalate in that way, but it depends on the place and it depends on the person who’s doing it and just sort of your confidence as an employee to some degree, as well. Like, probably, 19-year-old me would’ve not had the ability to, you know, deal with that shit in the way that 30-year-old me would have the ability to deal with that.

This aspiring chef recognised that his initial reactions to workplace violence as a younger person were impacted by precarity and inexperience, but with time his response matured. Thus, resistance strategies must be honed through age and professional experience, and reflect the power one has in the setting.

Enduring violence

Enduring violence was the most common strategy described and observed by study subjects. Workers engaged in endurance by actively ignoring violence, persevered with their work and visualised future career paths. This strategy also reflected participants’ own career aspirations and relative position within the workplace. Participants with upwardly mobile, long-term career goals in professional kitchens were more likely to endure violence than those who had already gained high status and/or achieved professional aspirations. To many of these workers, dealing with violence was a mundane work hazard that barely coded as ‘violence’. Instead, they used language like ‘misogynistic culture’, ‘egos’ and occupational ‘pressure’ to describe situations that featured violence while rarely characterising perpetrators of workplace violence as problematically violent.

To endure the brutality of their chefs or peers, workers rationalised their treatment in ways that corresponded with the framing of a positive work identity in a bid to reduce the cognitive dissonance of tolerating (and thereby accepting) violence. Some regarded their endurance as a performance of loyalty to the organisation or occupation, both of which superseded the relative discomforts or trauma of victimisation. For example, Ruby, a line cook in New York, noted that despite her experiences of sexual harassment at the hands of her peers, ‘I still stayed ‘cause I’m loyal to my job, usually. Even if I hate it.’ Other interviewees framed violence as an unintentional product of politically incorrect kitchen humour (as described by Tobias in the ‘Ceding territory’ section). This had the effect of diluting the urgency of taking action to address workplace violence. Further, roughly one-third of interviewees viewed their victimisation as the price of working in a setting that was often harsh and unforgiving and accumulating new skills. For example, Carsen, a military veteran who interned at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Nevada, recognised hierarchical and authoritarian similarities between the military and professional kitchens as he recounted a time when a co-worker ‘ripped’ into him after he refused advice on shucking oysters:

[He] ripped into me, cursed at me, screamed at me and I just looked at him, like (gives blank stare) . . . I was visibly pissed off, but I didn’t say anything to him. Went through my job, did my day. I got pulled into the office and got written up, because they said I ‘disrupted the environment of the prep kitchen’ and they couldn’t have that. Being in the military, I understand that already, because what they wanted to do is break you down so . . . you fit into this space that they need you to fit into. You do what they need you to do. You smile and nod and get through your day. Like, even if you don’t like it.

Carsen deciphered his peer’s extreme response over a seemingly trivial interaction through his experiential lens. He explained to the interviewer that as a junior employee, his refusal to follow his hierarchically superior peer was an affront to the co-worker and the organisation. It was less about oysters, and more about status and maintaining social order. This type of thinking removes the responsibility of violence from the shoulders of a perpetrator and places it on structural features of the workplace. Violent individuals are easier to resist than a violent workplace, and by viewing one’s treatment as an unsavoury but largely unavoidable dimension of kitchen-based employment, workers, like Carsen, do not have to resist or attempt to change anything. Instead, they can endure it. Carsen also rationalised enduring violence as a facet of career development, stating, ‘I was there for the experience. I wasn’t there because I was invested in the restaurant.’

Carsen’s method of enduring violence by viewing it as a stable feature of kitchens was echoed by other interviewees, like Brian, an ex-line cook in Arizona. Brian reiterated several times throughout his interview that aggression and hostility – specifically on the part of a sous chef (a mid-level manager) – was needed to ‘keep [employees] down’ by maintaining a strict chain of command and to ensure a well-operating kitchen. Staff, in turn, had to endure such treatment for the good of the restaurant, he explained:

I feel a sous chef need[s] to be that dog . . . He’s actually the one holding down this entire kitchen right now. He’s the one actually keeping us all in line. He might be a little bit of a dick, but that’s kinda what you have to be. You kinda have to be on people and in their face. Because you’re the face of the chef, basically.

Later in the interview, Brian analogised one of his sous chefs to an ‘angry red bull’, who would cause staff to ‘breakdown in the middle of their shifts and quit’. Despite the reaction by some employees to leave the kitchen (an avoidance strategy), many, like Brian, stayed on and endured, viewing the sous chef as the necessary ‘bad cop’ to their more passive ‘good cop’ chef. Violence became a tool to achieve kitchen excellence.

Brian’s experiences are telling, as they come from the perspective of an individual who did not occupy a supervisory role nor act as a violent perpetrator, but instead has been on the receiving end of significant violence and ‘craziness’, as he put it, his entire career. Brian’s rationalisation of his own mistreatment illustrates how low-status workers’ perspectives and actions can ultimately support violent behaviour by way of endurance.

Such justification is not without its disadvantages. Workers described mentally and physically steeling themselves for workplace violence. They battled anxiety on commutes to work and lost sleep. Some also abused substances. For example, when discussing the ‘misogyny’ of the industry, a woman line cook and aspiring chef, stated, ‘I knew I was gonna have to, like, bear with it ‘til I got enough skill to stop tolerating it, but . . . it was the worst part and still is the worst part for me’. The aspiring chef viewed enduring as the first phase in her response to violence. Her framing of accumulating ‘enough skill[s]’ to respond differently indicates the role of status and ability in these violent interactions.

It should be underscored that high-status workers also endure violence through processes of rationalisation. For example, one evening at The Tiki Bar, head chef Jesus recounted when the owner became so upset that he berated staff, ‘flipped everyone off and told them to “go fuck themselves”’. However, he followed the story by citing how ownership always maintained a ‘straightforward’ and ‘honest business’ approach, explaining, ‘they don’t make me any promises [they cannot keep]’. Outbursts from ownership were accepted by Jesus as a product of ‘honesty’ and emotion, rather than of interpersonal violence and the flawed workplace structures that incubate such behaviour.

Discussion and conclusion

This article asks, how do workers respond to everyday violence embedded in their workplaces? By building upon existing frameworks for workers’ responses to violence (Djurkovic et al., 2005), our research shows that avoidance, resistance and endurance are key dimensions of how victims of workplace violence behave. While prior scholarship notes that workers engage in a fight (i.e. resistance) or flight (i.e. avoidance) response to violence (Burrow et al., 2015; Djurkovic et al., 2005; Harris and Giuffre, 2020; Zhou et al., 2021), we highlight that strategies of enduring violence are among the most commonly used by workers. While instances of enduring violence and violent relationships have been alluded to in passing by studies on other workplaces (Porter et al., 2017; Villegas, 2019) and in the context of personal relationships (Gracia, 2004; Kearney, 2001), such studies have failed to acknowledge endurance as a distinct response to violence or explain why workers are likely to deploy such a strategy. Subsequently, this study significantly extends extant understandings of worker responses to workplace violence (e.g. Burrow et al., 2015; Djurkovic et al., 2005; Harris and Giuffre, 2020; Zhou et al., 2021) and provides a new typology of worker responses, entailing avoiding, resisting and enduring. The primary behavioural categories outlined in this article – with emphasis on endurance – can and should be clearly extrapolated to other workspaces (e.g. Porter et al., 2017; Villegas, 2019), particularly to those where violence is conceived of by perpetrators and targets as a product of labour norms rather than individual behaviour or animus.

As noted above, the findings of this study also contribute to explaining worker responses to violence by revealing that their decisions to choose one response over another reflect their occupational status and work experience. These findings deepen our understanding of worker responses by explaining why responses vary. While extant literature has noted the presence of variation in such strategies (e.g. Burrow et al., 2015; Djurkovic et al., 2005; Harris and Giuffre, 2020; Zhou et al., 2021), explanatory factors have remained remiss. Thus, the findings from this study not only extend the range of possible worker responses to violence but also identify factors that can help to explain those responses. For example, quitting (i.e. avoidance) was associated with workers of higher occupational status who had other career opportunities to resort to, while workers of lower occupational status who aspired to advance within the industry were more likely to endure violence. Similarly, workers with less experience and little organisational power were more likely to engage in ‘weapons of the weak’ (Scott, 1985), acts that surreptitiously resist those in power, yet avoid direct confrontation.

The findings of this research also make a significant contribution to existing literature by illustrating how enduring violence affects workers and organisations. First, it normalises violence as part of the industry and workplace structure. Toleration in these settings signals to others that violence is normal behaviour that must be either avoided or, more likely, endured. Second, individuals are forced to make cognitive and behavioural rationalisations about their treatment in the workplace, and learn to manage the psychological and emotional impact of victimisation in the process. Our findings illustrate how workers attempt to resolve the cognitive dissonance of being committed to a job that also causes them harm and the toll that this takes. Third, endurance increases the likelihood that workers will experience repeat instances of bullying (Kim et al., 2020). If violence continues for long periods of time, victims begin to incorporate counterproductive acts into their behaviour (Kim et al., 2020; Widom and Maxfield, 2001). Thus, in the long-term, enduring violence negatively impacts both people and workplaces by prolonging negative workplace cultures and leading victims to behave in damaging ways.

Further, in the scheme of other responses, the findings of this study highlight how avoidance strategies also assist in normalisation processes and extend negative conditions. By ceding territory or transferring workplaces, workers remove themselves from a position to defy violent norms and remedy the broken social order of a workplace and industry. Unfortunately, findings and current events (i.e. lawsuits against high-profile chefs) also show that even those who remain in an organisation, accrue status and resist violence still are likely unable to significantly interrupt workplace violence, as perpetrators who are professionally successful continue to be employed (Booth, 2022; Ong, 2021). This is exacerbated by the fact that most acts of resistance are those ‘weapons of the weak’ (Scott, 1985), behaviours not intended to produce structural change, but instead individual retribution. By explicating how workers strategically avoid, resist and endure violence, this study details the ground-level dynamics that enable workplace violence, particularly how enduring violence becomes a core aspect of how workers relate to their jobs.

By naming and typologising workers’ reactions, organisations will be able to more appropriately identify, combat and provide assistance to those experiencing workplace violence. Since most targets choose to endure their treatment, stay quiet and not signal a need for intervention, these victims (alongside those who avoid violence) are largely ignored by intervening bodies (such as human resources, labour organisations and law enforcement). They are similarly neglected by workplace policies. Only formal resisters trigger notice in these entities. However, clarifying that victimisation and a tenure absent of formal complaints are not mutually exclusive can prompt intervening organisations to look more deeply at how workers are treated and to examine organisational structures and interpersonal norms. Organisations can then identify ways to improve workplaces embedded with violence, which can result in reduced employee turnover and consequent operations and training costs, as well as the cultivation of healthier workplace climates. Roscigno et al. (2009) and other interventionist scholars provide helpful recommendations for such improvements. For example, developing ‘workplace guardians’, individuals or organised bodies who identify and mitigate violence, as well as act as protectors of vulnerable workers; or building accountability measures into annual evaluations of leaders to hold them responsible for the conduct of themselves and their staff (Roscigno et al., 2009).

While not discounting the contributions of this study, it is important to note that it is not without limitations. First, as previously described, by focusing our research on chefs and aspiring chefs, this study captures the experiences of only a subset of workers employed in this setting. Other kinds of restaurant workers have different relational dynamics to negotiate that exist alongside or outside of kitchen violence, such as customer service relations (Erickson, 2009) and waitstaff–kitchen interactions (Wilson, 2021). Second, it is important to acknowledge factors beyond the scope of this research that may influence how individuals respond to violence. Racial power dynamics, for example, are likely to shape targeted workers’ behaviours, and studies indicate that workers of colour are among those most likely to be targets of kitchen violence (Wilson, 2021). Since themes of violence were uncovered in interviews via grounded theory rather than explicitly interrogated, how exactly race factors into workers’ responses to violence falls outside the scope of this study and requires further investigation to explicate potential connections.

Future studies could expand on this research by exploring the impact of gender on both the perpetuation of and worker responses to workplace violence. Since this study suggests that gender affects workers’ awareness of the issue of workplace violence but not their responses, other studies could centre a gendered analysis of responses to violence more explicitly. Given that violence is typically found in male-dominated workplaces and within cultures of hegemonic masculinity (such as commercial kitchens), it would be instructive to see whether women-led workplaces in the same industry house similar issues for workers. This could illustrate the extent to which fostering alternative organisational cultures could disrupt industry norms of workplace violence that workers – particularly those who aspire to long-term careers in that industry – must ultimately respond to and, often, reinforce and reproduce anew.

In sum, this research develops a new typology of worker responses to workplace violence by highlighting three key responses – avoidance, resistance and endurance – and argues that while these reactions may complement workers’ occupational self-interest, they ultimately serve to reinforce, normalise and even exacerbate violence within a given workplace. Importantly, this typology will enable more effective identification of workplace violence along with the development of policy responses directed towards redressing it.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Mahalo nui loa to the kitchen workers who participated in this study and shared with us their stories, as well as Dr Deisy del Real, Dr Hajar Yazdiha and Dr Amy Zhou for providing feedback on early drafts of this work.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Ellen T Meiser

Eli R Wilson

Notes

Ellen T Meiser is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Hawai’i at Hilo. She is co-creator and co-host of The Social Breakdown, a free and accessible sociology podcast and learning resource.

Eli R Wilson is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of New Mexico. His research broadly examines how race, culture and inequality interact in contemporary service workplaces and other settings of the new economy. Dr Wilson is the author of two books: Front of the House, Back of the House: Race and Inequality in the Lives of Restaurant Workers (New York University Press, 2021) and Beer and Society: How We Make Beer and Beer Makes Us (co-authored with AB Stone; Lexington Books, 2022).

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