Every episode
Hello Gordon, we’re the petite bourgeois restaurant owners. We’re deluded and running our company into the ground by our denial and constant alienation of our employees.
Hi Gordon, we’re the employees. Here’s an annotated list of all the things wrong with the restaurant and how to fix it.
Gordon: “Ok owners, get out of the way of your employees.”
Owners: “No. You’re stupid and we, the small business owner, are right.”
Gordon implements fixes that the employees have been clamoring for.
The restaurant immediately succeeds.
Owners: “Well dang, I guess Gordon had a point. What employees?”
The restaurant then either succeeds or fails due to market conditions, or the owners immediately revert back to their old ways and the restaurant instantly nosedives again
Every episode is the same story. Gordon asks the employees what’s wrong with the business and they always go “The owner is a fucking moron and is running it into the ground and getting in the way of everyone doing actual good work.” and then Gordon forces through the changes that the employees say need doing.
Why do the employees, the larger class, not simply devour the business owners?
I love Kitchen Nightmares soley because it’s the only content I’ve found where a core part of the entertainment is small business owners who normally act like they’re God’s gift to the world being forced to just take it while someone just screams in their faces about what incompetent fools they are while their long suffering employees smugly watch.
The Capitalists will sell us the pot with which we will roast them. :lenin-laugh:
this show is so idiosyncratic because of how it’s just a bigger bourg coming in and viciously bullying dumber, smaller and less succesful boug
coincidentally, a lot of people don’t like it
(probably because hilariously, now that I think of it, it pretty accurately elucidates class relations)
I typically only watch the first half of each episode, precisely for the bullying.
I don’t need the wholesomeness of class reconciliation in the second halves. (“CANT YOU SEE, BOSS, THAT WE CAAARRRRREEEE ABOUT YOUUU?!”).
Now I’m imagining a show called Workplace Nightmares, where the hosts are a couple IWW representatives.
“CANT YOU SEE, BOSS, THAT WE CAAARRRRREEEE ABOUT YOUUU?!”
That always grossed me out, the minute the cameras disappear the bosses return to their bullshit
Almost all of these restaurants fail within a year after Ramsey leaves anyways. It turns out it takes more than a few weeks of bullying to cure a lead-poisoned small business tyrant.