An Open Letter to Hipcooks Cooking School

A WARNING BEFORE YOU TAKE CLASSES AT OR VOLUNTEER AT HIPCOOKS

The letter below...

Frankly, I am appalled.

I have never been disrespected, demeaned, and belittled the way I was tonight.

First of all, I will never assist at one of your classes again.  The description was completely inaccurate.  I did not assist.  Apparently, the only thing I was there to do was clean dishes.  I spent four hours of my Friday night cleaning dishes.  I am a lawyer and I make a six figure salary.  There is no way I would willingly spend four hour of my Friday evening washing dishes.  Every other time that I have assisted somewhere I have actually assisted- sautéing, whisking, chopping or any other forms of prep.  Of course there are always some dishes to wash, but this was ridiculous.  To call what I was told to do tonight assisting is misleading.  In the emails sent out by Bonny, it touts one of the benefits of assisting as learning the class.  I don’t know how I could be expected to learn and participate when I am elbow deep in soapy water.  I can afford to buy my own cooking class.  I am clearly not doing this because I could not afford to otherwise.  I volunteered to assist because I thought it was going to be an interactive cooking experience.  I enjoy cooking and I thought this would be a fun way to participate and help out.

Second, I have assisted at a number of cooking schools in Los Angeles and I have never been treated the way I was tonight.  My friend Emily signed up for the class at my urging and she said she could not even enjoy herself because of the way I was being treated.  At one point Liza asked me to hand her a teaspoon.  She was standing closer to the teaspoon than I was.  Emily heard this and was shocked as well.  Joy did the same thing at one point.  One of the girls in the class came up to me at one point and said, “I feel so bad, you have to clean all these dishes!” and she doesn’t know that I’m not a paid employee.  The final straw was at 10:20 p.m. when I had been there fore four hours and Joy said to me, “the floor needs to be swept”, clearly implying that the floor needed to be swept BY ME.  That was it.  I left right then.

I’m sorry, but if you are going to ask for assistants, and tout the benefits as being earning free classes as well as learning and participating then it should be that.  I am not opposed to manual labor, but I did not sign up to be someone’s dish wench for an entire evening.  I signed up to assist people in a cooking class.   I am too tired and aggravated by tonight’s events to go into further detail.