In the Bay Area, Google is pretty much considered one of the best places to work, what with the countless—ok, 17?—cafeterias providing free, sustainable food around the clock and the company's ongoing attempt at world domination. But apparently, it might not be the best place for chefs to be employed, as a Google chef was discovered to be living in a homeless shelter in a showy investigation by the Guardian:
I spend the evening down in the laundry area, discussing Mayor Gavin Newsom's administration with a chef for Google who's staying here for a few days ... Everyone has a hustle – his is laying low in a $200/week hotel while he searches for a real place to live. He had the day off and gave it a look, but a Craigslist search for "studio, $500-1000" in San Francisco turned up nothing.
He stresses that not everyone' the same but everyone gets lumped together in the shelters. There are lots of guys like him -- he knows them, he sees them trying to make the system work for them. They just need a little bit more than what they're getting.We're not quite sure if a homeless chef reflects poorly on the individual, the profession, the city or the Googles, but one thing's certain: we never thought all those "starving chef" jokes really went quite this far (but does he have health care?). While the Google PR squadron tries to spin this somehow, we're willing to bet that students currently enrolled in culinary school just got even more nervous about their future in the industry.
· Five Days Homeless: The Journals [SFBG]
· Obviously Not Homeless: Writer Goes "Undercover" in Shelter [Curbed SF]
· Google chef in homeless shelter [Valleywag]