Ask Lori McDermot why she spent the last 23 years of her life in the restaurant industry, and she'll tell you that she's wondered the same thing. Her first job waiting tables seemed a good way to pay the bills while going to school. After she graduated and found her chosen career unfulfilling, a restaurant management position seemed a fair alternative.

But now McDermot is leaving. As a single mom she finds the demands of the career far outweigh the medical benefits and the credit rating the salaried job afforded her. She will finish the final year of her post-graduate degree and then complete her teaching certification.

McDermot is not alone in her exodus. As many service industry managers reach middle age, they read the dead-end sign in their future's road. They change to whatever job they can, taking their skills and knowledge with them.

So who's replacing them? What can we expect from the new generation of "service professionals?"

Americans spend nearly $940 million a day on restaurant food. A large number of service professionals prepare that food. Most restaurant employees are between the ages of 18 and 35. Most bounce from five to 12 different jobs during that age period.

Take Jay as an example. Twenty-eight years old, he has worked in the restaurant industry for 10 years. He spent his first year-and-a-half at Red Lobster, working as a busser. The restaurant manager required employees to wear a uniform that included a full white apron, white shirt and tie. Jay disliked this dress; the lack of tips that bussers received at the restaurant; and his wages, which were $1 more than minimum wage. When work started to interfere with high school football, he quit.

Six months later, Red Robin hired Jay. He stayed for two years and enjoyed the job. The work was hard and fast-paced, but employees wore comfortable uniforms, made tips, and received respect and responsibility from the management. Jay hoped to become a server and was promoted to food runner. The management, however, put off his promotion to server for six months. Fed up, he quit to take a serving position at a different restaurant, The Crossing.

Jay stayed at The Crossing for six months but eventually developed what he called "a bad rap" and had to leave. Problems developed between Jay and a manager/drinking buddy. He also experienced a spurned romance with a friend of the restaurant owner.

The Olive Garden hired Jay next. He worked there for one year and felt it was a good place to work. The clientele bothered him, though. The tips weren't what he expected. Eventually a scheduling mix-up led to his dismissal.

After that, Jay stopped serving and went to work at Home Base. After six months, he quit and worked for a school district and then a logging company. Finally, Jay hired on at the City Grill as a server. About 18 other "Jays" are working, each at different stages of their service careers. Is there a problem?

One of the primary difficulties restaurants have in staying profitable is keeping their labor costs down. For every cheeseburger customers eat, a little less than a quarter of its price is sliced out for the service professional serving that meal. If the slice gets bigger, the owner of that restaurant must raise the prices to say profitable. And because a burger joint down the street sells a similar product, restaurants can only raise the price so high.

While onlookers talk about price wars, they miss the real battle over labor costs. Labor costs have steadily increased each decade. Today's work force needs three times the supervision of yesterday's work force.

Why do service staffs need three times the supervision, and why do restaurants experience turnover rates of up to 200 percent in a year?

Bill Emberlin has some suggestons. For more than 30 years, Mr. Emberlin ran the Service Master company that cleaned and maintained restaurants and corporate buildings.

He said, "It used to be that you would have an employee, let's say her name is Mary Ann, and she would work for you for 10 years. She had her jobs, and she knew how to do them perfectly. She would even tell me not to let anyone else work her floors in the corporate buildings. She knew how each person wanted his or her office kept and organized.

"Today you have Mary. She is only Mary because she doesn't stay long enough to get to know her whole name. We spend 10 days training her, put her to work on one or two floors, and assign a team leader to her and four other people. It used to be that we would have one supervisor over 15 Mary Anns. But after six months, Mary is off to another job, and I have to hire someone new."

According to industry experts, the loss for a business when it hires, trains and loses an employee in one year is roughly half of that employee's annual salary. Why are these employees leaving?

Pierre Catania, the service manager for Portland's Stanford's restaurants said, "It is the Generation Xers. You have to baby-sit them. All day long it is putting out fires. Many people can work and their entire focus is money. They just want to get through their shift, collect their tips from everyone, and then they are out of the restaurant and off spending their cash. I have worked with so many individuals like that over the years. But those kinds of workers don't last long here."

Catania is not alone in his assessment. Baby boomers watch Gen-Xers with the same sense of worry their parents experienced. The title, Generation X, has become almost synonymous with terms such as entitlement, self-absorption, frustration, experience-hungry, restless, idealistic, and ungrounded.

Are the slurs true? According to today's managers and our wallets, they are.

The cyclical problem is getting worse. Businesses need profit. Employee turnovers drain profit. Increased supervision drains profit. Businesses have less money to spend and salaries freeze. Employee training-enhancement spending freezes. Employees become disgruntled and feel unchallenged. Employees move to another entry-level service job. Businesses raise prices.

The newest wave of service industry managers have a mess. While expectations increase because of the younger generation's beliefs of entitlement, performance has decreased to communist levels. The business owners, primarily baby boomers, express their frustration and resentment.

James Lang, the service manager at the City Grill restaurant in Vancouver, Wash., said, "There is no usable work ethic, no motivation behind loyalty to a job or a business. Unemployment is so low you don't have the luxury to hire only people with good traits. This group has left school and entered the work force without learning the basics of professionalism, communication, courtesy or respect. How do you get them to care about their jobs?"

Lang is looking for another line of work himself. Jay is slowly working on his bachelor's degree.

And what about McDermot? She hopes to get a job teaching elementary students. Perhaps her efforts won't be wasted on the upcoming generation.