Kitchens are a notoriously cruder and harsher working environment than most. My wife went to culinary school to be a chef. While she stuck with it and graduated, she is totally against ever working in a kitchen. Instead, she's a daycare worker. That was the less stressful and more respected position for her.

It seems like, if all restaurant workers put up with the culture, it might be because those who won't never joined in the first place.

That book is significantly exaggerated and decades out of date. Kitchens remain horrible workplaces but not really in the ways depicted in that book.

It changed, not as much as it should have, but it changed in the right way.