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Restaurant workers quit at record rate

npr.org

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Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#41

Post by wyager »

colinmhayes wrote: post #21
yepthatsreality wrote: post #4

The restaurant industry has known the solution for a long time but everyone wants to pretend it would be too difficult. Stop the tipping guilt trip placed on the public, raise your prices 20%, and pay your employees a livable wage. The public will still show up to eat in your restaurant.

Restaurant work sucks, it's not tipping's fault. I don't work nearly as hard as a software developer compared to when I was a waiter or cook. Software development is lower stress most of the time too.

For me, job stress has little to do with being extremely busy in the moment and a lot to do with thinking about far-flung high-leverage consequences of mistakes (will this system crash in the middle of the night 2 weeks from now, costing tons of money and causing someone to call me in a panic?). With something like being a cook, failure feedback is usually pretty immediate, which IMO is nice for stress levels.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#42

Post by devwastaken »

pm90 wrote: post #2

> That's because for many, leaving food service had a lot to do also with its high-stress culture: exhausting work, unreliable hours, no benefits and so many rude customers. I didn't realize that rude customers was that widespread.

In my experience out in more remote areas rude customers are a daily occurrence. People like to feel power over others, and have very little in terms of self control. Companies won't boot them because there's plenty of people whom are intentionally dishonest and will then label the company as being "sensitive liberals" or otherwise. Which then gethers people around it whom are just looking to take a bat to the "other team". It's a scapegoat for bad behavior I've seen multiple times.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#43

Post by dragontamer »

karlkatzke wrote: post #30
dragontamer wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on my discussions with barber-shops and other lower wage earners... at least in my area... people are still afraid of COVID19 and don't want to work in a public-facing role during a pandemic. I'm not sure how money would change that. Even if you doubled wages all of a sudden, if people are literally fearing for their lives, you can't actually get them to come in. ------- In resort areas (beaches, etc. etc.), a…

The #1 career field that died of COVID during the pandemic is restaurant cooks.

Well, you don't usually interact with cooks, so that's a bit harder for me to gather information about :-)

You can actually gain a hell of a lot of information with a brief 30-second talk with a cashier, someone stocking the shelves at a store, waiter, or barber. Keep it brief: they're still on the clock and you don't want to waste their time.

Its also their job to respond to you (ex: talk about checkout, to point you in the direction of where items are in a store... or to serve you a meal or cut your hair). So its not very hard to translate a natural interaction into a brief 30-seconds or so question about their perspective in life right now.

Sometimes, you don't even need to talk with them. Like the German seasonal workers at my local beach area: I know it without even talking to anyone. The Germans are gone this year: I didn't see any of them. I normally see lots of them (often shy workers who respond "I don't speak English" when you try to talk with them), but I saw literally none of them this past week when I went to the beach.

I also studied a basic level of Spanish and German. I'm not conversational, but I can recognize when people speak those languages. So hearing random German discussions between seasonal workers in the background is common under normal times, and that's just missing this year.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#44

Post by Ajay-p »

jhou2 wrote: post #28
tarr11 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of this article is about fast food workers, who don’t get tips. The answer is automation, logistics and supply chain improvements so you can service more customers with fewer, but more specialized employees who can be paid a living wage.

heh or go the other way with more immigration of cheap labor who are willing to absorb the abuse.

That has not worked out so well in other industries. Immigrant labor is badly abused, perhaps you said this in jest, but I do not think it is something to be taken so lightly. This article from the New Yorker may change your thinking: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/08/exploitation-a...

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#45

Post by heywintermute »

nostromo wrote: post #6

I’m sure it has nothing to do with the government paying people to sit at home - something NPR forgot to mention in their article.

Except it literally does?

>Cornett, off work for a few weeks, realized he received enough money through unemployment benefits to start saving — for the first time. He wondered if the work he loves would ever entail a job that came with health insurance or paid leave. "I was working what I decided was going to be my last kitchen job," Cornett said.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#46

Post by Aboh33 »

MattGaiser wrote: post #19
pm90 wrote: post #2

> That's because for many, leaving food service had a lot to do also with its high-stress culture: exhausting work, unreliable hours, no benefits and so many rude customers. I didn't realize that rude customers was that widespread.

Go on a cruise and spend some time people watching. People can be awful.

Likely where the whole "Karen" Stereotype came from in part

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#47

Post by mrob »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #27
yepthatsreality wrote: post #4

The restaurant industry has known the solution for a long time but everyone wants to pretend it would be too difficult. Stop the tipping guilt trip placed on the public, raise your prices 20%, and pay your employees a livable wage. The public will still show up to eat in your restaurant.

or automate 99% of the business and free these poor souls from a mundane existence. Also, I think we should support them w/ safety net (see basically andrew yang's platform). I don't see anyone screaming about ditch digging jobs or dishwashers saying we should "save those jobs!" . Backhoes and automatic dishwashers have freed people from meaningless work. We should do the same for everything we can. There's a stereot…

There is already an enormous oversupply of art. The struggling artists' real product is something rarer: authenticity. If they did not struggle then they would not be able to produce it.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#48

Post by k33n »

devwastaken wrote: post #13
nostromo wrote: post #6

I’m sure it has nothing to do with the government paying people to sit at home - something NPR forgot to mention in their article.

Whom are they paying to sit at home?

Currently, tens of millions of people. Or were you looking for a list of names?

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#49

Post by maerF0x0 »

boulos wrote: post #5

If you’re interested in the topic, I recommend the MIT living wage research [1]. They’ve got probably the most useful calculator, letting you compare multiple scenarios. [1] https://livingwage.mit.edu/

This is a great resource. I'd nitpick that the childcare expense is IMO a terrible evolution of society. People used to take care of eachother's kids while they were at work (eg, work less hours or compressed days and trade day care days with a friend. ). It's far better for children to have stable adult support (ie same small set of people stably over time) than a revolving door of new employees, whomever is working that shift etc. So we're being less resourceful _and_ giving a worse setup to the next generation.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#50

Post by downrightmike »

nostromo wrote: post #6

I’m sure it has nothing to do with the government paying people to sit at home - something NPR forgot to mention in their article.

People don't want to get covid, and the food service workers took the brunt of cases. Not surprising they don't want to go back as it could literally kill them. Here is an article with graphs showing their higher infection rates: https://www.marketplace.org/2021/01/27/food-workers-greatest... Also the people going out now, are assholes: https://www.metrotimes.com/table-and-bar/archives/2020/12/07...
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