10 ms·

Waiters Reject Signing Bonuses, Hobbling an $860B Industry

33 points by matco11 5y ago

dv_dt 5y ago
Hmm, on the other hand cooks in this study were the number one occupational role for risk of death by covid. I wonder how much of this difficulty hiring for the food industry just from reduction of trained workforce via deaths, hesitance of survivors to return to an occupation where there would be many first or second hand experiences with colleagues passing on. https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2021/02/10/covid-jobs https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2021/02/10/covid-job...
- blakesterz 5y ago
  That list is really interesting, surprising even... Cooks at #1, then factory work, agriculture, then bakers at #4, construction, procutions, sewing, shipping, grounds, customer service, then again "chefs and head cooks" at #12 and at 13 is "Computer occupations, all other" which surprised me and then second to last, bartenders. So food service is well represented. Where are the waiters/waitress/servers on that list? I'd expect them to be at higher risk than cooks, since they're out there walking around.
  - evgen 5y ago
    From what I recall at the time the issue with back of house workers is that if anyone on the line has it then everyone is likely to get it. The kitchen is crowded, it is hot (making PPE seldom used), people are shouting over each other and the noises of cooking, ventilation is pulling from the public in the front of house across the line and then out, and the existing contamination-prevention efforts are all based on touch and not respiration. While front of house people would have been exposed to the general public they were not as confined.
    - tomlagier 5y ago
      To add to this, cooks are often more economically precarious than front of house & so less likely to stay at home if they are sick.
    - jjeaff 5y ago
      I would also postulate that back of the house workers are more likely to be older, lower income and more recent immigrants. So they may have poorer access to healthcare or simply less knowledge or experience in navigating the healthcare system or less likely to seek medical attention at all. Then of course, receiving poorer medical care when they do seek it.
- dporter 5y ago
  Another thing I never see mentioned in the articles about restaurant staff shortages is how awful working at a restaurant is. The restaurant industry has more sexual harassment claims than any other industry, with 90% of women and 70% of men experiencing some form of sexual harassment [1]. Everyone I know who has worked in restaurants has plenty of stories about how awful the managers and customers are. [1] https://hbr.org/2018/01/sexual-harassment-is-pervasive-in-the-restaurant-industry-heres-what-needs-to-change https://hbr.org/2018/01/sexual-harassment-is-pervasive-in-th...
  - wodenokoto 5y ago
    It is mentioned in TFA. Not the sexual harassment, but that working fast food is tough, stressful, low pay and so bad that fulfillment is comparatively a breeze.
chad_strategic 5y ago
As a developer I'm now request/demanding $100 up front to speak with a recruiter. Also how important is a waiter? Half the time here in Colorado they high on 420. Can't I just use an app to communicate with the kitchen an have an expediter bring it to my table?
- the_lonely_road 5y ago
  You are going to get downvoted to Oblivion for the way you said it without regards to what you are saying which is disappointing because there is an interesting conversation to be had around the question “do we need servers in 2021?” I would say no we don’t. I would be interested to hear from people who disagree as to what elements of a servers position you think would be better left to a human instead of an app. Clearly fast food joints don’t use servers but their food quality is always subpar and I don’t think I’ve ever been to a restaurant quality business that didn’t use servers so I wonder what I’m missing.
  - evgen 5y ago
    Nolan Bushnell, the former founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese, launched a restaurant chain in 2000 called uWink where you ordered via an app using a tablet at the table and there were only 'expediters' instead of humans with whom you would interact. There was one in Mountain View around 2007 or 2008 at the corner of Castro and California (replacing one of the original Tung Kee Noodle locations.) It did not last long.
    - blakesterz 5y ago
      https://www.mercurynews.com/2009/04/22/nolan-bushnells-high-tech-uwink-restaurant-closes-in-mountain-view/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2009/04/22/nolan-bushnells-high-... Doesn't seem like it made much of a splash.
    - rightbyte 5y ago
      McDonalds type of serving works for higher end too. My experience with 'apps' for ordering on the otherhand has been terrible. Many unnessecary user hostile steps to uppsell stuff to you.
ncmncm 5y ago
Many of us locked down have learned to cook better than we can find at restaurants we can afford to eat in. Most nights I make a salad with feta, goat, or parmesan cheese, split grape tomatoes, snap peas, kalamata olives, a shredded carrot, avocado, and crushed tortillas, in 15 minutes. Sometimes I make fettucini with fresh sauce from the same tomatoes (blanch for 20s in the pasta water and peel, microwave for 5 min with chopped bell pepper, salt, pepper, olive oil; sauté noodles with the sauce for 2) and parmesan, in 20. How can they compete?
dannyphantom 5y ago
An article about Milwaukee! Woah. As a former sever of 7 (?) years throughout high-school and college it seems these articles are missing the elephant in the room: Restaurant life is hard, thankless and can very much a toxic lifestyle. I worked at 5 restaurants in the city and all of them had their unique workplace culture than ranged from fairly nice to down right exploitation and abuse [1]. Drug use, alcoholism, and often times undercutting your peers so you are scheduled shifts during prime hours just drives morale down. There is high turnover because of these things. Now that you have trouble hiring is more indicative of not wanting to be treated like crap than "restaurant staff won't come back because lazy". It's baffling to me how out of touch these restaurant owners can be when it comes to the question of not being able to retain staff. This comment comes across as resentful; but it's important to highlight the less understood aspects of restaurant culture. Generally, it was fulfilling and left me with valuable skills. But, I'd never dare to go back to that lifestyle. [1]: https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/business/2017/07/14/water-street-brewery-agrees-settle-class-action-lawsuit-filed-servers-over-wages/480379001/ https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/business/2017/07/14/wat...
- ruffrey 5y ago
  Spot on. I worked 5 years in the restaurant business during college. Still have occasional nightmares of getting 4 tables sat at once.
- falcolas 5y ago
  Every business owner that I’ve talked to in the last few months, who employ low skill labor, are leaning hard on the lazy angle. They're quite happy the unemployment benefits are shutting down soon. I postulate that is correlated to people being forced into these shit jobs so employers can keep their wages low.
  - prepend 5y ago
    > I postulate that is correlated to people being forced into these shit jobs so employers can keep their wages low. Of course this is true. Many jobs suck and no one would work them unless they must. If I have the choice of working for a jerk bussing tables for $11/hour for variable 30-40/hours per week to getting $16/hour for 40 hours through unemployment, I will choose not working for more money. That’s rational. Of course I’d also choose not working over $11/hour with the world’s best boss. It’s not revelatory that many work in jobs they don’t like just to make a living, pay for kids, etc etc. Sure not being a jerk is a good move to retain employees but I don’t think it matters in the “work for less money < not work for more money” equation.
mattzito 5y ago
I worked in this industry in a few ways - indirectly (my family owned and operated restaurants), directly (working in my family's restaurants), and adjacent (I ran product for a restaurant reservation platform). There's a couple of dynamics to be aware of here, some of which have been called out: - It's a rough job, and the labor economics are all skewed. Even pre-pandemic restaurants were struggling with balancing tipped pay with kitchen pay through a variety of approaches. Removing tipping had very mixed results. - A lot of restaurant workplaces are very toxic, through a combination of the culture, bad management, etc. While there are a lot of small businesses where the owner/manager are bad, restaurants have disproportionately high staffing requirements, which means that the bad managers impact a larger number of people - Lack of career advancement. At the low end of the restaurant market, people tend to just age out after early adulthood, or take a management track job. At the mid-range of the market, you might bounce around from place to place, but there's not really a path up and out. At the high end there's the most opportunity, but even then the salaries are not that high, and many of the better paying FOH jobs (captain, somm, GM) have been consolidated down to reduce labor costs - Restaurants are not confident enough yet to understand what their business looks like in a post-pandemic world. That is making them hesitant to make transformative shifts like salaried servers (non-tipped) or investing in career development for kitchen staff. It's a lot easier to contemplate these things when you have a general sense of what the next few years look like, and I think there's just a general sense of unease about what comes next. I love restaurants, it's something I really enjoy, and while I understand the people who just want to get fed and get on with their lives, I think the hospitality aspect of it (for me) can be nice. I think the industry as a whole has been structured unsustainably for years, though, and the pandemic just accelerated what would have become clear over the next 5-10 years. EDIT: one last factor - I think there was also an ever-increasing shift towards higher expectations from customers. Shows like top chef, better access to ingredients, and casual chains with higher standards have raised the bar for everyone. I think that's good for diners, but there's a lot of restaurants that were already going to struggle to compete and the pandemic also is accelerating their demise.
underseacables 5y ago
Right now may just not be the best time for hiring, there are many people who are able to live on benefits. Why return to work, especially as grueling as a restaurant, if you don’t have to?
a3n 5y ago
> Yet he and other employers in the industry face a more fundamental challenge. Low-skilled workers are fleeing food service for higher-paying jobs at fulfillment centers operated by Amazon .com Inc. and other retailers, according to Daniel Zhao, a senior economist at the employment site Glassdoor. Amazon will probably sell fresh cooked meals from their fulfillment centers, delivered in their trucks. "All restaurants are Amazon."

33 points by matco11 5y ago

Hmm, on the other hand cooks in this study were the number one occupational role for risk of death by covid. I wonder how much of this difficulty hiring for the food industry just from reduction of trained workforce via deaths, hesitance of survivors to return to an occupation where there would be many first or second hand experiences with colleagues passing on. https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2021/02/10/covid-jobs https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2021/02/10/covid-job...

blakesterz 5y ago
That list is really interesting, surprising even... Cooks at #1, then factory work, agriculture, then bakers at #4, construction, procutions, sewing, shipping, grounds, customer service, then again "chefs and head cooks" at #12 and at 13 is "Computer occupations, all other" which surprised me and then second to last, bartenders. So food service is well represented. Where are the waiters/waitress/servers on that list? I'd expect them to be at higher risk than cooks, since they're out there walking around.
- evgen 5y ago
  From what I recall at the time the issue with back of house workers is that if anyone on the line has it then everyone is likely to get it. The kitchen is crowded, it is hot (making PPE seldom used), people are shouting over each other and the noises of cooking, ventilation is pulling from the public in the front of house across the line and then out, and the existing contamination-prevention efforts are all based on touch and not respiration. While front of house people would have been exposed to the general public they were not as confined.
  - tomlagier 5y ago
    To add to this, cooks are often more economically precarious than front of house & so less likely to stay at home if they are sick.
  - jjeaff 5y ago
    I would also postulate that back of the house workers are more likely to be older, lower income and more recent immigrants. So they may have poorer access to healthcare or simply less knowledge or experience in navigating the healthcare system or less likely to seek medical attention at all. Then of course, receiving poorer medical care when they do seek it.
dporter 5y ago
Another thing I never see mentioned in the articles about restaurant staff shortages is how awful working at a restaurant is. The restaurant industry has more sexual harassment claims than any other industry, with 90% of women and 70% of men experiencing some form of sexual harassment [1]. Everyone I know who has worked in restaurants has plenty of stories about how awful the managers and customers are. [1] https://hbr.org/2018/01/sexual-harassment-is-pervasive-in-the-restaurant-industry-heres-what-needs-to-change https://hbr.org/2018/01/sexual-harassment-is-pervasive-in-th...
- wodenokoto 5y ago
  It is mentioned in TFA. Not the sexual harassment, but that working fast food is tough, stressful, low pay and so bad that fulfillment is comparatively a breeze.

chad_strategic 5y ago

As a developer I'm now request/demanding $100 up front to speak with a recruiter. Also how important is a waiter? Half the time here in Colorado they high on 420. Can't I just use an app to communicate with the kitchen an have an expediter bring it to my table?

the_lonely_road 5y ago
You are going to get downvoted to Oblivion for the way you said it without regards to what you are saying which is disappointing because there is an interesting conversation to be had around the question “do we need servers in 2021?” I would say no we don’t. I would be interested to hear from people who disagree as to what elements of a servers position you think would be better left to a human instead of an app. Clearly fast food joints don’t use servers but their food quality is always subpar and I don’t think I’ve ever been to a restaurant quality business that didn’t use servers so I wonder what I’m missing.
- evgen 5y ago
  Nolan Bushnell, the former founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese, launched a restaurant chain in 2000 called uWink where you ordered via an app using a tablet at the table and there were only 'expediters' instead of humans with whom you would interact. There was one in Mountain View around 2007 or 2008 at the corner of Castro and California (replacing one of the original Tung Kee Noodle locations.) It did not last long.
  - blakesterz 5y ago
    https://www.mercurynews.com/2009/04/22/nolan-bushnells-high-tech-uwink-restaurant-closes-in-mountain-view/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2009/04/22/nolan-bushnells-high-... Doesn't seem like it made much of a splash.
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    McDonalds type of serving works for higher end too. My experience with 'apps' for ordering on the otherhand has been terrible. Many unnessecary user hostile steps to uppsell stuff to you.

ncmncm 5y ago

Many of us locked down have learned to cook better than we can find at restaurants we can afford to eat in. Most nights I make a salad with feta, goat, or parmesan cheese, split grape tomatoes, snap peas, kalamata olives, a shredded carrot, avocado, and crushed tortillas, in 15 minutes. Sometimes I make fettucini with fresh sauce from the same tomatoes (blanch for 20s in the pasta water and peel, microwave for 5 min with chopped bell pepper, salt, pepper, olive oil; sauté noodles with the sauce for 2) and parmesan, in 20. How can they compete?

dannyphantom 5y ago

An article about Milwaukee! Woah. As a former sever of 7 (?) years throughout high-school and college it seems these articles are missing the elephant in the room: Restaurant life is hard, thankless and can very much a toxic lifestyle. I worked at 5 restaurants in the city and all of them had their unique workplace culture than ranged from fairly nice to down right exploitation and abuse [1]. Drug use, alcoholism, and often times undercutting your peers so you are scheduled shifts during prime hours just drives morale down. There is high turnover because of these things. Now that you have trouble hiring is more indicative of not wanting to be treated like crap than "restaurant staff won't come back because lazy". It's baffling to me how out of touch these restaurant owners can be when it comes to the question of not being able to retain staff. This comment comes across as resentful; but it's important to highlight the less understood aspects of restaurant culture. Generally, it was fulfilling and left me with valuable skills. But, I'd never dare to go back to that lifestyle. [1]: https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/business/2017/07/14/water-street-brewery-agrees-settle-class-action-lawsuit-filed-servers-over-wages/480379001/ https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/business/2017/07/14/wat...

ruffrey 5y ago
Spot on. I worked 5 years in the restaurant business during college. Still have occasional nightmares of getting 4 tables sat at once.
falcolas 5y ago
Every business owner that I’ve talked to in the last few months, who employ low skill labor, are leaning hard on the lazy angle. They're quite happy the unemployment benefits are shutting down soon. I postulate that is correlated to people being forced into these shit jobs so employers can keep their wages low.
- prepend 5y ago
  > I postulate that is correlated to people being forced into these shit jobs so employers can keep their wages low. Of course this is true. Many jobs suck and no one would work them unless they must. If I have the choice of working for a jerk bussing tables for $11/hour for variable 30-40/hours per week to getting $16/hour for 40 hours through unemployment, I will choose not working for more money. That’s rational. Of course I’d also choose not working over $11/hour with the world’s best boss. It’s not revelatory that many work in jobs they don’t like just to make a living, pay for kids, etc etc. Sure not being a jerk is a good move to retain employees but I don’t think it matters in the “work for less money < not work for more money” equation.

mattzito 5y ago

I worked in this industry in a few ways - indirectly (my family owned and operated restaurants), directly (working in my family's restaurants), and adjacent (I ran product for a restaurant reservation platform). There's a couple of dynamics to be aware of here, some of which have been called out: - It's a rough job, and the labor economics are all skewed. Even pre-pandemic restaurants were struggling with balancing tipped pay with kitchen pay through a variety of approaches. Removing tipping had very mixed results. - A lot of restaurant workplaces are very toxic, through a combination of the culture, bad management, etc. While there are a lot of small businesses where the owner/manager are bad, restaurants have disproportionately high staffing requirements, which means that the bad managers impact a larger number of people - Lack of career advancement. At the low end of the restaurant market, people tend to just age out after early adulthood, or take a management track job. At the mid-range of the market, you might bounce around from place to place, but there's not really a path up and out. At the high end there's the most opportunity, but even then the salaries are not that high, and many of the better paying FOH jobs (captain, somm, GM) have been consolidated down to reduce labor costs - Restaurants are not confident enough yet to understand what their business looks like in a post-pandemic world. That is making them hesitant to make transformative shifts like salaried servers (non-tipped) or investing in career development for kitchen staff. It's a lot easier to contemplate these things when you have a general sense of what the next few years look like, and I think there's just a general sense of unease about what comes next. I love restaurants, it's something I really enjoy, and while I understand the people who just want to get fed and get on with their lives, I think the hospitality aspect of it (for me) can be nice. I think the industry as a whole has been structured unsustainably for years, though, and the pandemic just accelerated what would have become clear over the next 5-10 years. EDIT: one last factor - I think there was also an ever-increasing shift towards higher expectations from customers. Shows like top chef, better access to ingredients, and casual chains with higher standards have raised the bar for everyone. I think that's good for diners, but there's a lot of restaurants that were already going to struggle to compete and the pandemic also is accelerating their demise.

underseacables 5y ago

Right now may just not be the best time for hiring, there are many people who are able to live on benefits. Why return to work, especially as grueling as a restaurant, if you don’t have to?

a3n 5y ago

> Yet he and other employers in the industry face a more fundamental challenge. Low-skilled workers are fleeing food service for higher-paying jobs at fulfillment centers operated by Amazon .com Inc. and other retailers, according to Daniel Zhao, a senior economist at the employment site Glassdoor. Amazon will probably sell fresh cooked meals from their fulfillment centers, delivered in their trucks. "All restaurants are Amazon."