I've never heard of anything remotely like that occurring in the restaurant industry and servers - but there are industries where the reach of someone would be

I've never heard of anything remotely like that occurring in the restaurant industry and servers - but there are industries where the reach of someone would be important for hiring or booking them for a gig. In today's world, social media followers is one of those proxies we tend to default to for reach. But a similar thing has been part of the service industry for a long time - attractive and charismatic people will often get the best shifts, even if they're not necessarily the hardest working or best at the other aspects of the job. I suspect if such a thing around the followers is happening now, it's just the a new manifestation of the same underlying cause.