Show some love. Be good to each other. A cafe owner inspires us on Labor Day.
Last Tuesday, in a move that should inspire bosses everywhere, Ryan Tracy closed his two businesses in the Chicago suburb of Park Ridge to give his staff a mental health day after a rough week.
“We need a break,” he posted on Facebook.
Tracy owns Beer on the Wall, a liquor store and beer cafe on the town’s Main Street, along with Off the Wall Cafe, which the website notes exists because “You can’t drink beer ALL the time, can you?”
The rough week, as Jennifer Johnson reported in Tribune Publishing’s Pioneer Press, included “two threats against servers who were trying to enforce a no-dog policy on the outdoor patio, a man who wanted to fight the host of a trivia night who had disqualified one of the teams, and confrontations between angry customers.”
There had been three complaints that the COVID-19 protection procedures were too strict, and one that they weren’t strict enough.
“Frankly,” Tracy wrote on Facebook, “we’ve had enough of it. We’re not the mask police, we actually love dogs, and each day we make it a priority to send each and every customer home feeling safe about their visit — simple as that.”
The tone of Tracy’s post was affable, but he sounded tired. “Send us some love,” he wrote when he announced the mental health day, promising the staff would be back, refreshed, on Wednesday. He concluded: “Be good to each other.”
It’s an important message for this Labor Day in the fraught Pandemic Year of 2020: Send some love to the people whose work you rely on. Let’s be good to each other.
This pandemic has shone the harsh light of truth on the nature and meaning of work in our country. The past few months have illuminated how dependent we are on the work of others, jobs that are often poorly paid and otherwise undervalued.
It has also shown how fragile work is for many people. As the novel coronavirus has stalked the land — killing 187,000 Americans so far, infecting more than 6 million — it has forced legions of businesses to cut back or close. Millions of Americans have been furloughed or laid off. Those fortunate enough to have jobs are working with unaccustomed stresses.
The stresses run the gamut. Many people struggle with the stress of working in isolation. Others, many of them the workers deemed “essential,” bear the stress of working around people. They include grocery cashiers, bus drivers, medical personnel and restaurant employees who not only have to fear the virus but have to cope with a public that is testy at best, traumatized at worst, and as a result too often rude.
If ever there was a Labor Day to pause and appreciate the work of others, this is it. So here’s an idea for how to celebrate Labor Day: Sometime in the course of the weekend, thank three people for the work they do.
Here are a few who deserve my thanks: Thank you to the technician who was working last week when I went for a mammogram. I asked her how it felt to always work in a mask. She said she wore it so much that even when she took it off she thought she had it on.
Thank you to the overwhelmed but cheerful woman who answered when I called to complain about my spotty Internet.
Thanks to the masked Peet’s barista who brightens my day by greeting me by name, and to the grocery store clerks who from behind their masks and plastic shield cheerfully say, “So how’s your day going?”
Thank you to the Instacart shoppers who select the groceries I order online for my housebound sister. They’re under huge stress to move fast, which is why they deserve good tips.
Thank you to all the journalists who have exhausted themselves during months of pandemics and public protests, trying to get the facts right while also getting them fast.
There are different ways to say thank you. One way is with words. Another is with money. Let’s let Labor Day be a reminder to tip well whenever possible and to support businesses we like, especially local ones, so that they’ll still be around when the pandemic is over.
In short, think of Ryan Tracy’s words: Send some love. Be good to each other.
And a special thanks to any boss anywhere who understands that the workers need a mental health day.