‘When you do find a ... job that you can make enough money to pay your bills, I don’t think that should be a rarity’ NOUR QUTYAN
After two possible exposures to the novel coronavirus, Nour Qutyan had to miss out on practically two weeks of pay. A bartender and server in Philadelphia who relies primarily on tips and a $2.83 hourly rate, that income covered about half of their rent.
“Thankfully I’d had money saved, and it was enough for me to pay my rent that month. [But] it’s really easy to spiral into fear and uncertainty and not know what your next step was,” said Mx. Qutyan, who prefers a gender neutral pronoun.
Mx. Qutyan has not contracted the virus but “it’s not enough to just be lucky,” they said.
If they had become infected, the best case scenario would have been missing even more time off work. The worst would have been a hospital stay with medical bills they couldn’t afford to pay.
“When you do find a restaurant job that you can make enough money to pay your bills, I don’t think that should be a rarity,” they said. “And I think a lot of times it is.”
Mx. Qutyan, who is 28 and a full-time student at Temple University, has worked in the restaurant industry since graduating high school.
There are good days when they work long hours that show up in take-home pay. And there are bad days when long hours aren’t reflected in a bank account.
Changing the system “would give me a sense of stability, knowing whatever happened that day I know I’m going to be making at least this amount of money in a day or this amount of money in a week,” Mx. Qutyan said. “We shouldn’t have to depend on how much other people perceive the value of our work.”
Gov. Tom Wolf’s proposed plan to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by July 2027 and replace the tipped minimum wage starting this summer with a $12 an hour rate was a “slap in the face,” Mx. Qutyan said. Restaurant workers need the pay bump this year, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, they said.
Before the pandemic last spring, Mx. Qutyan had been working 25-30 hours a week at a microbrewery in Philadelphia. Since then, their hours have been cut, and now they work about one day a week making a fraction of what was previously earned.
They applied for and received unemployment benefits for about three months, but the payments were inconsistent and stopped without any explanation.
To make ends meet, Mx. Qutyan moved to an apartment with a lower rent, lives as minimally as possible and rarely leaves home — for both safety and financial reasons.
They also applied for other jobs in the restaurant industry but didn’t have any success. A new job could come with added health risks. At the microbrewery, Mx. Qutyan said, there’s no indoor dining, no room for outdoor tables and no haggling with customers over putting a mask on.
“I feel safe, but I’m the only person I know that works in a restaurant that feels safe,” they said. “But the sacrifice that I’m making for not having to deal with that is not making as much money as I used to make.”