Fatigue, financial insecurity wear on hospitality workers
On some days, it’s simply the fatigue of constantly having to remind patrons they need to wear masks, keep their distance from others or sanitize hands that wears on the wellbeing of restaurant-servers and hosts.
“It’s just having the staff have to say it over-andover-and-over again,” said Christina Cottell, proprietor of Gringo in Gastown. “And same thing about staying in your seats and no, you can’t have more than six people (at a table.)
“The exhaustion and the frustration that the staff are feeling in there, especially in the front-of-house, is causing them to take less shifts,” she added. “It’s real.”
Ten months into the COVID-19 pandemic, that exhaustion layers onto bigger financial worries of restaurant workers — fewer shifts and less tips in venues operating with limited seating and shorter hours — to erode the mental health of workers in an industry that has taken more of a beating than most sectors.
“The biggest thing is just the stress level of trying to make money and make ends meet,” said city bartender Stacy Davidson, who has had to piece together three jobs, including at a North Shore pub, to do so for himself.
Servers and bartenders are drawn to the work for the social aspect, to make sure people have a good time, but having to police people’s behaviour makes the environment a lot less enjoyable, Davidson said.
With fewer people allowed in venues and shifts harder to come by, “people are being affected a lot more by … if a customer doesn’t tip or if someone’s being kind of a jerk,” Davidson said.
“You’re doing your best, you’re trying to accommodate (customers) as much as possible, and then there’s this added stress where we have all these rules we have to follow,” said Davidson, a 16-year veteran of the industry.
Mental illness is sometimes referred to as the shadow pandemic of COVID-19 with increasing numbers of people experiencing stress and anxiety generally.
A survey commissioned by Pacific Blue Cross in December found that 62 per cent of respondents in British Columbia reported being more worried than usual, 59 per cent were more anxious during the months between September and December.
Cottell is also vice-president of the Mind the Bar Foundation, an industry
“There’s this feeling like, ‘I don’t know if we’re going to get shut down tonight’.”
Rob Aldridge Bar manager, B.C.
organization aimed at worker well-being, and she has seen applications for membership increase noticeably during the pandemic. Membership gives people access to the online mental-health resources of LifeWorks, an app-based employee assistance program offered through provider Morneau Shepell.
“We get … anywhere between six and 12 membership applications a day,” Cottell said, “so that’s a lot. Certainly more than we were getting before (the pandemic).”
Mind the Bar has also seen high demand from members for a series of webinars it’s putting together on the topics of financial wellness and career counselling, Cottell added.
Statistics specific to the service sector are hard to come by, but the main organization operating crisis lines in B.C. reported calls up 25 per cent in 2020 over the previous year and 16 per cent in January.
And the kinds of financial issues hospitality workers are dealing with are near the top of the list pushing people into crisis, said Stacy Ashton, executive director of the Crisis Centre of B.C.
Some of the sudden changes in operating rules, such as cutting back last call on New Year’s Eve to 8 p.m., create an added stress for people who are still working, said Rob Aldridge, bar manager at a downtown venue.
“There’s this feeling like, ‘I don’t know if we’re going to get shut down tonight,’” Aldridge said. “I think that’s given a lot of people anxiety, because you could pick up the paper on your way to work and be like, ‘Oh, I’m out of a job.’”
The restaurant business, where a lot of compensation is in cash, and “everyone around you tends to be quite charming,” has always been prone to “unhealthy behaviour,” said former restaurant manager Tyson Duben, so now would be a good time to work on more robust assistance programs.
“I think there needs to be, whether it’s a community effort or a governmental one, access to resources for these things,” said Duben, who moved back to Victoria in September, leaving a general manager’s position at a sizable restaurant in Calgary to be closer to family.
Because many of their woes are financial, Aldridge would like to see government revisit the idea of assistance programs. “All that rent (assistance) stuff went away real quick,” he said.
Aldridge’s venue attracts industry workers and he worries for some of them, with the stories he hears.
“Most people in the bar and restaurant industry are in that industry because they’re extroverted, social people,” Aldridge said. “So, that being taken away because of COVID, you have a lot of people that are sitting at home by themselves.”
The stresses Duben faced there included a sense of helplessness over not being able to help servers struggling with limited shifts and guilt over still having his salaried job while others were laid off. And the pressure took a personal toll.
“I ended up having a nice little COVID breakup with my girlfriend at the time as well,” Duben said.
Duben struggled to find work in Victoria too before securing a role consulting, but only at about 30 hours a week.
“I see my biggest stressor is a little bit of an exhaustion of just the continuous nature of this,” Duben said, and then the uncertainty, “not really knowing when we can actually hang out with people.”