The big walkout: Are restaurant workers finally fed up?
Pandemic restrictions have finally eased, but the restaurant industry is now suffering an epidemic of customer rudeness, said Marisa Iati in The
Washington Post. Across the country, restaurant workers are reporting a rise in mistreatment as staff shortages, supply-chain issues, and price increases are inconveniencing patrons and making them irritable. At Apt Cape Cod, a farm-to-table restaurant in Brewster, Mass., the dynamic got so bad that the owners shut down and declared a “day of kindness” so that the staff could briefly escape the abuse. Not all employees are so lucky. Workers at a Lincoln, Neb., Burger King, fed up with understaffing, an overheated kitchen, and the nonstop complaints of customers, punched out en masse earlier this month and used the restaurant marquee to express their unhappiness. “We quit,” they wrote in large block letters. “Sorry for the inconvenience.”
Nasty patrons are hardly the only cause of the growing exodus, said Alina Selyukh in NPR.org. Food-service work is inescapably stressful, and “low wages are the most common reason people cite for leaving.” This year, though, the quit rate has been a whopping 5 percent per month and reached a 20-year high of 5.7 percent in May, when 706,000 people walked out. At least employers are responding, pushing the average hourly restaurant wage to $15 for the first time that same month. The rest of us, for now, should do our best to ensure that the people who serve us feel valued, said Jaya Saxena in Eater.com. Always remember that your favorite restaurant and its staff may be struggling with myriad disruptions. “Be patient, be kind. Otherwise, you’ll ruin it for everyone.”