https://www.npr.org/2021/07/20/1016081936/low-pay-no-benefits-rude-customers-restaurant-workers-quit-at-record-rate

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Low Pay Is The Main Reason So Many Workers Are Quitting Restaurant
Jobs Average wages for nonmanagers at restaurants and bars hit $15 an
hour in May, but many say no amount of pay would get them to return.
They are leaving at the highest rate in decades.
A "Now Hiring" sign is displayed on a business window on March 4,
2021, in Salem, N.H.
Special Series

Help Wanted: Where Are The Workers?

Low Pay, No Benefits, Rude Customers: Restaurant Workers Quit At
Record Rate

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July 20, 20215:00 AM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
Alina Selyukh 2016

Alina Selyukh

Twitter

Low Pay, No Benefits, Rude Customers: Restaurant Workers Quit At
Record Rate

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Lamar Cornett has worked in restaurants for more than 20 years.
During the pandemic, he began thinking about leaving that career
behind. Courtesy of Lamar Cornett hide caption

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Courtesy of Lamar Cornett

Lamar Cornett has worked in restaurants for more than 20 years.
During the pandemic, he began thinking about leaving that career
behind.

Courtesy of Lamar Cornett

A wooden spoon gliding over cast iron. Barely tall enough to see over
the stove, Lamar Cornett watched his mother, a cook, make his
favorite dish of scrambled eggs.

That first cooking lesson launched a lifelong journey in food.
Cornett has spent over 20 years in Kentucky restaurants, doing every
job short of being the owner. The work is grueling and tense but
rewarding and rowdy, and so fast-paced that the pandemic shutdown was
like lightning on a cloudy day.

"It was almost like there was this unplanned, unorganized general
strike," Cornett said.

A $500 Sign-On Bonus To Deliver Pizzas? Here's What To Know About
Hiring Incentives

Business

A $500 Sign-On Bonus To Deliver Pizzas? Here's What To Know About
Hiring Incentives

In those rare quiet moments, millions of restaurant workers like
Cornett found themselves thinking about the realities of their work.
Breaks barely long enough to use the restroom or smoke a cigarette.
Meals inhaled on the go. Hostile bosses, crazy schedules and paltry,
stagnant pay.

To top it off: rude customers, whose abuses restaurant staff are
often forced to tolerate. And lately, testy diners have only gotten
more impatient as they emerge from the pandemic shutdowns.

Cornett, off work for a few weeks, realized he received enough money
through unemployment benefits to start saving -- for the first time.
He wondered if the work he loves would ever entail a job that came
with health insurance or paid leave.

"I was working what I decided was going to be my last kitchen job,"
Cornett said.

As he pondered a new career path, an exodus began rattling his
industry. Workers have been leaving jobs in restaurants, bars and
hotels at the highest rate in decades. Each month so far this year,
around 5% of this massive workforce have called it quits. In May
alone, that was 706,000 people.

And now "help wanted" signs are everywhere, with a staggering 1.2
million jobs unfilled in the industry, right when customers are
crushing through the doors, ready to eat, drink and finally
socialize.

"They're just yelling the entire time"

Low wages are the most common reason people cite for leaving food
service work. But in one recent survey, more than half of hospitality
workers who've quit said no amount of pay would get them to return.

That's because for many, leaving food service had a lot to do also
with its high-stress culture: exhausting work, unreliable hours, no
benefits and so many rude customers.

Loading...

"I never want to do something like this again," said Marcus
Brotherns, who spent two years serving coffee and doughnuts at a
drive-through in Rhode Island. During the busiest hours, customers
would storm inside to complain about the wrong amount of creamer or
sugar.

"They're just yelling the entire time," he said. Brotherns got a new
job delivering beverages to restaurants, work that's tough but
quieter and better-paying with more stable hours. "I am done with
fast food."

Tensions escalated over the pandemic, when many low-wage workers at
stores and restaurants found themselves forced to be the enforcers of
mask-wearing mandates, facing harassment and physical attacks.

Now, as many eateries are short-handed and hurriedly train new staff,
negative reviews and complaints are on the rise from impatient,
oblivious diners. One restaurant in Massachusetts even closed for a
"Day of Kindness" after angry customers drove servers to tears.

Average pay finally topped $15 in May

After they reopened, many food establishments suddenly faced a surge
of visitors. Despite hiring like crazy, they found themselves
operating with skeleton crews and had to reduce their hours.

"We used to be known as a late-night restaurant. ... We can't do that
anymore. I don't have the staff and people are exhausted," said
Laurie Torres, whose Ohio restaurant now closes earlier and stays
closed on Mondays. She said she's been paying her staff bonuses and
offered $17 an hour for a dishwasher job, and even then three workers
stood her up.

In fact, for the first time on record, average hourly pay for
nonmanagers at restaurants and bars topped $15 in May.

U.S. Job Openings Remain At A Historic High, Giving Job Seekers
Options

Business

U.S. Job Openings Remain At A Historic High, Giving Job Seekers
Options

Major chains have been trumpeting higher wages: Chipotle, Olive
Garden, White Castle, even McDonald's, which is now promising
entry-level pay between $11 and $17 an hour. Employers are paying
people just to show up for interviews, adding signing bonuses and
recruiting ever-younger workers on TikTok.

"Every manager acted like they were urgently hiring, it was kind of
weird. Like, their big focus was: When can you start?" said Sterling
Baumgardner, who at 17 is a minor in Ohio. He recently quit his job
at Dunkin' Donuts and got immediately hired at a sandwich chain
making about $12.50 an hour, $3 more than before.

If you can't pay well, "then you can't afford to be in business"

Food service jobs have been "plagued with low wages for an
extraordinary long period of time," said Jeannette Wicks-Lim, labor
economist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Pay was eking
up before the pandemic but then fell again, and so now, she said,
workers are just barely making up lost ground. Wages might be jumping
fast, but not very high.

Hotels And Restaurants That Survived Pandemic Face New Challenge:
Staffing Shortages

The Coronavirus Crisis

Hotels And Restaurants That Survived Pandemic Face New Challenge:
Staffing Shortages

Cornett, the lifelong restaurant worker from Kentucky, has watched
the wage issue get tense on his local food service Facebook group.
Any job posting below $15 an hour would get jeers and demands for
higher pay. Then the employers would get defensive, saying they
couldn't afford big raises.

"The immediate response every time was: 'Then you can't afford to be
in business, bro,' " Cornett said.

He was planning to hang up his apron and began looking at jobs at
warehouses and factories when he got an offer he couldn't turn down --
from someone who could afford to be in business while paying him
better. He's now a chef at a new brewery in Louisville.

"This is the first time I've ever been on a salary," Cornett said.
"This is the first time I've been able to depend on getting a
specific amount of money every pay period."

That amount is $30,000 a year -- which isn't a lot, he admits. But
it's "life-changing" compared with his long career earning $22,000 or
$23,000 a year.

It's also the first time he's had only one boss, whom he likes. And
the first time -- finally -- that he's had a job that offers health
insurance.

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A "Now Hiring" sign is displayed on a business window on March 4,
2021, in Salem, N.H.
Special Series

Help Wanted: Where Are The Workers?

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