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Restaurant Workers in a Pandemic
More than thoughts and prayers
I’ve worked in the restaurant industry for more than twenty years, going from dishwasher to bus boy to waiter, and after a lot of study that still continues, sommelier. Like most restaurant employees, I thought I’d be back at work by now. A couple of months ago I even went out and bought a couple of new shirts to go with my suits and a few new ties. One of the managers at the high end steakhouse where I work had called first to give me a date when we would all be expected back at work to help clean the place up in anticipation of our reopening.
A few days later I got an email telling me that only a third of the employees, myself not included, could be brought back at first since business was probably going to be very slow. I haven’t been called back to work yet, and the restaurant has had to temporarily re-close because business was so slow they were losing money by opening and paying employees to serve mostly nonexistent customers.
Here in Texas, and a number of other states, the Coronavirus cases have been surging since the attempted reopening of the country, so we see the governor talking about the possibility of having to shut the state completely down again.
