Current Events > "Restaurant Work Is Always Brutal. Under the Pandemic, It's Hell."

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Antifar
12/02/20 6:50:53 PM
#1:


https://jacobinmag.com/2020/12/restaurant-workers-covid-coronavirus-food-service

A report on food-service workers experiences during the pandemic, released today, reveals how coronavirus has multiplied the problems servers face on the job. The report, conducted by One Fair Wage, a nonprofit that advocates for the end of the subminimum wage for tipped workers, is titled Take off your mask so I know how much to tip you.

Its a line spoken by a customer to one of the 1,675 food-service workers surveyed in the study, and its typical of the hundreds of accounts of harassment offered by the studys respondents, who were gathered from the pool of 61,392 applicants to the One Fair Wage Emergency Fund, with responses collected from late October through early November. When servers are tasked with enforcing social-distancing and mask mandates, the results are more harassment and smaller tips.

A CDC report published in September shows that restaurants are a key site of coronavirus transmission, with adults twice as likely to contract the virus after dining in a restaurant. Todays report confirms the implication of that finding: restaurant workers are particularly at risk of getting the disease. In fact, 44 percent of workers who responded to the survey say that one or more of their coworkers has contracted COVID-19.

The reason for this added risk is no mystery: servers are working in venues that are not designed for social distancing, serving customer after customer, some of whom simply ignore the health protocols.
More than a third of the workers surveyed say their employer did not conduct mandatory training on COVID safety protocols, and 69 percent say their employer does not consistently follow all COVID safety protocols. One Fair Wage finds that 84 percent of servers report being within six feet of at least one person who is not wearing a mask in every shift, and one-third report being within six feet of thirty or more maskless individuals on every shift.

Servers are risking their health to make a living. One Fair Wage previously found that 60 percent of tipped workers are unable to access unemployment benefits because their wage which can legally be as low as $2.13 does not meet state thresholds to qualify for benefits. For hundreds of thousands of the people who work as servers in the United States, its serve or starve, which has led them to return to restaurants even as the pandemic rages on. Todays findings suggest there is no way for a server to abide by the guidelines for minimizing the risk to their health.

But when servers do return to work, theyre earning less in tips than ever: 83 percent say their tips have declined during the pandemic, with 66 percent reporting that their tips have declined by at least 50 percent. While one cause of this decline is fewer customers as people stay home instead of eating out, another is the paradoxical situation servers find themselves in: theyve become de facto public-health czars, tasked with policing the compliance of the very customers they rely on for tips.

Its no secret that a significant portion of the US population has elevated mask wearing to an issue of political principle, refusing to follow health protocols on the grounds that they infringe on their personal freedom. The result for servers is an impossible predicament: enforce the mandates, and get stiffed; or let it go, and risk their health and that of others in the restaurant. More than half of the workers surveyed say they are reluctant to enforce COVID protocols out of concern that customers will tip them less, and 67 percent received a lesser than usual tip after enforcing those protocols on customers, usually on a frequent basis.

Getting sick, or stiffed, arent the only possibilities servers face, either: theres also sexual harassment. Such harassment has long been a constant for many servers. Restaurant workers account for more harassment claims filed in the United States than workers in any other industry, and a 2016 report by Restaurant Opportunities Center United (ROC United) found that 90 percent of women and 70 percent of men in the industry experience harassment from customers on the job. The fact that servers working in states that have abolished the subminimum wage for tipped workers report half the rate of sexual harassment has long been central to the argument for phasing out such a wage, an argument made by organizations like One Fair Wage.

The pandemic hasnt reduced workplace sexual harassment. Unbelievably, for many of the reports respondents, it intensified it. As todays reports states, More than 40% of workers (41%) reported that there has been a noticeable change in the frequency of unwanted sexualized comments from customers, and just over one quarter (25%) report that they have experienced or witnessed a significant change in the frequency of such sexual harassment. It goes on to list comments customers made to workers received, many of which, like the reports title, turn upon a fixation with servers masks. A sampling: Asks to see pretty face. If i say no he doesnt tip; The patrons make comment about using the mask in a bedroom; Ill take your mask off and stick my tongue down your throat; A man cut a hole in the mouth (of the mask) and asked a coworker if she sat on his face would he get covid.

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sktgamer_13dude
12/02/20 6:53:36 PM
#2:


But I was told we need to get rid of all liabilities for companies for COVID instead of working on protecting workers and whatnot. So this is obviously fake news.

/s
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Cobalt_Wasps
12/02/20 6:54:48 PM
#3:


ive given up on the food service industry...it was a fun 14 years, but the industry will never be the same after this.
more than half of all restaurants dont survive their first year, with all these new rules and fears flying around, i predict the failure rate to double at least.
i just got my last unemployment check today and now i gotta find out a new career path
shits weak bro!

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pikachupwnage
12/02/20 6:55:43 PM
#4:


Yeah resturants work can be really fucking stressful and dehumanizing.

Covid amplifies a lot of the bullshit.

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Shablagoo
12/02/20 6:59:38 PM
#5:


Capitalists: We deserve all the profits because we take all the risks!

Capitalists facing risks: Well theres no way I should be responsible for any of this. You do it.

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Kazi1212
12/02/20 7:00:18 PM
#6:


Shame. Cant wait till we get automated bots doing these jobs so people dont have to be subjected to it

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