“The World is Short-Staffed”
Staffing Shortages and the Re-evaluation of Service Work
The words were written in pink chalk on a slate clap-board sign: “Please be patient. The world is short-staffed right now.” I’d been standing there long enough to read it a half-dozen times, and was trying to embody the message.
Like most people, I haven’t traveled or even been out much since March 2020. Also like most people, I decided to try going on holiday in August, before things potentially shut down a second time due to the delta variant of Covid-19. Deciding that it would be better and safer to hit the countryside, my partner and I (both vaccinated) headed for Lake Placid, NY, to hike the mountains. But all granola bars aside, you still have to go into town for dinner.
There are quite a lot of restaurants in Lake Placid. Every single one of them was packed, and most struggled to meet demand. Two different venues closed or shut down their kitchens due to staffing shortages while we were there, and this was mid-week. I overheard the chef-owner of cocktail bar explain things to a frustrated regular; “I can’t do it alone. We’re a skeleton crew. Somebody gets sick, and we’re closed.”
I’ve probably heard those words before. But it all means something different now. If ever I encouraged or participated in the “work even when ill” culture, I repent. Nobody ought to be working with a virus. Not this one. Not any others. I shudder to think of it in food service. And I used to work in food service.
We don’t think of the people who hand us the silverware or clear away the plates. At least, not when they are doing it “right” (being, that is, efficient and invisible). I worked at a Hardee’s and at a roadside diner as a teenager, and at my mother’s lunch counter in college during the summer. I probably managed to be efficient. I was never invisible. Slightly clumsy, a bit forgetful and loud-mouthed if I thought a customer was wrong. I could do that, because I never thought of this as my career. I’m embarrassed to admit: I was a bookish snob. But I learned some hard lessons — for one, service work is back-breaking, difficult, long, and thankless. And (with the exception of my mother’s employ), I was faceless and 100% replaceable.
I’m not the first person to make this realization. There are books out there. You should read them: Hand to Mouth by Linda Tirado, or Nickled and Dimed. Now, with staff shortages and the fact you might legitimately be imperiled by the very people you serve, it’s so much harder. People are walking out mid-shift, deciding there is simply no reason to take the abuse. And you know what?
They’re right.
As the New York Times put it, workers in demand can make demands of their own:
People returning to the work force after the pandemic are expecting more from their employers, pushing companies to raise pay, give bonuses and improve health care and tuition plans. — Steve Lohr
The headlines have that feel-good quality: Corporate America is Ponying Up for Workers in Demand or University Staff Workers Demand Higher Wages. Everyone is re-evaluating work, it seems, and asking why we’ve been content with so little for so long. In revolutionary terms, there are “more of us than them,” so to speak. Forbes called is the Great Resignation, and noted that it’s forcing companies to work harder at finding work-life balances that employees want and need. It’s about time.
But. Here I am in Lake Placid. It’s not Google headquarters. The little Italian restaurant we went to has been there since 1920, mainly staffed by immigrants. The place was hopping — but given that half the tables have been removed for social distancing, it’s hard to know what sort of turn-around a small mom and pop can make. I know my parent’s eventually closed the lunch-counter; they had gone from basic grocery and deli to full breakfast, lunch, and dinner just to try and make ends meet. They still didn’t. It was a bittersweet parting, but trust me, they were exhausted.
It’s going to be hardest, as always, on the little guys: the workers who can’t shift jobs and have to take the long hours and short staffing, extra work and hostile customers in stride (somehow)… or the small business that can’t offer the incentives it needs to keep employees, or who no longer makes enough to pay properly competitive salaries. If they close, those take the last holdouts with them, a vicious cycle.
There are memes for the new staffing crisis. But there often aren’t solutions — or none that take into account the complexity of this new and ambiguous marketplace. It’s not clear how we as consumers should react, either. I’m still nervous about indoor dining. I’ve already started to limit my going out and travel again. But I do want to support people where they are.
We were patient, and we were seated, and we had the best marinara sauce I’ve ever tasted. The waiter was from Romania, I discovered. The cook was Ukrainian — I know, because we tipped the kitchen and he came up to thank us. We met his girlfriend, too, and we spoke to the waiter about the Danube and about the Carpathian mountains. I’m not sure if our chatter meant that other customers had to wait by the chalk sign a while or not. If so, I hope they were patient. Because the world really is always short-staffed.
