Think deeply: why is it so difficult to find hospitality staff?
Restaurants and cafés are gradually reopening and, as many hospitality entrepreneurs already feared: it is difficult to find staff. In America, it is an especially major problem. The lockdown measures are being scaled back there, and restaurant owners are at their wits’ end. Strange? Or actually quite logical?
Everyone knows: working in hospitality in America is paid differently than here in Europe. The basic salary is low, and front-of-house staff mainly have to rely on tips. If all goes well, people tip more there than in the Netherlands: here, you can consider yourself lucky with one or two euros, while there the bill certainly includes a 5 to 10 percent service tip, sometimes even more. But that can’t be the only reason people would rather work somewhere else than in a restaurant or bar, right?
People are treated badly
Restaurant owners complain on Facebook and Twitter about how difficult it is to find new staff. Bored Panda responds in force. ‘Listen carefully. You pay shit, management treats employees like shit and guests treat waitstaff like shit. Why do you think it’s so difficult to find staff?’
Pay is really low
In fast-food restaurants, people earn 8 to 10 dollars an hour. People are often not scheduled for 40 hours, so how can you pay rent, buy groceries and arrange childcare on that salary? You can’t. And that keeps an economy going in which people work two or three jobs at once, have to accept ridiculous working hours and still don’t earn enough to live a normal life.
Supply and demand, baby
So the real question that fast-food restaurants in particular should be asking is not: why does no one want to work for us? The question is: why does no one want to work for us for this low salary and under these poor conditions? Well, supply and demand. Apparently, there are other jobs that pay better, offer more hours and have better employment conditions – or at the very least: are less bad. Economics 101: if demand rises and supply remains the same, the price rises. Or does it?
Are these kinds of problems also occurring in the Netherlands? There is a good chance it will become difficult for hospitality entrepreneurs to find staff after restaurants and cafés have been closed for so long. People who previously had a temporary contract in hospitality have started doing something else: working as parcel couriers or order pickers, for example, an industry that actually needed many people during the coronavirus pandemic. Working in the Dutch hospitality industry isn’t always a bed of roses, but we see fewer American-style situations here. Still, the reopening may also lead hospitality entrepreneurs to appreciate anew the employees who run themselves ragged for guests. That would be nice!
Read also:
- 9x disgusting and bizarre staff meals in hospitality that people talked about for a long time
- Hospitality workers share their horror stories about tips
- Man has unsolicited pizzas delivered for 9 years and he’s had enough
Source: Bored Panda
