So I work in a restaurant that has both indoor seating and outdoor seating.
This outdoor seating is one of our main attractions, as it is a quite beautiful space. However, temperatures are very high (North Carolina summer) and, despite it being technically outdoors, it has a roof and walls, which can make it incredibly stuffy (and almost always hotter than being in direct sunlight).
This results in us workers overheating very easily, to the point where we are all red in the face and sweating bullets after being in the outdoor seating area for even 5 minutes. I work as a busser, which means essentially exercising my entire shift (carrying heavy things and running around) and it is killing me.
I come home everyday exhausted, feeling faint and sick from hours of what feels like sweating out every bit of energy I have. I mean literally sweating for 6-12 hours straight. It is awful.
While we have not had anyone experiencing health problems from the heat yet, I’m worried for myself and my coworkers as this summer is easily hotter than the past two that I have worked at this job. We protested last year by wearing shorts rather than jeans, which pretty much accomplished nothing besides getting a couple of fans that you would find inside a typical home. We were supposed to get new, better fans to help this year but they were vetoed for not “matching the decor of the outdoor seating area.”
As you can probably assume by my posting to this sub, management acts like they couldn’t care less about us, not just in the form of them dismissing the heat problem, but in many other aspects of the restaurant. So, fellow employees who are sick of the higher ups not giving a damn, what can I do to get management to act on this problem?
I’m seriously worried that I’m damaging my body and brain by exposing myself to this heat while straining myself and sweating an absurd amount on a daily basis just to get by. Is not not a workplace hazard?