Guilt that your colleagues will have to work an extra 2-3 hours on their already 11 hour shift when understaffed, or come in on their free day to cover you when you are sick (because we all know our boss will not fork out an extra 10€/ hr for an agency chef) is overwhelming. It’s like text book evil villain energy how they use that guilt and shame to directly profit from us coming to work and pushing through it, ‘for the sake of your colleagues’. Or when the Stockholm syndrome is so bad colleagues even blame each-other, while their boss is laughing to the bank.
The great resignation has left the remaining hospitality sector workers with more work and less pay. Are owners trying to see how far we will bend before we break and (optimistically) assuming there will be someone waiting at the door with their resume when we burn out? Do the effects of understaffing affect the revenue of the business or the owner so little personally that they have absolutely no incentive to make things better until it does?
I’m standing here watching my workplace fall apart because people are leaving left right and centre, while we ask for less opening hours, no extra functions on our free days, less or paid overtime overtime and agency chefs while our employer does absolutely nothing and says to our face I don’t understand why people are leaving. The best thing we can do for ourselves and other hospitality workers is leave these places behind, but it’s going to be hard few years for those remaining until we see something change.
‘if your not puking and shitting you have to come to work’. – my sous chef on my first kitchen job at 17
‘your colleagues are going to suffer because of what you are doing’ – Previous boss when I quit my job with a months notice.