Covid-19 took their restaurant jobs. They switched careers: ‘I’m making twice as much money now’ | US news

andYears ago on March 16, my mobile phone had flourished on a table of wake up at about 8 in the morning. Unless they are cooking in the morning or baker, restaurant workers are not usually early. sleeping Late not luxury when it works Restaurants; It is a necessity – necessary to manage the strict mental and physical demands of the job.

“I cannot believe that I say this, but we put everyone in the restaurant.” “A person of human resources will be in contact with you soon.” The Director General of Midtown Manhattan Steakouse was where I was waiting for more than two years. Like most difficult restaurant managers, it was not known to be very emotional. But that morning, it seemed a real regret.

At that time, I couldn’t know that I wouldn’t serve another table in a restaurant again. I was working as a waiter for more than two decades, and a world without luxury dining places was an emergency that no one predicted. But for many restaurant workers like me, the shock of the epidemic led to the diving feast that forced us to reconsider our priorities, and for some, it has become an incentive to leave the restaurants industry behind it.

This month marks the fifth anniversary of Covid-19 The clips that motivated team workers through the restaurant industry. During the first six months of the epidemic, Closed more than 100,000 restaurants Throughout the United States, many of them are permanently, and more than 5M Restaurant Jobs I lost. The closures and restrictions imposed by the government left the legions of restaurant workers in a step, causing many of them to reflect the industry in search of a safer work.

Even while Employment was generally recovered in the restaurant industry For prenatal levels, the majority of independent restaurants are still thinking about employing high -quality employees and maintaining a fundamental challenge. According to a modern survey before 7 episodes65 % of restaurant operators describe the labor market as “tight” or “very narrow”, with 30 % of the respondents martyrdom of employment as their most important concern.

The epidemic forced people to decline and breathe. Alice Cheng, the founder of his founder Cooking agentsIt is a company specializing in job marketing for the hospitality industry. “Many people re -break them. Some people started. Some people moved and realized that life was better wherever they moved.”

Fixed communications trading buttocks

After working for a decade as a craftsman in the Detroit region, Chos Williams dreamed of opening his cocktail bar. He had collected an impressive autobiography, including the difficulties that vibrate in some cocktail destinations the most popular crafts in Detroit, such as Bad Luck Bar and Oakland. In late 2018, Williams obtained a major waiter’s dream job for three restaurants inside the Swanky Hotel in WoodWard in Detroit. He lost this job less than a year and a half when the epidemic suddenly closed the hotel.

Today, Williams is a USPS airline, one of the countless workers in restaurants who have not returned to their jobs after birth. It will be the first to admit that the delivery of the mail is a great departure from the excitement of Martinis and the old mosque, but he learned to embrace financial security and a health balance in his new career.

Williams said: “In bars and restaurants, you always have this pressure of not knowing the amount of money that you will achieve every day, every week or every month,” Williams said. “With this job, I know that I will have at least 40 hours a week with additional work. There is safety to know the exact amount of money that I will make of the number of hours I work.”

Williams is attributed to the skills he hurts behind the bar to help him provide better to the neighborhood residents along its postal path every day, which is a dynamic that compares it to the presence of the bar. “The idea of ​​providing service to society is something I enjoyed around hospitality,” Williams said. “As a mail holder, I am now helping to bring things to disabled people or at home and provide products for people who have small companies – the real relationship that I feel for the community that this work is doing very rewarding.”

His transition to the public sector was more profitable than he was expected, and the peace of mind that comes with more expected income, health care coverage and retirement savings are invaluable. Williams said: “As a waiter or manager for the bar, I was usually between $ 50,000 and $ 60,000 a year,” Williams said. “In the postage service, I was achieving between $ 65,000 and $ 75,000 with much better benefits.”

Government jobs have proven to be a common shelter for displaced restaurant workers. One month before the lobby of restaurants in Cincinnati, Mary Judhi was tired of the job of her assistant manager at the gourmet pizza restaurant where she worked in various capabilities for more than 16 years. She was finally ready to challenge a new challenge, but less than a month after starting work as a servant in a sophisticated restaurant, was unemployed.

After the bounce about strange jobs such as a personal shopper and landscape, goodhew got the work of a printers in the Ministry of Jobs in Ohio and family services. More than a year after its new role now, fewer hours work without taking a wage reduction. “I make about 20 % more than I made in my old job on average, except for that now I know exactly what my salary will be, unlike what I was working on to get tips. I can better budget. I can save better. I can plan better. The security factor is really what I wanted.”

Translate skills into a new industry

Forrest Seamons had a four -month -old girl when he was suddenly hampered his mockery at the upscale Manhattan Restaurant in March 2020. After he briefly returned to work later that year, he and his wife concluded that approaching more than her family would make it easier for them to raise their daughter. “I thought I was in good condition in my life, but it turned out that I was ignoring many of the best opportunities that were open to me,” said Seamons. “I leave when it turned into the exact right step.”

Today, Seamons acts as a company sales coach for the Redting of House in Portland, Oregon, leaving behind more than a decade of experience as a country in some of the best restaurants in New York including standard grill and carbon.

The skills obtained by the sale of Burgundes have moved exorbitant and one support to his new convincing career for home owners to carry out the main renewal projects. “Sales revolve around people’s reading,” said Seamons. There is a dynamic similar to restaurants. Whether you give people special offers or two hours’ presentation about re -width your home, if you are good at it, you can feel the place where you call and where are you not. “

He was expected to take a major wage reduction when he took this step for the first time, but the reproductive commissions sparked his capabilities that exceeded anything he could have done in his mockery. “I am in Portland, where the cost of living is much lower, and I am achieving the weakening of money now as I did in the last job in a restaurant.”

Keira Baker left New York City when it was demobilized as a chef. Since then, she has lived in four states five years ago (including Hawaii where she is currently residing); All 2,198 miles are raised from the path of Apalashian; I worked in at least five different jobs from the ski lifting operator to replace the teacher. Focusing the work experience in other industries in focusing on how it works to accept the dysfunctional work environment in many professional kitchens.

“Work in industry made me worse,” Baker said. “I was angry all the time. There was not enough.” After Cavide, I noticed that she was not facing the same aggression and intimidation in other places of work that used to cook in professional kitchens. “After the epidemic, I think I realized how life could be,” she says. “I didn’t want to deal with all the things related to the industry that thwarted me anymore: reducing age, working hours, they should always be perfect. Most jobs are not like this.”

Barakat in camouflage

After the cultural shock of adapting to the most organized work environments calmed down, most of the restaurant workers spoke to them feel nostalgia to their career. A few of them are still absent from the adrenaline rush on Saturday night, but they do not miss the anxiety accompanying him.

“When I go out for drinks or dinner, it is more satisfied now,” Judo said. “When you work in the industry, you can be excessively tight about service and food. I am no longer to” put the restaurant manager “all the time.”

Williams was just elected at Union Steward at the local USPS station. He found consolation at work towards a safer future for himself, which could lead to a dream of having his tape one day. He said: “I do not miss people drunk, screaming at my face.” “I do not feel physical threat, and there is no need to worry about the death of someone in the bathroom and I had to make sure that he is fine.”

After submitting in vain to get a job as a correction official, Baker recently returned to restaurants as head of chef at Brewpub in OAHU, where her parents enjoy a house. It does not consider this step in the long run, but it hopes to provide some closure, and it is a scenario that it says is closer to secession for five years. She said: “I feel I have reached the end of my journey, as I now got out of industry forever, at least I can say that I became head of the head.”

The new Seamons schedule during the day allows him more quality with his two children, between the ages of 2 and five. “I wake up now when I used to go home from closing the restaurant,” he says. Like many others who left the industry, Seamons is reflected in his last restaurant with a mixture of reverence and contempt. He added: “I do not see myself really go back to restaurants.” “I don’t miss the job. I miss the wine.”