Or even fascinating. An illustrative story:
Allan Creasy, 39, had worked in restaurants and bars for more than two decades, most recently as a bartender at Celtic Crossing, an Irish bar in Memphis, where he was voted the city’s best bartender three times over the years by readers of the city’s alt-weekly newspaper, the Memphis Flyer.
Like others, Creasy saidthe pandemic proved to be the tipping point for him, exacerbating long-standing labor issues in the industry and drawing attention to how low his wages were: $2.13 an hour before tips — the minimum wage for tipped positions in Tennessee and at the federal level.
After three months back at the bar after the initial lockdown, Creasy decided to quit and pursue a career change.
“I didn’t come back to the same job I left previously,” he said. “It was very difficult to constantly have to police people about mask-wearing. It was very difficult to try to bartend and run out to the back parking lot to deliver to-go food, and to deal with Uber Eats drivers and the like, while making significantly less money than I’d been making previously.”
And the pay had gotten worse — with his income dropping from about $60,000 a year around 2011 to less than $40,000 before the pandemic, he said.
“I’ve seen the number of people who are passionate about the restaurant industry slowly ebb away over the last 20 years,” he said. “In my opinion, it’s because the server’s minimum wage hasn’t changed. There is this belief that servers and bartenders are interchangeable.”
Creasy, who has a bachelor’s degree in history, has been doing fundraising and social media work for a local political action committee since. He’s making about the same amount of money he did at the bar but doing something that feels closer to his heart with less risk. [WaPo]
If stories like these are common, this could have quite the impact on American society, as those working sub-minimum jobs finally figure out that they need more – and can make more, if only they start working towards it. These jobs may not disappear, but they may force prices up at all restaurants – and that’ll perturb what we currently see as American society.
Some people won’t like that. I, personally, think it’ll be a great thing, and I look forward to seeing how things change. Robots? Automats? Better wages? More cooking at home?
