(")essential worker(")

how 2020 prepared me to manage a restaurant during hurricane Ian

much to the chagrin of my 30 employees adn fellow management, my restaurant is staying open during hurricane ian. i joined them in commiserating because i know corporate’s reasons for staying open and mine are very different.

from the corporate perspective, the people in the big chairs that have never worked in-store in their life don’t want to lose a source of income. even for one day. they value profit over the lives of everyone they employ. we all know this, but during national health crisis or national weather crisis, it is shoved in our faces in a way that is hard to ignore. i have been fighting for some of my employees to get raises and been given one lame excuse after another as to why the company can’t “afford” it. but when my entire city shuts down due to a hurricane, i am expected to ask these employees to risk their lives on the road to pad the pockets of the people refusing to pay them a just wage. it is frustrating for everyone involved.

i circumnavigate this by telling my employees they don’t have to come in if they don’t want to and shutting down anyway due to lack of staff. many of my fellow restaurant managers do the same. i hope that you are never put in the position of trying to convince someone with a severe anxiety disorder who is triggered by bad weather that the loss of income for one day (because she’s not paid enough) isn’t worth her safety. the mind games our society plays with restaurant workers are cruel. it’s a lose lose. either you stand up for yourself and lose a day’s work (and potentially your job), or you continue working, knowing the whole time you’re being taken advantage of and knowing you’re announcing through your actions that you are desperate.

overall, my entire approach to the whole hurricane ian situation has been completely different than hurricane prep in recent years, and i have 2020 to thank for that.

2020 was a hard and horrible year for many of us. it is the year that mentally and physically broke me beyond recognition. i couldn’t tell what was real and what was in my head. i could no longer look at my reflection without gagging. i was having panic, anxiety and asthma attacks that all fed off of each other/blended together nonstop for about 6 months. i was clawing my face bloody in my sleep, convinced there was something covering my mouth/keeping me from breathing. (i would later discover this is masklaphobia aka a phobia or uncontrollable fear of medical face masks.) i lost weight. my back gave out. i lost my damn mind. my therapist told me i was going on psych drugs or i was being baker acted. i caught c0rv!d and my lungs almost failed.

i came out alive but barely.

a phrase i had never heard before 2020 was the term “essential worker”. there was a stay at home order for all of florida. you literally weren’t allowed to leave your house/be out on the streets unless you were an essential worker going to work or coming home from work. my entire staff and i carried letters from HR stating we were essential workers for when we got pulled over by law enforcement.

looking back, i can see that “essential worker” was one of the things that led to my first and then second mental breakdowns. it forced me to look at our society the way i look at the Catholic church and notice all the discrepancies. as an essential worker, i was working a minimum of 50 hours a week. i had limited staff and was expected to take care of 70% of the workload by myself. i had people screaming obscenities at me for being out of product when the supply chain was a complete disaster. i was being told by my superiors and by social media that i was “lucky” to still have a job when so many people were out of work.

it didn’t feel lucky. i didn’t feel lucky.

the title felt like a lie. i spent my entire life being called an “unskilled worker” and being demeaned for not finishing high school or college. being told i didn’t deserve to live on what i made, even while i was struggling, because i was so pathetic. having loud “Catholic” presences on social media be openly against raising minimum wage with absolutely no consideration for the people they considered less important than themselves. it was bullying on a grand scale but it was acceptable and voiced by the right people (read: straight, white, Christian people), so it was allowed. in my mind i had no value in the world’s eye so i couldn’t understand why we had to stay open or why such a big deal was made out of us being allowed to work.

i asked to be put on unpaid furlough when everything started going down in 2020 because i had a feeling my (lack of) mental health wouldn’t be able to handle the stress. i was told they could not place me on furlough because i was “too valuable to the company”. what they meant was they didn’t pay me enough since i was a queer, cis-presenting female and as such, my life had less value than the straight people they were furloughing. they got more bang for their buck if i was kept on the payroll so they kept me in total disregard for my physical and mental well being. i sacrificed my health for the same company that tried to deny me short term disability when i broke my leg last winter. they truly value me.

i was being told i was essential and treated like shit. either what i was being told was a lie or how i was being treated was a lie and i didn’t know how to figure out the truth.

looking back, i should have quit. but i come from an abusive home. i’m a millennial and these days, that’s synonymous with thinking i don’t deserve to be alive or treated well. i didn’t know much about boundaries or how to stand up for myself. i had only just started therapy and had no vocabulary to express what was going on, either in my head or in the world.

grocery stores were on limited hours. being an essential worker, i was heading to work before anything was open and getting off after everything was closed. delivery hours for groceries and meals were also restricted. i was working 6 days a week and barely lucid enough to get to work on time. if it hadn’t been for my roommate who was working from home, i wouldn’t have had the ability to get food. these were dark days. i was convinced me being alive didn’t actually matter.

there were good spots. the few employees i had left encouraging me to stand up to my boss (who i ended up leaving for a different location) were one. the other essential workers were another. my restaurant was filled with law enforcement, first responders and health care workers who were also being over worked and underpaid. our official business hours were over at 7; my team and i would be making food for backlogged orders until 9, not leaving for the night until 10 or 11. sure, there were some entitled, nasty pieces of work that were truly awful to us. but for every horrid person, there were 10 essential workers thanking me for being open, for taking their orders, for making sure they were fed because they didn’t have any time for grocery shopping either.

i had people who would get off a hospital shift in the c0v!d unit, come to my dining room and weep for an hour before heading home to their families or partners that they needed to be strong for.

i recieved story after story of loss.

i would spend over 30 minutes on the phone with a customers when they admitted to me they just needed someone to talk to because they worked from home and no social interaction was driving them crazy.

between panic attacks i would always offer to let my staff go early and remind them they didn’t have to stay; not one of them ever left early.

we started giving out the food we hadn’t used at the end of the day to all the homeless people in the parking lot. they came to expect it. it was illegal. i could have been fired, i did it anyway. i got to hear their stories too; how an international pandemic was affecting life on the streets. how c0v!d came for everyone, including those who had nothing. how they were avoiding shelters because they didn’t want to risk exposure. how they were trying to stay “under the radar” because this country has a history of medical experimentation on the homeless community (you know, on those who "won’t be missed” if something goes wrong.")

i heard from grocery store employees whose hands were cracked and bleeding from the amount of cleaning they were required to do.

i heard from law enforcement being called to answer a disturbing amount of domestic violence cases.

i heard from person after person who knew they were being used but were still determined to help other people. i learned their names, their stories. i made sure they knew they had a place to go. i did whatever i could to ease their burden of being alive.

i’ve always said my favourite types of jobs are ones that incorporate corporal works of mercy. for those of you who aren’t Catholic, the corporal works of mercy are to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to clothe the naked, to give shelter to travellers, to visit the sick, to visit the imprisoned, and to bury the dead. managing a restaurant enables me to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty and give shelter to travelerrs all at the same time. it is demanding, unrelenting and thankless work most days. but it is the holiest work i know.

when the city shut down for hurricane ian and my coworkers started complaining, i sympathized from a corporate perspective. but from a personal perspective, i knew i was going to do whatever i could to help my community.

when i opened my doors this morning, the first people in my store were homeless individuals seeking shelter and first responders who had been out all night trying to get people to safety while the storm rolled in. every single one of them approached me or one of my staff to thank us for being open. i told everyone i was happy to be there, happy to serve and happy to ease the burden of caring for people who don’t always want to be helped. every single one of those people was worth it. i’m not paid enough but on the other hand, there is no way i could be paid enough for this. this type of work is invaluable.

we’re open again tomorrow, if we have power. i’ll be there to greet every person our society uses and then throws away so they know they are seen, heard and valued by at least one person. i’m able to do this because 2020 taught me what i am worth.

Laus Deo.