Went out for a late dinner last night shortly after 8:00 and this is what I found:
Mexican restaurant - line out the door
Casual dining restaurant - only seating 4-5 tables total because only have one waitress.
2 Sports bars - line out the door.
At this point, it's after 8:30 and I'm just trying to find a drive thru I can go through quickly to grab something and head home. Every drive thru I pass has one of two scenarios:
Closed at 8 due to shortage of workers.
Drive thru was 6+ cars deep to get to the speaker.
Eventually I drove all the way across town and found the Portillo's drive thru at about 9:00 and they only had a couple of cars waiting to order so I would up ordering there.
All that said, I was really surprised to see how understaffed all these restaurants are that they are closing early and can't move people through their drive-thrus at a reasonable pace even while having their dining rooms closed. Almost every single one had help-wanted signs up too and were advertising starting wages at $11/hour or more which seems like a pretty good wage for such a job in this area.
This was the South Bend area but I've been hearing that it's like this in many places. Is anyone else seeing this? If so, why is there all of a sudden such a big worker shortage?
Mexican restaurant - line out the door
Casual dining restaurant - only seating 4-5 tables total because only have one waitress.
2 Sports bars - line out the door.
At this point, it's after 8:30 and I'm just trying to find a drive thru I can go through quickly to grab something and head home. Every drive thru I pass has one of two scenarios:
Closed at 8 due to shortage of workers.
Drive thru was 6+ cars deep to get to the speaker.
Eventually I drove all the way across town and found the Portillo's drive thru at about 9:00 and they only had a couple of cars waiting to order so I would up ordering there.
All that said, I was really surprised to see how understaffed all these restaurants are that they are closing early and can't move people through their drive-thrus at a reasonable pace even while having their dining rooms closed. Almost every single one had help-wanted signs up too and were advertising starting wages at $11/hour or more which seems like a pretty good wage for such a job in this area.
This was the South Bend area but I've been hearing that it's like this in many places. Is anyone else seeing this? If so, why is there all of a sudden such a big worker shortage?
