Photo: Getty Images When my brother Matt was just a few years into his restaurant career, still working as a line cook, he got salmonella on the job. It was the restaurant’s opening night, and he was one of just three cooks, including the chef. The situation was, obviously, precarious: “There was no wiggle room.” He was asked to stay, and sat out prep before getting back on the line for service. “I couldn’t stand up,” he recalls, adding that he threw up several times and was aching.
As Herrin puts it, working through impediments is “treated like a competitive sport” — or at least it was until COVID-19. In the words of another cook, “this was the first time illness was treated as anything besides an inconvenience.” When Omicron arrived, the highly contagious strain of COVID spread rapidly around restaurants and changed the calculation for many operators. Many operators announced temporary closing so that employees could get tested for or recover from the illness.
And employees say they often feel like they have no choice, because if they don’t work, they don’t make money, and they can’t afford the time away. According to a report by the nonprofit worker center ROC United, the poverty rate among restaurant workers is 16.6 percent, compared to 6.6 percent of the workforce overall.