On this Labor Day, we pause, we apologize

By JoAnne Young

To the people who serve us in restaurants and handle our banking business and check us out at the grocery and all others we encounter as we go about the lives we lead outside of our homes: We’re sorry. 

 

On this Labor Day weekend, we’re sorry on behalf of all the customers and clients and yes, even your employers, for not treating you with the respect you so necessarily deserve. 

 

We’re sorry for not understanding that many of you are underpaid. And sorry that we don’t always try to understand that, like us, maybe you’ve had a bad day or that your children are struggling or your parent is sick. Or that you really need a vacation but can’t afford it. 

 

I try to always be kind to people in shops and restaurants and at counters or on the phone. But yeah, sometimes I have a bad day, too, or get in too much of a hurry, and forget to take a breath and smile. 

 

Three conversations I had with workers this week gave me pause to consider these things. 

 

A young woman checking me out at my regular grocery store was unusually fast and efficient and the customers were moving through her line like I’ve seldom seen in any store. When it was my turn I said to her, “You are the fastest checkout person I’ve ever had in this store.” She thanked me, then added that she wished that would help her get a raise. But I could tell she didn’t have much hope in that. 

 

A few days later, I went to my bank to get a cashier’s check and the teller helping me kept getting called away to help another teller with a customer. He apologized, but I wasn’t in a hurry and stood patiently while he stepped away several times, and took time to fill out all the paperwork for my check. When I noticed he had written the wrong amount on the check that increased the amount by several thousand dollars, I think I may have even apologized to him because he had to reprint the check in the right amount. 

 

When he was done, he told me he was going to waive the check fee because I had been patient. “Really?” I asked. Yes, he assured me. Many customers don’t understand the time it takes to do financial transactions at a bank, and they roll their eyes, drum their fingers and sigh or groan. 

 

My third conversation was with a young woman serving us at a Lincoln restaurant when I asked if she considered wait staff as essential workers. Not like health workers, of course, she said, whose patients’ lives depend on them. But yes, there is a class of workers that are essential to both the businesses they work for and the people who use those businesses. 

 

People depend on restaurants not for life, but for quality of life. And restaurants are one of those businesses that shore up the economy of a community, a city, a state. 

 

When the pandemic started in 2020, people who patronized restaurants, whether by eating there or ordering takeout, were kind and appreciative, she said. But after a while, those same people grew impatient with slower service or limits on open tables caused by a shortage of workers. They were at best testy and at their worst rude, during a time that was both tense for workers and dangerous to their health. 

 

Many restaurant patrons didn’t understand the dilemma those workers found themselves in: not enough servers or workers behind the scenes. At the beginning of the pandemic, when restaurants were forced to close or limit tables, some workers left and still haven’t returned.  The slowdown gave them a chance to think about their low wages and tough working conditions. Many found they could make more money working at other jobs or from home in safer conditions or with more respect. 

 

And then there’s the compensation. Minimum tipped wages are $2.13 an hour in Nebraska, although owners of those businesses are supposed to guarantee they make $9 an hour if tips don’t make up the difference. They frequently don’t however, according to Nebraska State Sen. Megan Hunt. And in spite of multiple tries to raise the wage, it hasn’t budged since 1991.

 

One waiter said he was seriously considering moving to Oregon, where the minimum tipped wage was $12.75 an hour before tips. 

 

I told the young woman I talked to I considered her essential, in that quality of life sort of way. She thanked me for our short conversation and said, “It’s nice to be seen.” 

 

And so, yes, we apologize. That we don’t always see you, even though you are struggling like many of the rest of us, that you don’t always get that minimum wage you are owed or the respect you deserve as a fellow human. 

 

We know, it’s tough out there.