A server at a bar and restaurant near downtown Austin, whose name Eater changed to protect her anonymity“We were one of the first places to open back up after everything closed in March, and there wasn’t a mask mandate or anything. So we were the ones that were stuck with policing everybody. For the first two months, I would go cry in my car before I drove home.
“I recently got verbally assaulted by this group of guys for asking them to sit down at their table. And I couldn’t really do anything about it. Because not only was I by myself out far away from my coworkers, I’m a fairly petite woman; what the fuck am I going to do? I’m surrounded by 15 guys that are picking on me. You’re in a situation where you feel very on your own.
“I had a gentleman the other night who apparently was a physician who’s already been vaccinated. He didn’t want to wear his mask. Now, we’re in another scary scenario where I can’t tell if you’re actually a physician and if you’ve actually been vaccinated. Even so, it doesn’t matter. There are two new variants out there at least [], and he should know that.
“Honestly, I’ve given up. After a while, you just get numb to it. I’m probably going to get sick at work at some point.” “I immediately applied for unemployment and I was accepted pretty quickly. But so many people I know either never saw a dime, had a lot of trouble getting paid, or are continuing to have problems even a year later. I have too much financial responsibility to rely on unemployment alone. In the beginning, we were getting an additional federal contribution of, but that on top of the maximum weekly payout I got definitely wasn’t enough for me to survive.
“I’ve never received any pushback when I said, ‘Hey, can you just put your mask on?’ My managers are great. The only thing is that they’re both women, and, I hate to say it, but I know that sometimes, it’s hard for them to command respect from customers. “I had a really bad table last week. It was a party of 16. We split the tables up, because obviously, one, it’s not possible within our restaurant to sit like that, and two, there is a pandemic. They didn’t adhere to the rules — I saw two of the guests standing over another table that was not in their party talking to them without a mask on. That same night, another table that was supposed to seat five people had eight people at it.
Austin Then don’t ask about masks or find a new career losers