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Transients and the Night Shift

By Chris Colcord

Fort Wayne Reader

2018-08-18

When I was working at a restaurant in college, the FBI showed up one day and arrested one of the line cooks for operating a little side business that involved illicit substances. It was pretty dramatic and even shocking, to see those stereotypically dark-suited agents in your kitchen, soberly shackling up one of your acquaintances and hustling him out the door. Everybody was buzzing about it for hours and it was a real challenge to find a replacement for him and then get the shift back on track.

What was most surprising about the whole incident, though, was how quickly people got used to the idea that our co-worker was a drug dealer. After the initial shock wore off, there was absolutely zero of that “I can’t believe it” or “but he was such a nice guy.” It was all: Barry was a drug dealer? Makes. Total. Sense. He wasn’t a thuggish guy or an
outwardly criminally-looking sort, yet my co-workers had absolutely no doubt that the FBI got the right guy.

It was one of my first introductions into the way things work in the restaurant business and the nature of restaurant employees. The turn-over rate in restaurants is always notoriously high, but that particularly restaurant I worked in was insane: nearly every week, there was a whole batch of new hires and fires. It was impossible to keep up with the revolving door. With so many transient workers, it’s sort of inevitable that you’re going to end up with a few criminals and flakes on staff.

And I say this with affection, for I’ve worked alongside many criminals and flakes in my illustrious career in the restaurant business, and I tended to get along with most of them. But I’m fascinated by the chicken-or-egg question at the heart of all this—does the restaurant business create unpredictable, night time characters, or just attract them?

From experience I know that it’s easy to make questionable decisions when you get off of work at a busy restaurant or bar. Most likely, it’s about 1:00am, you’re totally wired, and you’ve got a fresh pile of twenties in your pocket. What could go wrong? Well, quite a lot, actually, unless you’re the type of person who has the discipline to just go home after
a stressful night of work instead of searching the city for felonies to commit. It doesn’t take a lot of human transactions after 2:00am to encounter a hazardous situation, after all.

Which is part of the appeal, I guess, for the night crawlers out there, and I guess I should go ahead and scrabble down from my observational post and admit that I’ve caused employers some headaches with my night time exploits as well. But I’m also less unpredictable than most restaurant workers in that I don’t ever miss work: no matter how
hungover, I always show up the next day.

It’s kind of shocking how rare this quality is. I’ve done some hiring for restaurants over the years and it’s alternately an exasperating and hysterically funny exercise. Currently the turn-over rate in the food business is about 72%, which is nuts, but I’m a little surprised it’s not higher.
When you hire somebody in the restaurant business, you’re on pins and needles hoping they actually show up for the first day. And if they make it through the first shift, there’s about an 80% chance that you’re gonna get a phone call in that first week with a whopper of a story—the dead grandmother or the concussion or the ER visit or the stolen car. The
ubiquity of cellphones has really improved the quality of the storytelling, I must admit, for it’s hard to explain why you couldn’t be reached for ditching a shift without a truly original narrative. The “concussion” story is quite popular for this very reason: Sorry I didn’t call, I was unconscious.

There’s a nationwide shortage in restaurant workers right now, and restaurant owners are constantly scrambling to find reliable workers. Not all of this is due to the unpredictability of restaurant workers, though. The National Restaurant Association reported that between the third quarter of 2016 and the third quarter of 2017, 15,000 new restaurants opened for business in the United States. It’s crazy; everybody goes out to eat now. It’s our favorite pastime. Think of the new restaurants that you’ve heard about that have opened in Fort Wayne recently: chances are you’ve already gone there or at least have known someone who’s patronized it, often in the first week. It’s almost impossible to maintain a staff in this climate. And the crackdown on undocumented workers has also had a negative impact on restaurant owners’ ability to find skilled or lightly-skilled workers to fill positions.

I’ve gone to bat for some troubled employees over the years and it’s never worked out well. Driven guys home, covered shifts, even lent money to some guys before payday. And then poof: they’re gone. Never to be heard from again. And then you go to another restaurant on your day off, and you see that the guy clearing tables is your MIA co-
worker. It’s almost painful to watch them avoid eye contact, and then see them talk another employee into finishing the job, just so they don’t have to talk to you.

I want to tell them, Look, don’t bother. I’ve been around enough to not take it personally. It’s just the nature of the business, and I’m not going to blame someone else for me being a sucker. And besides, I’ve probably got a couple of 2:00am nights left in me, so the chances are pretty good we’ll be running into each other again.