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The return to indoor dining across the country has not been exactly smooth.
Since the revival of indoor dining, service industry workers have repeatedly testified customers and tips are getting worse, while wages remain stagnant and unlivable.
The situation is so bad restaurants across the country are suffering labor shortages, largely as a result of unwillingness to work out a sustainable model for their employees. And the things people are doing to the waiterstaff are getting recorded and put online.
Tommy Bracco, of the Broadway show Newsies, posted a video of an entire table of men pretending to be asleep to alarm their busy server, who had not been able to make a stop at the table.
@tommy_bracco It’s been literally an hour 😴😫 #brunch #weekend #bar #sad #disappointed #dehydrated
Though Bracco qualified the trick was meant solely as a joke, people did not take too kindly to a table of men disrespecting an overworked server in a public place.
@tommy_bracco/TikTok
@tommy_bracco/TikTok
@tommy_bracco/TikTok
@tommy_bracco/TikTok
Restaurants have continued to remain understaffed since reopening, with no word on whether it is a business decision or a personal choice made by people to leave the service industry.
"People are just walking out in the middle of shifts," said Joshua Morton, a service industry veteran from Phoenix, Arizona.
"[Hostesses who] seat the tables, the dishwashers, the bussers ... they'll walk out....It's almost like we're running double the restaurant, comparatively, with half the staff."
@tommy_bracco/TikTok
@tommy_bracco/TikTok
@tommy_bracco/TikTok
@tommy_bracco/TikTok
Bracco later qualified the long wait time was definitely not the waitress's fault.
"The place was clearly understaffed."
However, most viewers still found the joke unhelpful at best and extremely disrespectful at worst.
@tommy_bracco/TikTok
@tommy_bracco/TikTok
@tommy_bracco/TikTok
Bracco's final word on the matter was to reassure everybody this gesture was a joke and the table did tip generously.
@tommy_bracco/TikTok
Restaurant workers are struggling right now with short staff and with customers with even shorter tempers—and a nationwide conversation about the standards of labor throughout the United States is taking place.
Hopefully more TikToks of people giving their staff generous tips are the next crop of media about the topic.