Introduction
In this particular section of the project research, a keen analysis is made on the overall employee dissatisfaction in bar and restaurant jobs. In line with the two objectives of this research, understanding why most employees opt out of bar and restaurant jobs would be sufficient in addressing the questions of low turnover rates in this specific industry. Nonetheless, the following discussion brings into perspective an elaborate literature review of the mentioned dissatisfaction drawing a keen analysis on previous works done by scholars as supported in most economies (Charlebois, Creed & von Massow, 2015). This is to imply that this section will particularly address why employees feel uncomfortable working in bars and restaurants eventually leading to their eminent departure.
Work Stress
From a descriptive point of view, any profession is faced with numerous challenges which emanate from one’s personal or professional lives. This is to imply that there comes a period in an employment time where an employee does not feel 100% mentally fit to go to work. Psychologists have noted that this is a common phenomenon and can only be addressed at a personal level (Dhar & Dhar, 2010). This is one of the many reasons that great and successful professionals in different fields are advised to separate their personal lives from their career day-to-day lives. Work stress, to be more accurate, happens to be one of the many personal reasons that lead to employee dissatisfaction in working at bar and restaurant businesses.
A typical example of work stress would include a teenage waitress working in a McDonald’s coffee shop in a busy street. During the initial stages of employment at McDonald’s as a teenager, attending to more than one table for different menu items would be hectic. Apparently, some of these restaurants offer more than one menu items which ought to be mastered by the workers for efficient and timely table deliveries upon accepting an order. For an experienced waiter or waitress, it becomes relatively easy to attend to more than one table (Kraak & Holmqvist, 2017). However, the kind of stress experienced by a teenager in serving more than table contributes to their resignation upon succumbing to pressure.
From a different angle, the female gender also tends to be a victim of work stress due to the social imbalance in the modern community. This has been seen in bars where waitresses are constantly harassed by male clients who, to some extent, request for sexual services. When objectively addressed, it would be vital to acknowledge that there are some ladies who feel discontented with such behaviors and eventually opt to quit. Logically, that feeling of disrespect from drunk and disorganized customers to a waitress greatly affect their overall confidence in executing their employment roles and responsibilities (Cain, Tanford & Shulga, 2018). In turn, the victims end up succumbing to such work stress and subsequently resign.
It would also be of essence to acknowledge the nature of work stress that emanate from supervisors and managers of bars and restaurants. It has been realized that these category of management officials tend to unnecessary pressure workers of a bar or restaurant on issues that are completely irrelevant. For instance, working at Bounce Sporting Bar would depict a perfect example where supervisors execute their duties at the expense of bar-attenders and other restaurant workers (Ariyabuddhiphongs & Kahn, 2017). In such contexts, it is understood that such kind of work pressure is intended to ensure that customer satisfaction is achieved at the highest possible level. It is during such periods that workers at such kind of places end up quitting due to mounting work-related stress.
Career Development
A number of studies has shown that working in a bar or restaurant provides a perfect stepping stone for future professional developments. This is to say that most hospitality jobs (such as working in restaurants) is considered as the perfect starting point for an individual who has semi-skills in a given business enterprise (Sallaz, 2017). For instance, taking the McDonald’s coffee shop as an example for this section, it has been shown that employees who quit working at this shop end up opening their own similar businesses. In different scenarios, the same employees opt to venture into a different enterprise but within the same beverage industry.
When critically addressed, it would be genuine to acknowledge that such kind of experience gained in a bar or restaurant provides necessary skills for entrepreneurship. For instance, working at the described coffee shop would give a waiter or waitress first-hand experience of dealing with nuisance customers who change orders ignorantly and do not account for the wasted product delivered at the table (McPhail, et al 2015). Additionally, handling and accounting for all payment on served beverage products adds on to the experience of these workers.
From a different angle, it would also be vital to acknowledge the fact that working in a bar or restaurant provides an amicable leeway of saving for higher studies. In simpler terms, this basically implies that students who lack funds to finance their higher learning quests end up being contracted in bars or restaurants in order to raise fees by themselves (AlBattat, Som, & Helalat, 2014). For instance, once a teenager saves enough money for a higher diploma after working on a six months reemployment contract at a bar, they end up opting not to renew these working agreement in order to pursue their desired professions.
It is also in these kind of working environments that some employees feel disgruntled due disregarded personal attention from their bosses. Unlike the previous section which discussed work stress arising from supervisory pressure, personal attention in any profession plays a key role in employee retention. For instance, developing a career would also be termed as healthy if an individual attends to their personal needs without interfering with the professional performance (Johnson-Busbin, et al 2018). For instance, visiting a sick relative would create some sense of a peaceful state of mind while executing one’s roles and responsibilities in a future time.
However, this is never the case for employees who work at bars and restaurants especially when it comes to attending to important organization functions where their presence is required. Being alienated from loved ones during difficult times irrespective of the calendar day disgruntles or makes employees unsettled in their employment vicinity (Lee, Back & Chan, 2015). In the eventual end, their career development is negatively hampered contributing to their decision of quitting. After all, why would one work for an organization which disregards their peace of mind?
Employment Competition in the Hospitality Industry
When perceived from an employment requirements angle, there a number of elements that would come into play explaining why employees in a bar or restaurant. Various research has shown that the hospitality industry tends to be one of the employment areas which recruits its workers based on semi-skills background or foundation (Ariza-Montes, et al 2017). In other terms, working in a bar or restaurant does not require a higher diploma certificate to be employed as a waiter as a waitress. Consequently, it becomes valid to state that the labor market for this industry is vast and wide and hence new requirements ought to be evaluated as a key recruitment factor.
Apparently, waiter and waitress jobs narrow done to physical looks as one of the many evaluating factors of a suitable candidate for employment. One thing to note about recruitment in this employment industry is based on the fact that employee training or induction takes less than a week to acquaint a newly adopted individuals with the necessary skills. Nonetheless, prioritizing physical looks over professional or academic skills in employing a waitress (for instance) would lead to low self-esteem among the existing workers. Logically, this has been also proven in the fashion industry where different models tend to lose their contracts as a result of new and upcoming beautiful models.
Employment competition in the hospitality industry has also seen some employees opting to quit their jobs over what they claim as favoritism. Due to the high number of individuals willing to work in a bar or restaurant, those employees who fall out of favor with their seniors end up being frustrated on nonsensical grounds. This is to imply that sexual favors form the basis of job security in working for a bar or restaurant. There have been a number of different cases which have come as a result of indecent sexual behavior where managers in bar advantage of unemployment status in an economy to retain its workforce.
Aside from the modern efforts that see sexual favors forming the basis of job security, it would also be vital to acknowledge that employment competition has seen experienced employees seeking greener pastures in the same industry. For instance, it is very practical to find a waitress leaving a job at McDonald’s in search of greener pastures where they end up finding a spot Coava Coffee Roasters. Ambitious employees at bars and restaurants opt to resign their jobs in a bid to work in a more professional environment where their basic employment rights are observed and keenly respected.
In addition, career development in working as a bar-attender or an employee in a restaurant is hampered by high competition in the sense that new services in this sector are best implemented by a new workforce. This is to imply that a bar or restaurant wishing to introduce a new product is forced to recruit new individuals to commence on provision of the said product. When professionally examined, the existing employees feel unappreciated and demotivated when these new services tend to provide better and favorable working conditions than the existing ones (Dube, Lester & Reich, 2016). As a result, this aspect of not being appreciated could force some employees to quit working and commence searching for other working opportunities.
Poor Remunerations and Wage Packages
The question of salary among employees who trade their services in bars and restaurants remains inadequately answer prompting unexpected resignations and immature termination of employment contracts. To begin with, employees who commence their employment life as workers in bars or restaurant feel contented with what they receive as wages mainly because their needs are sufficiently catered for by the amount they earn as employees (Zhao, et al 2016). This forms one of the main reasons as to why financial ambitious individuals fail to have a good start as employees in restaurants. Additionally, most employers in this industry prefer young and energetic individuals to occupy these employment opportunities due to their low wage expectations.
Nonetheless, one of the main reasons as to why employees in the hospitality industry quit is engulfed on the fact that the remuneration packages take a relatively longer time to appreciate like in other business industries. For instance, promoting a junior software tester in a technology company takes evaluation of a small number of successful programing codes to be promoted to the production department (Gleeson, 2015). However, in a hospitality organization such as a bar or restaurant, it can take a possible two years for a waitress to be promoted to relatively senior position as the professional capacity of this industry has no standardized measures of improving this human resource practice.
From a different perspective, it has also been observed that employees in bars and restaurants tend to be demotivated from a remunerations point of view. Typical in this working environments, employees are normally motivated by the small “tips” they get from kind customers (Azar, Yosef & Bar-Eli, 2015). There are some clients who opt to leave change in the name of the waiter/waitress who served them the entire time. Aside from this source of financial remuneration, these individuals end up suffering in the hands of their employers as the latter hears none of wage increment suggestion placed on a meeting table.
Common in the hospitality industry is the term “shot” which basically implies the amount of cash deducted from an employee’s salary at the end of the week or month. A shot could be as much as a waiter or waitress earns and at times surpass that wage mark significantly. Mathematically, it becomes very possible for an employee to go home at the end of a wage period without anything in their pockets that they can call salary (Andringa, Poulston & Pernecky, 2016). At times, these employees go home with a debt of their firm if the said “shot” cannot be serviced by their end month or weekly salary. From a human point of view, it becomes very demoralizing to tirelessly work for a whole week or month yet have nothing to show for it as a reward.
Inconsiderate Employment Terms
Aside from poor remunerations or wages in an employment contract of a bar-attender, waiter or waitress exists the long working hours that these employees are subjected to. The fact that a newly recruited waiter or waitress signs a seemingly lucrative employment contract with a bar or restaurant is not a reason enough to state the terms contained in the agreement in is exclusively or mutually agreed to the highest level of satisfaction (Guerci, et al 2015). As a matter of fact, most individuals are carried away by the excitement of securing a job forgetting the rights and privileges that one should enjoy as a waiter or waiters in a restaurant or bar.
It has also been proven that these employees work for very long hours especially those who report for nightshifts. Apparently, most employers opt to call on its workforce any time additional workforce is needed. In turn, the nature of compensation for overtime does not statistically reflect the work done during this period of revenue generation. Subsequently, it becomes eminent that an employee would opt to resign if too much work is not sufficiently compensated as part of overtime wage agreement in the initial employment contract terms (Halvorsen, Treuren & Kulik, 2015). This, essentially, affect individuals who have families at home where time for children is recommended for an effective family bonding.
Another reason which makes employees or workers feel uncomfortable working in bar and restaurants for long tends to be the nature of protection they receive from their employers whenever a conflict arises between a customer and one of them. One rule of thumb in working as a bartender is that one should never argue with a customer irrespective of the latter’s behavior whether drunk or not. It is expected that should there an extreme insecurity case arises, the “bouncers” should chip in and calm the situation. However, some scenarios tend to be so embarrassing to the bartenders who opt to take matters on their hands as disgruntled human beings (Bhattacherjee, 2015). In such scenarios, when a supervisor or manager is called to address the circumstance, they end up protecting the customer at the expense of the employees.
Logically, any individual would feel unappreciated in such a scenario especially if the called arbitrator humiliates their employee in an unprofessional manner. Consequently, these employees are forced to think twice about their well-being as employees of the place in which they are workers. Ultimately, the wise decision that they end up making is resigning without notice to seek peace of mind even if it entails facing a couple of days without employment (Khuong & Nhu, 2015). However, they forget that business is all about protecting the interests of the customer as he or she is the primary source of revenue for the firm.
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