nytimes.com

Why Waiters Drink. And Why It Matters.

Brittany Bronson

5-7 minutes

Joan Wong

My former co-worker once drank so much during a waitressing shift, she stumbled through the restaurant with her intoxication on full display to guests. Even the chaos of the service rush couldn’t hide the state she was in. By closing she was fired.

After work that night, a group of us consoled her at the casino sports book, where we often congregated for an after-hours ritual. Over drinks, cigarettes and video poker, we traded our best war stories. Together, our minds and bodies recovered from the physical exhaustion and emotional stress of service.

We told our friend that everything would be fine. After all, she wasn’t the first employee to be under the influence on the job. One manager regularly arrived to work with alcohol on his breath. Some bartenders taste-tested enough cocktails to maintain a steady buzz throughout their shifts. We knew which servers, cooks and managers relied on cocaine to get through the long hours that restaurant life demanded.

For anyone who has worked in food service, these anecdotes are likely familiar. According to a 2015 report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the food services and accommodations industry is among the top fields for alcohol and illicit drug use, alongside construction and mining.

Naturally, food and beverage work is accompanied with an easy access to alcohol. But with the addition of late-night hours, long shifts without meal breaks and dark rooms full of people drinking, it is no surprise the environment often nurtures addiction.

According to the report, the industry currently has the highest rates of substance use disorder, at nearly 17 percent of its workers. That percentage is especially jarring when you consider that the restaurant industry is the second-largest private-sector employer. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, jobs in food service will soon outnumber those in manufacturing.

But without union representation, these jobs are usually accompanied by poor pay, inconsistent schedules and no medical insurance. High turnover means that when substance abuse behaviors do interfere with job performance, workers can be easily, and immediately, replaced.

Plus, the problem goes all the way to the top. The same report on substance abuse found that across all industries, one in 10 managers is abusing controlled substances. Middle management is arguably the most overworked in food service; in high-end bars and restaurants, managers often make less than their service staff, while working longer hours with no overtime pay.

Because food service jobs are increasingly a foundational part of our economy, it is even more crucial to think about what happens to the people who work them.

There remains a false assumption that restaurants are staffed by college students and 20-somethings, making it easy to pass off substance abuse as a result of unmotivated employees or the immaturity of a younger work force.

But an increasing portion of food service workers, particularly in cities like mine, are in the industry for the long term. With more metro areas relying predominantly on restaurants for employment, more workers will find themselves in food service based on economic necessity and limited employment opportunity.

I’ve personally managed to avoid drinking and drug use. On more than one occasion, however, I found myself walking back to my car after a shift, disappointed in the amount of cash tips I fed, like Monopoly money, into a video poker machine.

In Las Vegas, many bar and casino workers become addicted not only to substances, but also to the gambling services their employers provide. Many employers do not restrict their workers from gambling in their establishments.

Addiction is a disease, and in some ways, it is contagious. As much as we might want to imagine we are, none of us are completely immune.

My dearest friends are those I toiled alongside in horrible restaurant jobs. We share with manual labor industries like construction and mining the physical toll of our work, but also the continued sense that our work is less-than. In my first restaurant job at 18, I observed my older co-workers drinking together after shifts as I folded napkins and polished silverware. The social nature of food service can mean it becomes easy to define substance abuse behaviors as “typical” rather than problematic.

Incorporating substance abuse prevention information into training materials, and providing insurance with access to mental health care, could help.

Industry executives must realize that although far removed from them directly, the staff’s substance abuse has compounding effects on the bottom line through workplace injuries, absenteeism and low employee morale.

My co-worker who was let go after that drunken night eventually found another job. Today she works in sales.

But not everyone in food service can or will pick another career. If leaving the industry entirely is the primary path toward recovery, then we are not actually solving our problems. We are running away from them.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3707713&forum_id=2#34038247)