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This is NOT the result of a wide spread statistical survey or a labor study. It is impressionistic based on our observations into the restaurant (and catering industry) from the placement office at the Professional Bartending School in Arlington. This school has been providing strong bartender placement services for the past 3 + decades. We've always focused on placement services and have provided them in a variety of ways over these decades trying to service our students and employers while doing so in a manner that works for the staff and volume of graduates. Its a free service to employers. Specifically over the last year we have simply seen an astonishing increase in the number and variety of restaurants, bars, hotels, clubs, and caterers that post with our school. This increase corresponds to a significant increase in available positions advertised for both FOH (front of house) and BOH (back of house) positions in the various classifieds on the web. Over the decades we've monitored this, and we are simply seeing significantly more positions being advertised. Its a dramatic increase. With both unfilled positions and industry norm (always high) turnover I'm not surprised at the volume of complaints about customer service. Its difficult to provide great customer service at any level or time. That is not a function of unemployment rates or staff and management stability, but a function of the remarkably few people with great customer service qualities. As we've heard over the decades its not difficult to train a lot of people for most restaurant positions, its always difficult to find great people. Even as we regularly and continuously contact employers to list job opportunities with us and accordingly see increases in the volume of listing employers the natural increase of employers over the last year has been breathtaking. Besides the hundreds or thousands of bars, restaurants, and hotels that don't get referenced at DR.com there are an increasing number of employers from among those restaurants including those that are highly lauded here. There is simply a shortage of staff and an ever increasing volume of job opportunities. I could cite the comments from owners/management in general but one recent comment struck me as an employer referenced that as of May, he needs to start reviewing resumes, and interviewing for autumn hires NOW. He can't wait. The influx of student employment will leave as he well knows and hiring good staff is always difficult and more difficult now. Staffing is a major issue. All of this results in customer service issues. New staff, management turnover, etc. always culminate in customer service glitches. They could pop up in neighborhood restaurants, and frankly they can pop up at your favorite fine dining establishments especially if and when internal turnover that customers don't see result in entirely new staff and/or staff that is less well trained and managed by new management. I suggest this may be a recurring issue, at least as long as this under employment status continues. What would I do? Well I think I'd continue to visit and patronize the family run operations that maintain dedicated staff and/or any restaurants wherein I know when I walk in the door I'll see some or hopefully many of the same staff faces. Hopefully if I see the same faces in the FOH, the same faces will be in the BOH. In the meantime I'd suggest get used to customer service glitches.
