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The Lie of ‘No One Wants to Work’

After eight years in the restaurant industry, Estefanía decided she’d had enough. Last summer, she quit her job at a New American restaurant in Chicago where she had worked as a manager and sommelier since 2017. Estefanía, who asked to be referred to by her first

than her last job.

The fact that Estefanía quit restaurant work and re- turned makes her a COVID-era rarity. For months, restaurateurs across the country have been sounding

name because she is an undocumented worker, said she got COVID-19 in June and took two weeks off to recover and quarantine. When she came back, she noticed a shift in the way her employ- ers treated her. “I came back to be given the silent treatment from the owner,” she told me via email. “He said I abandoned him and that he couldn’t trust me [or] see me as a manager anymore.” Estefanía said the last straw was when a coworker threatened to call ICE on her. She quit the restaurant, got a job as a re-

the alarm about an industry-wide labor shortage. Managers of small, independent restaurants and big national chains alike have told the press they’re having trouble getting longtime staff to return to their jobs or finding new employees to re- place them. Managers and owners are largely blaming their inability to retain — or even re-hire — staff on expanded unemployment benefits designed to mitigate the economic devastation of the pandemic; claims that “no one wants to work” be-

ceptionist, and thought she was done with the restau- rant industry altogether. But the pay couldn’t compare to what she was making before, so now, she’s back. De- spite her hesitancy to return to the industry, Estefanía just started working at a Mexican restaurant in Logan Square, which she describes as a better experience

cause they’d rather stay home and cash unemployment checks have become commonplace, even though they aren’t entirely accurate.

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