Is this really how we treat people?

Hospitality badly needs to recruit more people into the sector, but there are sections of the industry that still seem hellbent on putting prospective candidates off the idea.

We all know there’s an image problem, but we also need to accept that perceptions about pubs, bars and restaurants being dodgy places to work are too often rooted in reality.

I’m all in favour of highlighting the many good things about hospitality, spotlighting the progressive and enlightened employers – and backing the campaigns to get people, especially the young, to take the sector seriously as a career option. But don’t let’s kid ourselves that everything is rosy. Until we start to address the bad practices, and that may have to mean naming-and-shaming, we run the risk of pulling the rug from under all those positives.

Unpaid trial shifts

I give you the story of the 17-year-old daughter of a good friend of mine, who lives on the south coast, and has been looking for part-time work in hospitality. Here are just six, yes only six, examples of her recent experiences:

■ First, she did a trial shift for six hours and was told at the end they didn’t pay for trials. What? And she was not alone in discovering that.

■ After doing another 5.5 hours ‘trial’ shift, she was told by the owner that ‘I only pay for full hours’ and gave her £25.

■ She was invited for another trial shift which the owner ‘forgot’ to pay for.

■ She then thought she had secured a job at a restaurant, but as she left work after shift three, she tripped down the steps and twisted her ankle. She had to put her feet up for two days, which meant she missed shifts. At first the owners were apparently understanding, but when she called two days later to say she was OK for the next day they called her ‘unreliable’ and didn’t want her back.

■ Then a chance encounter resulted in her being asked to work for what appeared a generous £9 an hour with pay that day, except at the end of the six-hour shift, the owner claimed she’d never said £9 and told her it would be minimum wage of £4.81. She still hasn’t paid this.

■ Finally, after a second shift at a café, she caught Covid for the first time. The owner told her she had ‘no time for illness so please don’t come back’.

Yes, this all happened in hospitality, and it has to be said largely in small independent operations. Businesses are being squeezed and many are on the edge of insolvency, but that’s no excuse for taking it out on staff, or wannabe staff.

As my pal said: “I’m just baffled and really annoyed by the way her age group is being treated by employers who forget that this is their first experience of work – and her experience of the working world so far isn’t a fair reflection of what it’s like out there, or is it?”

Bad news travels fast

These experiences may not be typical, but neither are they isolated. Just the other day Parklife founder and Greater Manchester’s night time economy adviser Sacha Lord highlighted on Twitter a story in the Manchester Evening News about a bar that had been holding back staff pay and tips because of cashflow problems. “How is that right?” he asked.

We can all argue about how representative this sort of behaviour is, but that misses the point. The damage is done – as bad news travels faster and further than the good. These episodes are now all being amplified out there on social media – and not just posted by the young people themselves but by their parents too.

So, is it time the industry collectively got tough with these ‘rogue’ operators and practices like unpaid trial shifts? Should we be calling out the ‘bad ’uns’ and banning the unpaid shift? Should we also question how much pressure is being put on GMs to ‘manage’ staff costs and cut corners?

What we cannot do is kid ourselves that this isn’t happening and isn’t a stain on the image we all want to buff up.