Hotels And Restaurants That Survived Pandemic Face New Challenge

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Jason Brissett, a kitchen worker who came to the U.S. last month from Jamaica through an H-2B visa, is bracing for 80-hour workweeks this summer to make up for staffing shortages. Tovia Smith/NPR hide caption

Jason Brissett, a kitchen worker who came to the U.S. last month from Jamaica through an H-2B visa, is bracing for 80-hour workweeks this summer to make up for staffing shortages.

It's exactly what everyone's been waiting for.

"I'm very happy to get out," says one woman, sitting down to a view of the harbor, at the Pilot House restaurant in Sandwich, Mass., on Cape Cod.

"It's like we're free at last!" a friend laughs, joining her to celebrate a 70th birthday, albeit several months late.

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They're as thrilled to be dining out again as restaurant owner Bob Jarvis is to see customers start pouring back in.

"Oh yeah! It was busy right off the bat," he says, when the restaurant reopened last month for what's promising to be a bustling summer.

But just when he thought he'd finally be able to start building his business back after a devastating year, he's facing a new challenge: finding enough help to keep the food coming out of the kitchen.

"There's nobody to do these jobs," Jarvis says, "and it's starting to get ultra-desperate."

Jarvis is one of many who rely every year on seasonal foreign workers coming to the U.S. on H-2B visas. They're perennially in high demand, and even with an extra 22,000 the Biden administration has added for a total of 55,000 this season, businesses say it's not nearly enough. Jarvis got about one-third of what he needs.

He's so short-staffed, Jarvis says he's having to stay closed two days a week, giving up some 20% of much-needed revenue. At the same time, his payroll costs will spike as all the employees he does have will be working overtime, earning time and a half.

"It's definitely not profitable," he says. "It's just a really bad situation right now."

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Bob Jarvis, owner of the Pilot House restaurant in Sandwich, Mass., is pitching in to wash dishes, cook and do anything else with staffing so low. Tovia Smith/NPR hide caption

Bob Jarvis, owner of the Pilot House restaurant in Sandwich, Mass., is pitching in to wash dishes, cook and do anything else with staffing so low.

That goes for the staff as well. Jason Brissett, one of the H-2B kitchen workers who arrived last month from Jamaica, was hired to run the kitchen, but he's jumping in to do everything — from chopping vegetables to washing dishes.

"We can pull down maybe like 80 hours [a] week. It's really difficult. You don't want to overwork. You still want to go home back to your family and not die on the line," he says with a laugh. Working the line in the heat of summer is hard in the best of times; Jarvis says he has landed in the emergency room on multiple occasions from exhaustion and dehydration.

"Horrendous" is how Erin Tiernan sums it up. She's been trying in vain for months to find help for her two stores in Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard, and for her husband's hotel, the Dockside Inn. Advertising as far away as Utah and West Virginia, they're subsidizing housing for employees and even working with colleges to create internships, since students seem to be most interested in resume-building jobs. Still, she says, the hotel — which is fully booked — remains woefully understaffed.

"My husband is the only employee currently," Tiernan says, of a hotel that usually hires a staff of more than 10, including front desk attendants and multiple housekeepers.

"We have a 10-year-old who is going to get a crash course in running a register and stripping rooms," she laughs.

Tiernan says they've done the paperwork for several J-1 student visas, as they do every season, but everything is at a standstill this year.

"[Job applicants] are just waiting for embassies and consulates to process their visas to see if they'll be allowed to come," she says.