CONWAY, Ark. — Shortly before last Christmas, Jarrod Ives and his fiancee could only seem to agree on one thing: He needed to quit his job as a server. Ives loved working at WunderHaus restaurant, a quirky bistro outside Little Rock, but the money wasn’t enough to cover rent and two car payments. The situation reminded him of his childhood, when the availability of food and money was precarious. As they contemplated a life together, they needed more security.
Ives left the restaurant optimistic about the possibilities to come. He envisioned a job that paid more and having time to play drums in his band. Soon enough, he’d learn a baby was on the way.
But over the next year, he would take two new jobs, only to quit them, exposing the limits of a mass worker movement that many hope will usher in a new era of economic opportunity in America. Tens of millions of Americans h ave left their jobs this year in the “Great Resignation,” awakened by the stresses of the pandemic and a labor market where companies are desperate to hire.
The experience of Ives — and much of the crew at WunderHaus, who ultimately would also leave the restaurant — offers a more sobering view of what’s next. No one regrets quitting the restaurant, but most are not better off financially.
A year after that first resignation, Ives has a 3-month-old baby he adores, but not a full-time job. His second job worked him too long, and the third left him too physically exhausted to do anything else. Now, he has a budding music career — his band even signed a small record deal — but on many nights, he eats ramen noodles or canned soup before spending hours out on the road as a driver for food-delivery services. The money woes intensify with each day.
“Financially, I’m stressed,” Ives said. “The pressure is on in a way that it has never been. Now it’s coming to a place I have to ask myself: Is this actually possible?”
The United States is on track to register 46 million resignations this year, suggesting more than a quarter of the workforce will turn over. But it remains challenging for low-wage workers to get ahead.
Stubborn inflation is threatening to eviscerate the value of raises, while workers’ savings, in part from sizable government checks during the pandemic, are evaporating. With yet another coronavirus wave now bearing down, the physical and mental health stresses of service-sector work are unyielding. While data on what happened next to those who quit is scant, recent analysis suggests that many workers who have left the fields of restaurant and hotel work — the two sectors with the most resignations — end up back in those industries or in similarly low-wage work in retail, according to the California Policy Lab at the University of California.
At WunderHaus, many of Ives’s former colleagues have followed this path, with uneven results. Four of the eight who quit quickly found employment at other restaurants for the same or less pay. They are still searching for better jobs.
The cook who has seen the greatest financial improvement is now a landscaper for a state university. For the first time in his life, he gets health insurance and paid time off.
Others have taken even bigger leaps. Two former WunderHaus owners moved their family across the country during the pandemic to work on a farm in Nebraska, a decision they are now reconsidering.
MARQUETTE, Neb. — For Jacqueline Smith, the decision to leave WunderHaus came down largely to safety. She couldn’t see a way to keep the restaurant going in the covid summer of 2020.
Smith started WunderHaus in 2015 in Conway, Ark., with her younger brother, Auguste Forrester. They bought an old bread delivery truck and, with the help of their spouses, transformed it into a food truck serving European specialties like stroganoff, spaetzle and meat pies. Food was sourced directly from nearby farms.
The food truck was such a hit, they opened a restaurant in downtown Conway a few years later. They persuaded the owner of an old gas station to rent them the space. They transformed the gas pump area into an outdoor garden and the indoor space into a cozy restaurant with a large bar and a mix of European castles and local artists’ work on the walls. They saw themselves as part of a small-town American revival.
Smith and her husband, Jason, became the heart of the kitchen. Jacqueline, 35, was a musician by training, and […]
source Life after quitting: What happened next to the workers who left their jobs
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