service industry – The Concordian

One restaurant owner triumphs over the pandemic

Quebec’s second lockdown, which began in October, has been a devastating blow to business owners all over the province. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Public health actions, such as social distancing, can make people feel isolated and lonely and can increase stress and anxiety.”

Due to COVID-19 restrictions, restaurant owners have only been allowed to open for takeout. As much as it’s been a financial burden for many restaurant owners to be unable to offer dine-in services, it remains a question as to how restaurant owners deal with their own mental health issues — on top of keeping their businesses afloat during this global pandemic.

Dino Angelo Luciano, an accomplished chef, moved to Montreal shortly after his win on season 8 of MasterChef. Originally from California, Luciano’s journey has been quite inspiring. As a result of Luciano’s large Instagram presence, he not only uses his platform to show his cooking skills, but he also advocates for mental health awareness. In a video on his Instagram, he explained that he has struggled from a young age with OCD, paired with anxiety and depression.

In a Zoom interview, Luciano explained that he remembers dealing with OCD from a very young age.

“I think I remember being around seven years old, that’s when I was the most conscious of what I was doing, who was around me, where I was living. The first thing I was doing was turning off the waterspout in the bathtub. I would do it over and over again, flick it on and off. I don’t know why I did it, I think it made me feel good. I think my parents always thought I was just messing around.”

Luciano’s mental health struggles followed him during the taping of MasterChef. “I had my little ticks here and there, like let’s say I had to cut something twice, like if I had to cut an onion at a certain angle. When you are cutting an onion, you’re dicing it up and you maybe get nine to 14 slices. Maybe I had a certain number in my mind, and I would cut the onion x number of slices,” Luciano explained.

After his move to Montreal, Luciano recounted that he always dreamed of opening a restaurant.

“I believe in manifestation, fate is written. I think we have the ability to control destiny and certain things happen at certain times. I came up here three years ago, October 2017. I met a lot of people, maybe not the right people at the time. They helped me build my knowledge on the culture of Montreal. As much as I wanted to open up something a long time ago, I don’t think I was mentally ready for it.”

He put his focus into his cannoli business instead, called ‘The Fat Cannoli.’ His business had done pretty well at the time however, he left this business behind and focused on his dream of opening the restaurant.

During the second lockdown in Montreal, Luciano explained that he wasn’t worried about the state of his future business.

“I could care less about my own stress at this point, the stress of opening a restaurant, ‘it might fail, we might hemorrhage money, we might not, we might fail.’ Actually, we’re doing pretty well at the moment. But even if we weren’t, the joy of making people happy with food was satisfying enough for me. I know during the first wave, I was going crazy, and I think one of the only things that was making me happy was ordering a lot of take out,” Luciano recalled. He explained that if he can offer the same joy to others, it would make everything well worth it.

No one human is perfect and everyone has their dark moments. However, who does Luciano turn to when things get tough?

“I don’t really talk about the dark thoughts too much, sometimes it manifests into my moods and makes me very grouchy and moody. My girlfriend mainly has to deal with that and she’s my number one supporter.” Luciano said that when his mind goes to the dark place, his girlfriend is able to bring him back.

“I have a secret that got me through this pandemic. You’re forced to be alone and a lot of people are watching Netflix… pay attention to those actors in those movies. When you’re forced to be away from everybody, you kinda get to develop who you want to be … By the time you go out again you can surprise people with who you have become.” Luciano says that the pandemic has been a time for self-growth and reflection, and believes that if people don’t take this as an opportunity to learn more about themselves, another opportunity will be less likely to present itself in the near future.

Feature photo by Dalia Nardolillo

TORONTO (CUP) — While you’re sitting comfortably in a restaurant, the service will cross your mind. Maybe the drinks took too long to arrive or your appetizer was missing a sauce. But when your server arrives with your meal, smiling and asking if there’s anything else they can get you, your mind turns to your food.
When you finally assess that tip, you might want to consider that your server hasn’t eaten for the last eight hours or so.

Skipping your breaks
Virginia Connors, 19, is a second-year child and youth care student at Ryerson. She works part-time as a waitress at Joey at the Eaton Centre.
She regularly goes four to seven hours without a break in the one-inch heels that are a mandatory part of her uniform.
“It’s too busy during the night shifts to take a break,” said Connors.
Connors usually chooses to skip her breaks to avoid losing her tables to another server.
“They don’t offer breaks, you just know that you’re entitled to them. I’ve gone almost 10 hours without a break, and that’s at my discretion,” she said. “While I’m working I don’t notice it so much, as compared to after work and I realize I haven’t eaten — then I’m tired.”
According to Ontario’s employment standards act, an employee is to work no more than five hours straight without a break of at least 30 minutes.
Jennifer Savage at the Ministry of Labour said, “It’s not the choice of the employee, it’s law.”
According to Savage, if employees aren’t getting their minimum 30-minute breaks, the employer can be fined.
“The employer has to ensure they [take their break].”
The inability to take proper breaks is a common problem for servers. Natalie Rineshore, whose name has been changed, is a Ryerson student who works in a sports bar on King St. West.
“If it is a busy night, like a 14-hour shift, you really don’t get a break unless you plan ahead and take one at 4 o’clock before the 5 o’clock rush.”
But Rineshore’s main concern isn’t breaks — it’s the required uniforms.

Dressing the part
For Connors at Joey, the heels are a hindrance, but her uniform is otherwise comfortable as long as the air conditioning isn’t too cold.
But Rineshore is more upset by her company’s dress code.
“Low cut shirt, very low cut, to the point where bra is exposed. The cup of the bra, and the wire, everything’s exposed. And mini skirts and knee high boots,” she said.
Rineshore said the knee-high boots need to have at least a one-and-a-half to two-inch heel.
According to Rineshore, some guests don’t like the uniforms and have filled out comment cards about how revealing they are. One guest wrote an online review saying the bar was more akin to “an upscale gentlemen’s club.”
“Our managers are all men. So obviously they’re enjoying it and it’s helping to promote the image of the restaurant that they want, but these comment cards have been filled out, handed to a manager, the manager reads them, laughs at them, rips them up and throws them in the garbage,” said Rineshore.
“So they don’t get sent to corporate. No one finds out about this. And even if they did get sent to corporate, who knows what they would do about it,” she said. “People have said we make Hooters look like Chuck E. Cheese’s.”
Regardless of the clothing, Rineshore’s main concern is the boots.
“I had to host on the patio in boots, and it was 30 degrees and my legs are sweating, and they get mad if you have a cup of water on the host stand, because they don’t want that image to be portrayed of you just sitting and drinking and socializing,” she said.
“They want you to look like you’re professional. But I’m sweating in my boots, literally.”
Rineshore said people have wiped out on the restaurant’s cement floor which has very little friction.
“People could get injured just by falling,” she said. “Waiting hot plates? You could burn a guest.”
According to Rineshore, the serving staff of about 30 employs only two men and one male bartender. The male servers are not required to wear equally provocative uniforms.
Jennifer Ramsay, communications coordinator for Toronto’s Human Rights Legal Support Centre, expressed some concerns over Rineshore’s situation.
“If only the women are being asked to dress provocatively, then that could be [discriminatory],” she said
There have been legal cases throughout Canada of female employees fighting against revealing uniforms. The 1982 Ontario case of Ballentyne v. Molly N’ Me Tavern favoured Susan Ballentyne who was offered a serving job with a topless dress code. A 1997 case in Quebec favoured female employees when the establishment imposed a uniform of short skirts, tight tops and high heels, similar to the uniforms at Rineshore’s restaurant.
But the human rights commission doesn’t take action against offensive dress codes without a complaint.
“If the employer could argue that it’s absolutely necessary for them to wear this uniform then that’s that,” said Ramsay. But she said she finds it difficult to believe an employer could argue that successfully.

Injury reservations
Kristine Norris, 20, is a fourth-year dance student who was a waitress at Cedarhill Golf and Country Club in Ottawa in 2009.
Once, while setting up for a banquet, she was asked to set up a nine-foot table by herself. It fell on her toe as she tried to take it down.
She had to ice her foot for about 45 minutes, and she said no report was filed for her injury.
While that was her only instance of getting hurt at work, like her fellow servers, she often went without her breaks.
“I would work 14-hour shifts on the hot dog cart … I couldn’t go to the washroom ever, because I had a cash box,” she said.
In order to go to the bathroom, she would wait for the beverage cart worker to drive over and watch her station, but that wasn’t often.
When Norris was working weddings, she would start at 4 p.m. or 5 p.m. and work until 4 a.m. if she was closing. She said she would get one 30-minute break if she was lucky.
She was warned about the hours and the breaks when she applied for the job, but she took the position anyway.
“Anytime you’re in an interview, you’re just going to [nod] your head and say yes,” Norris said.
“You want a paycheque at the end of the day.”

Do you have any waiter/waitressing horror stories? Share them with us below!