{"id":89906,"date":"2020-03-21T01:34:28","date_gmt":"2020-03-21T07:34:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/restaurant-workers-cope-with-sudden-loss-of-income\/"},"modified":"2020-03-21T01:34:28","modified_gmt":"2020-03-21T07:34:28","slug":"restaurant-workers-cope-with-sudden-loss-of-income","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/restaurant-workers-cope-with-sudden-loss-of-income\/","title":{"rendered":"Restaurant workers cope with sudden loss of income"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Michelle
Michelle Hill pushes her daughters Sage, 1, and Rosemary, 6, on a swing set Thursday at their Durango home. Hill was laid off from her job at Steamworks Brewing Co. earlier this week just as she and her husband, Kelly, had begun their search for their first home.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Michelle Hill and her husband, Kelly, had just submitted their paperwork seeking to qualify for their first house, when COVID-19 restrictions were put in place. Now, the Hills\u2019 plans for a home of their own and their two daughters, Rosemary, 6, and Sage, 1, are on hold.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Michelle Hill was temporarily laid off from her job as a server at Steamworks Brewing Co.<\/p>\n

Jessie Mackey is thankful for the Durango lifestyle \u2013 multiple jobs to make ends meet. It\u2019s hidden blessings are all too apparent now that she\u2019s been temporarily laid off from her bartending gig at J. Bo\u2019s Pizza and Rib Co.<\/p>\n

No one knows exactly how many service industry employees have lost their jobs \u2013 or are severely impacted from loss of tips \u2013 but Tim Walsworth, executive director of Durango\u2019s Business Improvement District, said it\u2019s \u201ceasily hundreds.\u201d<\/p>\n

He encouraged people to donate to the Community Emergency Relief Fund<\/a>, saying its core purpose is to help employees who have lost their jobs, through no fault of their own, as a result of disasters. And over the years, CERF has become very good at what it does, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat fund is taking donations right now,\u201d Walsworth said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to need every penny.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mackey\u2019s and Hill\u2019s stories are only two among hundreds of servers in town whose lives were upended Tuesday when Gov. Jared Polis banned dine-in restaurants through April 16, a ban he extended to at least April 30 on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had just turned in our first application. We\u2019re trying to buy our first house, and we wanted to qualify first to see what we could afford. That doesn\u2019t look like it\u2019s going to happen,\u201d Hill said.<\/p>\n

Even if Hill qualifies for unemployment, she doesn\u2019t think it will help much because more than 70% of her income comes from tips, not covered by unemployment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think we can make it through May and pay rent, and that\u2019s about it,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019ll see what we\u2019ll need to sacrifice after that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hill\u2019s supply of contacts have run out. She won\u2019t replace them. Instead, she\u2019ll rely on her glasses.<\/p>\n

Natural Grocers and Walmart are hiring and she\u2019s thinking of applying, but she\u2019s unsure if they would be interested in hiring her for a short period of time. \u201cAfter four or six weeks, we might be rolling again (at Steamworks). But I\u2019m working on a r\u00e9sum\u00e9.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hill understands the situation Steamworks is in, and she said her employer has been helpful to workers it has had to lay off. The brewpub is offering free meals to all its laid-off employees while its operation has been reduced to to-go service out of its sliding front windows.<\/p>\n

Rosemary and Sage are ecstatic mom is able to stay at home more.<\/p>\n

\u201cRosemary asked if we could go on a sleigh ride, and I said, \u2018Oh, the car\u2019s still covered with snow.\u2019 We\u2019re looking to sacrifice wherever we can. If my husband keeps his job, we\u2019ll be bare-bones, but we think we\u2019ll be able to get by, but there goes what little we saved for home-buying,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"Jessie
Jessie Mackey talks with chiropractor Tina Winters, during her appointment at Vertical Chiropractic on Thursday. Mackey has been temporarily laid off from J. Bo\u2019s Pizza as a result of Gov. Jared Polis ordering restaurants to close. Mackey said she is grateful now for her mother\u2019s insistence that all her children save a portion from each of their paychecks for a rainy day.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Mackey, like Hill, said her employer J. Bo\u2019s has been accommodating to its laid-off workers. The restaurant plans to conduct a deep cleaning during the hiatus in dine-in service, and it will employ some of its laid-off workers for that project.<\/p>\n

Mackey said J. Bo\u2019s owner has told them to come to him if they need help during the COVID-19 forced closure.<\/p>\n

Other aspects of coping in the wake of the COVID-19 layoffs have been more frustrating.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been trying to apply on the unemployment website for three days, but I get to a certain point and the website doesn\u2019t let me go any further,\u201d Mackey said. \u201cIf you think about it, there\u2019s hundreds of people from Durango and thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands trying to get on that website.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if I do get unemployment, servers rely on tips. We\u2019re creating a good experience for our customers. The hourly salary is not going to cover it, and the bills don\u2019t stop coming,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Mackey\u2019s second job, managing Hermosa Mobile Home Village, has proved a lifesaver.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m thankful I have another job not in the restaurant industry, and I\u2019m thankful my mother taught me to save. She said, \u2018Every paycheck you put this certain percentage away, and you don\u2019t even think about. You don\u2019t use it until you need it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

A final stress point for Mackey is just the uncertainty of her current employment situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t really know how long this will go on. Hopefully, it will be only a month, six weeks, but no one really has any answers.\u201d<\/p>\n

parmijo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Home-buying on hold; an appreciation for mom\u2019s lesson about thrift<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":89909,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1605,1255,1087,1922,2632,29,450],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-89906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-employee","tag-employment","tag-job-layoffs","tag-labor","tag-labor-market","tag-newsletter","tag-restaurant-and-catering"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89906"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=89906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}