THE LAST BITE

RUNNING ROUGH

BY MICHAEL SOHOCKI

(Photo by Annie Spratt)

It’s been a rough year.

Like all other restaurants in San Antonio, Gwendolyn, Kimura and Il Forno were shut down at the beginning of the Covid crisis – plunging us into a world of unprecedented financial and professional darkness. All three restaurants were also shuttered at one time or another for the appearance of a Covid case, forcing the entire crew to get tested and anxiously await results. With shaky, ramshackle government instructions still hot off the press, we formed a CDC-compliant sanitation policy and applied for the first PPP, disaster loans, private grants, city grants, state grants, federal grants – honestly, I can’t keep track of what all.

One year hence, I can share a few personal conclusions.

First, the PPP was largely a waste. The (admirable) intention was to keep people employed, but that’s not what happened. At times we threw money out the window at them because they were not allowed to work in an ordered shutdown and the money had to be used up by a certain time (a rule which changed in the middle, too late for us to alter course). At other times, we paid people to stay home because of symptoms, or fear of symptoms, or fear of the possibility of symptoms in this weird slosh of whether we could ... or should ... tell people to work.

Would that be considered reckless endangerment? Would we go to jail? We paid people for working, we paid people for partially working, we paid people for not working. Many got PPP AND hourly wages AND unemployment in a rat’s nest the TWC is still trying to untangle.

In the end, despite all that economic stimulus splashing around, we lost most of our team anyway. Ever since, we’ve been scrambling to retrain new employees in the worst hiring environment I’ve ever seen. Six out of seven applicants don’t show up for interviews (of those who show, four out of five don’t show up for their first day).

CDC guidelines do not take cost into consideration. The cost of rubber gloves skyrocketed to more than $110 a case and stayed there. All our laser thermometers ($90 each at the time) were stolen in a month. Rubbing alcohol climbed to $20 dollars a bottle, then disappeared entirely. In most cases we reverted to bleach, which we could usually get our hands on and was what we understood, anyway. We rotated through a dizzying array of cleaning chemicals as one sold out and another came available. You’re probably aware of the toilet paper issue.

I found it largely impossible to teach the difference between cloth and N95 masks to anyone. I had some of the latter stashed for painting projects and handed them out like rare treasures –they were gone in a day. And of course, having created a training for no-touch service and the absurd number of gloves that entailed, we quickly depleted every resource for gloves – and there were no more to be had at any price. For months.

All the while, when any employee called in with a sniffly nose or a cough, for any reason or sometimes no reason, really – all we could say was OK. Some got tested, others didn’t. And I’m not really sure how far my authority extends anymore. Is demanding a Covid test a responsible reaction to an employee staying home, or a violation of medical privacy? Will I be sued for ordering it, or arrested for not?

The good news is that business is steadily improving and we see evidence that consumer confidence is slowly creeping back into the limbs of our industry. Customers have been unfailingly patient and gracious. Also, the staff who were able to stay with us have all become hardened veterans. They’ve done so much more than any one person should have to, many working two or even three jobs at once filling in for those who called out or didn’t show up (or both). We’re just scrambling to keep our hands on a spray bottle, staying as safe as possible while trying to put out good food that still means something.

When all this is over and we are full staff again, life will seem effortless. Now, please excuse me, I was just informed I just became the butcher – and there are eighty pounds of chicken with my name on it. Bye.