Brinker International operates over 1,500 Chili’s Grill and Bar restaurants in 28 countries and brings in several billion dollars in revenue every year. In the United States we find Chili’s operating in 49 of the 50 states unsurprisingly distributed quite unevenly (the plurality operating in Texas where the brand was founded). In New Mexico we find 16 restaurants with 10 of them concentrated in and around Albuquerque, the largest city in the state with a population of half a million.
Our particular restaurant employs around 55 people at present, this number fluctuating given the consistent coming and going of workers. Our demographics reflect that of the city with an even split between male and female and between white and latino workers with a small number of native and black people as well. Management, however, while being evenly split between these two genders, is entirely white. Dividing the staff into Front of House (FOH) and Back of House (BOH) (or Heart of House as Chili’s almost endearingly calls it vying to do away with any negative connotation) we find 7 FOH workers for every 3 BOH. All BOH workers earn a wage (though not the same wage, sometimes even for the same position given tenure and no small amount of shadiness on behalf of the company) while the majority FOH workers primarily rely on tips with hosts, to go, QA, and bussers being the exception. The bulk of FOH workers are servers and food runners; servers rely on tips (and are the most wrapped up in the practice of providing good service in order to get tipped well) and food runners are tipped 4% of servers’ sales. The math is handled by our computer system.
The workload between all the various positions varies considerably. BOH work almost resembles that of an assembly line and the workload is almost constant (plus the kitchen is very commonly understaffed which means several workers work multiple doubles a week). FOH work can have some downtime, but is accompanied by the pleasures of customer service in a capitalist consumer economy. College students and young people (high schoolers) are concentrated in the FOH positions with around 13 college students and 5 high schoolers thus leaving the bulk of workers without any prospect of upward mobility or illusions regarding the temporality of their tenure in the service industry (or at least in low paid fields). 1 in 5 workers has more than one job; some of them working office jobs, some working in other restaurants, and some in logistics.
Our restaurant has recently undergone a change in management which has brought with it some hope that there may be an increase in the quality of life at our workplace (and in some ways has as the last manager was a misogynist and a weirdo), but there remain consistent problems such as some workers not getting enough hours and struggling to pay their bills, some workers getting too many hours and thus toiling for the majority of their waking week, the inappropriate behavior of male customers and male coworkers towards women workers, lack of access to healthcare (a few workers have been putting up with very painful and very treatable discomfort because they can’t afford to see the doctor), and just the general lack of control over our jobs and therefore lives due to decisions made by unaccountable faces higher up in our corporate structure. These are some of the problems that plague us, but fortunately some of us are conscious of these problems and want to work to address them.
As far as workplace benefits you have to work full time to qualify for health coverage and managers are explicitly instructed to create schedules that prevent workers from attaining these benefits. There is also the Brinker Family Fund (a 501c3) which functions as a pool of money that workers can donate to and then appeal to use in the event they experience an emergency. This is clearly a co-opted form of mutual aid in which workers may work together independently of the state or companies to meet their needs, but instead of existing as an independent institution erected and under the jurisdiction of the workers it is instead a pool of worker’s money set up and controlled by their employer to be used at the employer’s discretion (which is to say clearly not in the event you are fired for organizing or if your workplace decides to go on strike)! They’ll also do things like pay for your access to some limited education and provide access to the (bad, from our understanding) mental health service Magellan so you can submit your legitimate grievances about the hardships you face as a low paid worker in a country dominated by wealthy billionaires and they can tell you to focus on what you’re allowed to change (yourself)!
It’s safe to say that workers at our restaurant are not exactly satisfied with the way things are. Some will graduate college and move on to higher paid jobs, but most of us will stay, and for those of us who do, our only hope to improve the conditions of our lives will be coming together and exercising our collective strength as workers.