HUMBOLDT — Restaurant staff throughout Humboldt have been dealing with an increase of harassment from customers not wanting to follow pandemic regulations.
According to the Humboldt Chamber of Commerce, the majority of people in the area treat the staff with respect and empathy – however that isn’t the case for everyone.
“There is a lot of underlying frustration nowadays with the elongated lockdown,” said Brent Fitzpatrick, the chamber’s executive director.
“What I’ve been told is people have been a little less than polite and quite demanding at wanting additional people at a table or whatever the area they feel they have been infringed upon. That’s where they’re getting quite vocal about it.”
In Saskatchewan, individuals that don’t comply with emergency orders can be fined up to $7,500, for corporations it goes up to $100,000.
“It can be very frustrating, I understand that, but when you go out to eat, you know the rules,” Fitzpatrick said. “All these people are doing is just saying, ‘We can’t do that, there are penalties, there are consequences if we allow you to not obey the rules.’”
Judy Plag, general manager with the Humboldt Bella Vista Inn, said that before the pandemic began, she found that everyone was polite to staff. While in-person customers have adapted without issue, over the phone is a different story.
To accommodate table distance, the inn closed their restaurant in December, and moved dine-in and take-out services to the bar.
“We actually had one lady go off on one of our employees in the bar,” Plag said. “’We’re coming with 12 people. We’re just going to push the tables together.’
My employee said, ‘No you won’t, don’t bother coming.’”
According to Plag, it’s not just the restaurant either.
“People are phoning for meeting rooms and trying to circumvent the rules associated with that too and then giving the girls a rough time, and then just hanging up,” she said.
While using the meeting rooms there are no food or beverages allowed, and attendees are required to wear masks.
“It’s hard enough to be going to work in the hospitality industry right now, let alone that they have to deal with people who think that they should give them a rough time and are entitled to it,” Plag said.
“My staff can’t hang up on somebody who’s yelling at them either because that’s not how they are and they probably should be, but before they can get the opportunity, they hang up.”
She said she personally believes some of the calls are a setup to trap them into breaking COVID-19 regulations.
“Over the phone you can do or say whatever you want because they hang up and you can’t trace it.”
According to Carla Clement, owner of Johnny’s Bistro, the problems at their restaurant have been different – but there still have been some.
“Our local people are doing really good,” Clement said.
“There are people coming into town where they have a family of five and they don’t understand why they can’t all sit together because they’re in a bubble. So there’s some resistance there.”
Namely, Clement points to “one bad weekend”.
“A little bit of confrontation, nobody’s yelling or anything like that. It’s more of a matter of battling back and challenging the rules.”
When Fitzpatrick was asked if there is a message he would like to get out, he said that if all people have to do is wear a mask and be respectful, then let’s just do that.
“They know the rules. They know what the boundaries are. Please respect those boundaries,” he said. “If they say, ‘No’ that’s the end of the argument.”
