I tried to write a joke about this and can’t. Every single shift I work, it is a fucking battle to get most of my customers to wear a mask while I’m at their table. This has me really terrified. https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1303744143336845314

I've kept quiet about dining out during covid as it's a complicated issue and Twitter hates nuance but I'd like to say a few things now. I love restaurants and I think that folks fiscally and medically secure enough to do so, should be dining at them right now if they want to be.

But we can't return to the service industry standards we operated with prior to the pandemic, they are deeply rooted in classism and servitude. We need to be done with the notion that when you sit down at a bar or restaurant all your responsibilities are shifted to the

server taking care of you. When you sit down to dine and drink, you are there to dine and drink and still be a fucking human with all the responsibilities each human within a society has. Treat your server as your peer; wear a mask for their safety and yours!

Servers and bartenders’ jobs are to have deep knowledge of the food and beverage they’re serving and intuitive knowledge of how their establishment operates to make sure you have the best experience possible while patronizing their place of work.

It is not their jobs to place themselves beneath you on any sort of hierarchy. We are constantly expected to demean and degrade our own self worth to create a sense of greater self worth in the customer and it needs to fucking end now.

Go to restaurants to help keep them open, wear a mask, follow every rule, don’t complain about things being difficult, tip well. If this experience doesn’t sound ideal to you, make a box of Annie’s Mac & Cheese at home.