Why would anyone answer this job ad?

Alison Mau

The odorous underbelly of a sector-wide staffing crisis popped its head up this week, courtesy of a bit of A4 paper stuck to the window of a Hokitika cafe.

‘‘WANTED: Part Time Bar Staff Apply With-In,’’ it began. The casual passer-by will have quickly clocked that mangled punctuation was not the only issue with the ad.

‘‘Must have Double D Breasts, A Great Smile & A Good Attitude, But Men Can Also Apply!’’

That last bit is interesting. If you’re a man, that’s OK, you don’t need a particular chest measurement, a smile, or a ‘‘winning attitude’’. You just . . . need to be a man?

It’s hardly the main issue though. Perhaps the writer thought the message was a clever joke. Perhaps they were angling for the social-media virality they must have known would follow. If that’s the case I hope they got the message loud and clear; not all publicity is good publicity.

But let’s presume Stumpers actually does need to fill a bar role. How would a jobseeker view those requirements? They might rightly think the ad gives a good steer on the kinds of conditions they’d be working under; if the size of my chest is at the very top of the requirement list, what exactly am I being hired for here? If my cup size and the quality of my smile are paramount, what does that say about how my skills or experience as a server are valued? What does it say about the service customers are getting?

Do the customers at Stumpers see the cafe staff as purely decorative – not a person, but a thing to be ogled? A robot of sorts?

Aside from being sexist and gross, and potentially in breach of the Human Rights Act, it also reflects poorly on the industry as a whole – an industry currently busting a gut to attract staff. The first hurdle to clear has been wages; they’ve reportedly risen by 9% in the past year (much of which admittedly, has been soaked up by high inflation) and are now over the living wage mark. So far so good – but wages are just one factor.

In April, researchers at AUT’s School of Hospitality and Tourism released a report called ‘‘Voices From The Front Line’’, where hospo workers had their say about working conditions. The news wasn’t so good.

Lowlights of work in the industry were reported thus: 18% reported not being paid minimum wage (illegal); 22% were not getting all their holiday pay; 22% were being denied time off for working stat days (also illegal).

An astounding 81% said they were given no training in their jobs – and almost half had experienced or witnessed harassment in their workplaces. Owners and managers were responsible for 40% of that abuse.

Bar and restaurant workers know how pervasive harassment is in their industry – and this is regardless of gender. Long-time hospitality worker Chloe Ann-King of the on-line union Raise The Bar, says while women and nonbinary workers might be more likely to report these assaults, they happen to male workers too.

‘‘I’ve had so many conversations with my male coworkers who say they have been grabbed and groped routinely on shift. It’s a combination of people being drunk – impulse control is out the window – and customers straight-up thinking we are there to serve them and they don’t really see us as human.’’

The lack of professionalism (or at a very minimum, adherence to the law) by employers has been identified as a real problem at least by the industry’s professional body; venues have recently been offered a carrot for better behaviour by the Restaurant Association NZ through its Hospocred scheme. That’s an opt-in, promising businesses a way to set themselves apart from the rest and presumably, attract customers who care about social licence. Financial management, employment processes and training are all part of the deal.

The Association describes the kinds of abuse and mismanagement evidenced in the AUT report ‘‘legacy employment relation issues’’ and encourages employers to make use of its templates and guidelines to clean up their act. Good employers are used as a ‘‘benchmark’’ for others to aim for.

The AUT report’s data was gathered pre-Covid. The current staffing squeeze is a golden opportunity for all to have a close look at their practices and perhaps work out why they can’t get, or keep, staff.

And Stumpers, now an industry pariah, (Restaurant NZ) told me its ad was ‘‘unacceptable and discriminatory’’) may fall into a category named in the AUT report as ‘‘bad employers’’.

What should happen to those businesses? The report says they should be called out, and driven out of an industry which must adopt better employment practices, for its own sake.

Not all publicity is good publicity.