Restaurant hosts recall horrors of working during COVID: 'I do often times cry after most of my shifts'

Restaurant hostess.
(Image credit: ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images)

In the wake of COVID-related health protocols, like masking and proof of vaccination, the job of restaurants hosts — once a "position of some prestige and power" — has become "significantly harder and more dangerous," writes The New York Times, as what are typically young and sometimes inexperienced women and girls work tirelessly to keep diners safe.

"I have been screamed at. I have had fingers in my face. I have been called names. I have had something thrown at me," said fomer hostess Caroline Young. "I have never been yelled at like that before in my life, until I was asking people to simply put a piece of cloth over their face that I was wearing eight to 10 hours a day."

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Brigid Kennedy

Brigid Kennedy worked at The Week from 2021 to 2023 as a staff writer, junior editor and then story editor, with an interest in U.S. politics, the economy and the music industry.