Author and former bartender John deBary, who started his career at New York’s Please Don’t Tell, says that years of the “startender era” of the aughts—a time when working at high-end cocktail bars could mean becoming a celebrity in your own right—created the mentality among bartenders that there’s always a better job out there.
“There’s this idea that you could go somewhere else if you’re not being appreciated, because you have a brand already and you’re sort of known, rather than trying to roll up your sleeves and fix the conditions where you’re working,” deBary says. But “with turnover, it’s very chicken and egg. Maybe if you had a union, the turnover wouldn’t be as big a problem. You’d have a better place to work, and then there wouldn’t be this cycle.”