We were down at the New Jersey shore in late August on holiday, enjoying great weather, perfect ocean water, and terrific food. Unfortunately, we also witnessed a disturbingly large number of incidents where entitled vacationers who believed they weren’t entitled enough were getting impatient with restaurant wait staff, ice cream store servers, and others just trying to do their job.
Because of the pandemic the Jersey Shore was without its normal army of foreign students here on J-1 temporary work visas. So just about every town from Point Pleasant to Cape May was struggling to staff their businesses with local college kids, school teachers on summer break, and random relatives willing to help out.
It was a situation that would be perfectly fine and manageable if everyone showed a little patience and understanding. This is too much to ask of some, apparently.
As a communicator I think the state of New Jersey, and the local governments and chambers of commerce, might have missed an opportunity to get ahead of this bad behavior by communicating early and often about the situation so that everyone coming down for vacation knew what was going on, and to create a shared community of tolerance and support.
If you do this successfully there would be very few who still insist on acting like jerks to 19-year-olds just trying to do their best in difficult circumstances. And those that do act that way would probably be shamed by other patrons, or at least the abused staffers would likely receive more explicit support.
This sort of ‘proactive transparency’ is not used as often as it should be, I believe. Communication isn’t just for one party to convey information to another. It can be used to create an atmosphere of collaborative action and enlightened perspective.
I’ve noticed some of the more reactionary people I know on social media mocking the idea that during this pandemic we are “all in this together.” But, of course, the very definition of a pandemic is that we are all in this together. So yes, we should think that way and let it inform our choices and our actions, not just about how we treat wait staff but also about things like masking, keeping social distance, and for goodness sakes getting the vaccine.
Do everything you can to stay safe and healthy, please. And get the vaccine.