Back to Tulane: A booming job market
Richy Leitner was about to begin his second year at Tulane University late last summer when Hurricane Katrina disrupted his life and academics. He's back in New Orleans as the university prepares to reopen its classrooms.
Since the city is not exactly in perfect shape right now, there are many reasons for people who were not too established here to opt to live elsewhere.
Here's a reason to come back: The job market here is insane. Restaurants, stores, and bars are grossly understaffed, and to alleviate this problem they are paying new employees a lot more than anyone would normally expect. Driving down one of the main streets here you pass the signs constantly. Popeye's is throwing out $9 an hour. Burger King offers an even more regal $10. Wendy's offers a $125-a-week bonus in addition to having higher hourly wages than normal. A friend of mine with very little kitchen experience started at $10 an hour at a popular cafe near campus.
There is a negative side to this booming restaurant service market, however. The reason that everywhere in town is currently hiring at inflated wages is that no one has enough workers. Many of the places with help-wanted signs are not even open yet because they have yet to recruit enough workers to establish any logical hours of business. Even the places that are open are not open nearly as long as they used to be. Many restaurants are closing by 7 in the evening; others that used to be open much later are shutting down around 9.
It does present a problem for many of the college kids around here with our unorthodox eating schedules and our ever present need for late-night munchies. It was part of the culture of pre-Katrina New Orleans to know that no matter what time of night it was, you still had a wide variety of dining options. New Orleans prides itself on its restaurants, and the late-night scene was just another part of the great eating culture here. Let's hope the restaurants can get fully staffed soon.
There may be a little bit of salvation for the insomniac already. Thankfully, my favorite haunt from last year reopened this week. It is the all-night on-campus grease pit known as the Big Easy Café. Now there will always be somewhere for us to go when hunger strikes at inappropriate times.
But there is something else interesting about the reopening. The first night, I made it there around 3:30 and was happy to find that not only did they have their full menu back, but the same employees were working there as last year.
All the same people whose voices I so happily heard calling my order number out last year had made it back to the city to continue doing the important work of maintaining the premier campus eatery. It just seemed like a good sign that maybe people are still on their way back into the city, so people should be grabbing the high-paying jobs while they are still available.
advertisement
