Stigma in Food Service Work: How it Affects Restaurant Servers' Intention to Stay in the Business or Recommend a Job to Another

Abstract

Researchers have separately discussed the relationships between stereotype behaviour and behavioural intent. Other researchers have described the negative image of service work. The research for this study explored the notion that occupational stigma caused people to leave their jobs as restaurant servers.

Two hundred and forty-one restaurant servers completed the Stigma Consciousness Questionnaire (SCQ) to provide mean scores on both individual and group levels for the expectation of being stereotyped because of their job as food servers. Regression analysis provides data indicating that restaurant servers who feel stigmatised because of their work will not only leave the restaurant industry, but also will not recommend a job in the restaurant industry to a friend or family member.

Additional information points to studies that show 70 per cent of those under the age of 36 intend to leave the restaurant industry within two years; that 30 per cent of all respondents to the survey intend to stay in the restaurant industry for more than five years; and that 27 per cent categorised their job as professional.

Recommendations from this study suggest that managers create a campaign to promote the positive attributes of work in the food service industry to help overcome employee attrition. It is also suggested that those who are high in stigma consciousness who also intend to stay in the restaurant industry be recruited as spokes-people for the industry.