Restaurant owners tend to watch the obvious costs: food prices, rent, insurance. Gas usually isn’t one of them. But it may be quietly reshaping who shows up for a shift. According to one Seattle restaurant manager, staff rarely quit when a cost like gas climbs. They just start picking up fewer shifts, going unavailable on Sundays, and going quiet about covering for a coworker. By the time a manager notices, the decision to leave is already old.
Regular gas in the Seattle area is currently averaging around $5.27 a gallon, with diesel running above $6, according to AAA data. Prices have climbed roughly 15% over the past year and briefly touched nearly $6 a gallon this spring. None of that shows up on a restaurant’s books directly. It shows up two months later, when a manager looks at Thursday’s staffing schedule and wonders what changed.
The employees most likely to leave first are rarely the ones making noise about it. They do the math quietly, often in the car on the drive home, long before they say anything to a manager. One Seattle kitchen manager described exactly this happening with a longtime cook. The cook never once complained. His situation shows how this actually plays out…