Local restaurant staff fear for immunization policy backlash

Local restaurants are gearing up for Monday when a new policy that requires residents to provide proof of immunization to enter certain businesses and events comes into place.

Dustin Hedstrom is the Executive Chef of the Prestige Hotel, he says preparing for the new policy has been a relatively easy process, but fears his staff may deal with the consequences.

“The overall procedure that we go through is pretty straightforward, we just need to ask guests to present it so making expectations clear to our staff is pretty easy. Where the difficulty really lies is enforcing it,” he said, “frankly, people have been pretty petulant about the whole thing and so we are expecting an increase in incidents of people acting out.”

He says it is tough to put that onus on frontline workers, and he has had numerous conversations with staff about how to handle an unvaccinated customer that may be poorly behaving.

Staff members of the Prestige Hotel are directed to talk to management if there are any disgruntled guests acting poorly.

“They’re (staff members) nervous for sure, everybody is having to bear the brunt of enforcing these policies when we can already see like we all watch the news and see incidents of violence and see incidents of customers freaking out about it.”

However, Hedstrom is expecting that overall, Prince George residents will behave properly and comply without causing a scene.

In terms of business, Hedstrom says the restaurant might lose a little bit of revenue from people that aren’t complying with the mandate, but it isn’t too much of a concern.

“I’m anticipating that this will probably hurt a bit, there will be people who aren’t vaccinated and can’t go out, or people who refuse to go out and support a business that enforces the policy. So, I’m sure we’ll see a hit there but for the most part, I think our guests are going to be happy to comply,” he said.

Hedstrom wants to remind customers that staff members aren’t in charge of making provincial health orders, and failure to comply could result in some pretty hefty fines for the restaurant.

“We understand people are charged up about this but we have a zero-tolerance policy for people acting out. So any disrespect to the staff or huffs or people unwilling to comply, we’re happy to show them the door. We’re put in a really tough spot here by both the customer and the government and I think it’s just really important that as a unit, as an industry we’re unified as one voice.”