Where did all the seasonal workers go?

All tourism businesses in catering face its problem lack of staff, but who is to blame for this? Is it the bad working environment that keeps people from working or laziness?

What really pushed workers to choose summer work in the islands and tourist destinations?

Every summer hundreds of complaints are registered from people who went to find their luck in a promising business and when they get there they face completely different situations than those presented in the interview. This process could be reminiscent of Auschwitz with different criteria. First they convince you to go with a dreamy introduction and as soon as you arrive they “enslave” you. Nevertheless, in order not to be characterized as excessive, I will mention some stories of other people who shared them publicly.

Have you found plane tickets? See also on Traveljourn
Read also: The Incredible Story of Nek Chand’s Rock Garden

In an article published by NewsBomb the In the NewsBeast and in many others they mention a woman who went to work in Mykonos and she lived in her car for three whole months, she slept on deckchairs and bathed in showers because the house they provided her with was rented by mice rather than humans. The furniture was eaten and the mold its oxygen.

In addition, she talked about the amazing diet that was provided to her so that she and her colleagues were poisoned for a whole month while was prohibited to drink water when the staff bottle ran out. As for unpaid overtime we don’t need to talk. It is almost taken for granted now.

Also, in many articles they still write that in Crete they put a penal clause so that the hotel employees do not leave their jobs. If they resign they will have to pay the hotel €5,000.

But let’s move on to other employee experiences I stumbled across in a Facebook group:

Posts by random users:

In a well known Resort in Halkidiki they offered me to work as a Waiter for 500€ per month so that I could gain experience and get properly trained. As a fisherman of only 18 years, I accepted it and with great joy I went to become a “professional”. They had four people in one room with the beds almost stuck together, one wardrobe for all of us, in the first month they cut us all €20 without warning and as soon as I asked the manager he said “well it’s €20”. If we didn’t smile for the whole 8 hours (even when we weren’t talking to a customer) they cursed us for two hours. I don’t want to talk about the general behavior and the food.
Season in Halkidiki: I was told that I would work 9 hours and as soon as I finished I would have no obligations, I would go back to my room and not deal with anything. Come on, the room was INSIDE the reception, so I was on standby 24 hours a day.
Here the work is relaxed, you see only five small tables. In the end I did service, laundry, cold kitchen, cleaning, delivery and telephones for €2.80 an hour.
They told me they would need me to help with other posts. Finally there were no people at the other posts and I was helping.. myself..
Bitter, moldy ones they are sorry to throw away they throw them to the staff.
In Cyprus we ate whatever was inedible from the customer buffet which was usually miserable with double and triple cooked things in the oils and when they were not all consumed then they would “marry” two foods together so they would take them out again. We lived in a container that was the Wheel of Fortune for whether you would have air conditioning, hot water and mice (yes mice, plural). I fought tooth and nail to stay out of the season again and I was lucky enough to make it.
For sustenance they gave me secretly toasts in the kitchen. The conclusion is yours to make.
I left the hotel three weeks ago. Apart from their racist attitudes they called the African employees orangutans but paid them €3.60, they always paid us twenty of the month for the previous month and with a clause that if you don’t give two months notice you leave you lose your earningsI gave them 25 days of work and calmed down.
I went to work as a Receptionist and was told that I might have to make coffee sometimes. I finally learned the whole cocktail menu and stews.

These are the loose ends compared to other cases where they never pay their workers while at the same time draining them of work, drudgery and argument.

From complaint to complaint, from word of mouth and from dissemination on the internet, the world has been informed about the conditions that prevail in seasonal employment and a rumor has been created that the same thing happens everywhere, while in reality there are some good cases as a result of which there is no enough staff to meet business needs.

Unfortunately the percentage of bad employers is much higher and people are terrified of what they will encounter so they choose to find a permanent job in the city with survival wages and not risk choosing the summer job.