81-Year-Old Ohio Woman Steps Up, Takes A Job To Keep Her Favorite Restaurant Running

“Bonnie was walking up and she is a regular, so I met her at the door and I explained that we were closed. And she’s like, ‘No I’m here for an interview’… And I was like, ‘What!?'” owner Danielle Doxsey told WTOL-Toledo.

This retiree needed her Culver’s and decided it was time to put up or shut up.

“I said, ‘What can I do to help?’ And they said, ‘You can help us until we can get it open, and take food to cars,'” Bonnie said.

And this isn’t just some one-day-a-week gig to get herself on TV. Bonnie’s putting in three- to four-hour shifts, six days a week. If this nation is going to make it through the Great Staffing Shortage of 2021, it’s going to take thousands of great Americans like Bonnie stepping away from Facebook comment wars and taking up arms in the form of Culver’s visors, or whatever uniform they’re given. Bonnie saw an issue and decided to give back to her fellow man and woman.

If turning patrons into workers sounds ridiculous, take what’s happening on Tybee Island, Georgia where restaurant owner Ian Davis spends his days trying to entice customers to take a job slinging sushi.

“These are desperate times,” Davis told The Christian Science Monitor. “We lost pretty much everybody during the pandemic. So now I’m pulling people off the street.” A crab shack down the street from Davis is offering $3,000 signing bonuses.

The April jobs report showed a gain of just 266,000 jobs. Analysts explained it as a “tight supply of willing workers,” according to the Monitor. Restaurants have spent incredible amounts of energy battling to get their piece of that tightening supply of workers.

Perhaps it’s time to go looking for the Bonnie Augusts of the world who don’t want to see their favorite restaurants go under. Maybe it’s time to explain to the Baby Boomers and those just a little bit older than that to be like Bonnie August and serve their country one more time.