CHICO HOT SPRINGS, Mont. — In June of 2021 it seemed as though Americans had braved the belly of the beast, the trauma of the last year wiped from their conscience like sweat from the summer’s heat.
Normalcy had returned with large gatherings, travel and fading COVID restrictions. But across the country, business owners began to wrestle with yet another monster: an unrelenting labor shortage that has kept the haunting memory of a pandemic near and dear.
This morning, a report highlighting stories from the American labor shortage featured Chico Hot Springs Resort owner Collin Davis. In the podcast, Robert Jimison of The New York Times spoke with Davis, whose resort and family in Pray, Montana (30 miles north of Yellowstone National Park), have felt the taxing nature of the current U.S. labor crisis.
“We are 120 years old, always been family-owned, a lot of pre-standing lodges, and small cabins. We have a fine dining restaurant and we have a saloon that serves lunch and dinner…and a poolside family grill that also serves lunch and dinner,” Davis told Jimison of The Times.
Prior to the pandemic, Davis’ resort employed 180 individuals. At the lowest point in the pandemic, he had 15 staff members, today he employs 130.
When COVID first hit in March of 2020, Davis had to make the weighted decision to lay off 150 of his loyal employees and shut the resort’s doors for the very first time.
“I had to lay off 150 people which was — they are all friends, I know every one of them. I know their wives’ and husbands’ names, I know their kids’ names, we were all close and it’s a rural area so you know what everybody does and doesn’t do.”
It was a confronting moment for Davis when he closed the resort.
“This property has never even had a lock, literally doesn’t have a lock on the front doors of the lobby, this was the first time ever that the doors had been locked — we had to bolt them shut.”
But comparatively now, those challenges seem insignificant when faced with the grueling nature of running an understaffed resort, and at first with restrictions in place.
“Having to close and open, and eating in and outside, and operating at 50% capacity and then the tenure of our guests, everybody had a political issue to share with you whether it was for or against masking,” Davis said.
Davis recounted some of the horrific reports of his staff being mistreated since the resort’s re-opening.
“I had a guest actually spit, like literally spit on a bartender because she would not serve him because you’re not supposed to approach the bar and because he wasn’t wearing a mask. And then our staff, 10-15% of them got COVID including myself, so it’s been a hard go regardless, but we thought we’d come out into a booming season.”
While lockdown was financially difficult, there was a glimmer of hope for business owners. Experts predicted an unprecedented travel influx and record numbers of tourism, all of which came true.
“You know, the stats from Yellowstone National Park pointed to probably the best financial year we would’ve ever had. I was like ‘wow we’re going to come back rolling out of this and we’re just going to crush it.’ And we needed to you know, everybody needed a win and then we phased into this labor crisis.”
Davis felt defeated yet again. It was even harder to manage than COVID, he said.
In order to keep the business afloat, Davis and his family now navigate this new chapter by taking part in much of the upkeep and labor at the resort.
“I’ll go bus tables in the grill, I’ll help in the morning, I’ve stripped beds, I’ve pulled a dish shift every Saturday morning in the main dining room for the last two months. My wife is now hosting in our dining room, my daughter is home from college in Boston, she works in the garden in the day and the grill at night, it’s just all hands on deck.”
With the labor shortage at hand, Davis has been unable to match the financial metrics of his business from pre-COVID times.
“There are 20 rooms a night I can’t rent because I can’t keep them clean. That’s 600 rooms a month. That’s a phenomenal amount of money and that’s hurtin’ us.”
While locking his doors and laying off his employees was difficult in itself, Davis was taken back further when restrictions started to loosen and his employees did not want to return.
“We actually offered some of our key people to stay when we went down to 15 people and we had employees that still chose to take the unemployment and not stay on which was just unbelievable, I was just really surprised that they would follow that path,” he said.
To him, such actions reflected a larger issue at hand which is a crumbling U.S. workforce.
“These are hardworking people but they saw an opportunity to [live on unemployment] and knew they would get an offer [from me] when it all started up again, which to me is just disgusting, I’m sorry, but I’m old school I’m a dinosaur you know, work hard and good things come to you right?”
Prior to COVID, Davis saw a collective enthusiasm from his employees to show up and put in work. Today he says, this attitude is hard to come by.
“When did everyone get so lazy? I mean nothing is going to come to you if you don’t work for it right? If you don’t contribute… I feel like it’s going to have a pretty large demoralizing impact on the entire economy.”
The business owner predicted that it will be a long road ahead in rebuilding the service industry.
“You have to ask yourself, how sustainable is this, getting less revenue and then also working at this pace working six to seven days a week. Half of those shifts are to fill in or just to be there for morale reasons, it’s freakin’ brutal.”
