Restaurants in Lockdown
On 19. December 2020 in Switzerland, all shops except the supermarkets were closed down, together with all restaurants, for one month. You might have thought that the Wuhan-Flu was going to launch an imminent Christmas assault of unparalleled dimensions. This ruined Christmas and the New Year for everyone, reliant on their well-earned, annual, flourishing profits. In January, our worthy Federal Council members preened themselves again in front of the television to proclaim to their anxiously awaiting folk that they were prolonging the shutdown. Using celebrated salami tactics, our wise ones in government kept extending the agony without any reference to scientific facts or reliable numbers of patients in intensive care. While lockdown was forecast to be lifted on 1. March 2021, it was then once again abruptly extended until 12. March when a further review will be made. The question is whether there will be any restaurants surviving this intrusion into their business, to even re-open then. We remember that the last statistics showed that only 2% of the China infection were known to have been caught in restaurants.
Shrewd souls with plenty of cash have been booking into hotels as sleeping guests, just to be allowed to eat out, since it is mandatory for the hotels to serve them dinner. I’m not sure if the menus are delivered to the bedroom door, with dinner for two balanced on knees in bed, but I assume the hotel rooms have been rid of these belligerent viruses!
There have been a few innovative souls who have converted their restaurant into a take-away business, but the selection available is pitiful and the prices are not justified by either quantity or quality. Not being one to ‘take away’ anyhow, it seems like a woeful medley of nosh on offer. If you are not one to munch on pizza, pasta, kebab or hamburger, you will indeed fall short on culinary delights unless you rustle them up at home.
It’s been particularly hard on the workers employed outside on building sites and roadworks during minus degrees a lot of the winter, without being able to warm up at lunchtime and eat a substantial meal. A deep-frozen sandwich inside an excavator or huddled in the cabin of a crane can’t be terribly wholesome. And who knows where they perform their toilet needs. Now that the weather is warming up, the pen-pushers have graciously decided that only people working outside should be able to have access to specially converted canteens at lunchtime. You probably have to go into said canteen plastered in building material, to prove that you qualify. The viruses have been warned away from these areas in the meantime. However, the ‘canteen’ needs to be closed at 14:00, when said bugs are probably advancing in droves before the washing up is even completed.
Talking of canteens, the elite politicians in Bern consigned their own privileged restaurant to the status of a canteen long ago, so they could tuck into lunch at their discretion. I have it on good authority, that it is noticeably more than just bread and water on offer to strengthen their feeling of well-being while creating more hurdles for their afflicted folk.
I feel very sorry for restaurants who willingly complied with the rigorous rules set out by our wise ones at the top in 2020. At great cost and exertion, they installed Perspex screens between tables, reduced the number of tables to space them out and equipped their staff with the essential gear to keep it hygienic. The loss of business is heart-breaking for them. Even if they chip away at their savings, to avoid creating debts, it’s doubtful that all the staff will have survived the Wu-Flu laws intact.
I think members of parliament will be lucky to feel welcome into the restaurants they have largely punished, when they are finally allowed to serve their happy munchers. And do I care? – Do I heck!
Photo: Pexels / Brett Sayles