WASHINGTON — Restaurant managers currently operating at a loss due to the pandemic are now bracing for impact from a tropical storm, as Isaias heads up the East Coast. Many places are already short-staffed so employees are having to roll up their sleeves and wear several hats.
“It couldn’t be worse timing,” Niamh O’Donovan, the general manager of O’Connell’s restaurant in Old Town, Alexandria, said. “We really are working on a day-to-day basis. I don’t have a full staff right now, so my bartenders are working as servers. But everyone is doing it with a smile on their face and their masks on."
Even though she’ll need more, O’Donovan picked up five free sandbags Monday at the Quaker Lane loading dock. The Alexandria Department of Transportation and Environmental Services passed out 2,000 sandbags to businesses and homeowners, so restaurants could prepare for the storm.
A team of volunteers also stepped up to help distribute the sandbags.
“The community is going to be stronger and healthier by having people involved here,” Marion Brunken, the executive director of Volunteer Alexandria, said. “We’re all safer and better off if we just help each other out.”
Neighbors helping neighbors is how many businesses in Old Town have managed to weather the storm of the pandemic. So, they said, they’re prepared for whatever else mother nature sends their way.
“We’re very lucky, especially here in Old Town,” O’Donovan said. "The support we have for one another, the neighboring restaurants, we really do have each other’s back. We’re all in it together.”