her breath in my ear. Feeling uncomfortable, I quickly chose a pair to try on, whereupon she brought the shoes in my size and went back to her phone, thinking that was job done. Occasionally, she looked up to watch me, face full of curiosity, while I struggled for 10 minutes, first trying to correct the messed-up lacing and then removing it and starting again. My frustration boiled over, which I made plain. Neither she nor any of her three companions, faces buried in phones, made any move to help. This passive indifference to customers among retail staff was, to be sure, quite common throughout Asia before 2020, but now it has spread across sectors that normally employ individuals with job-appropriate skills, such as restaurants and hotels. Why? The problem in the retail, hospitality and food and beverage industries is, broadly speaking, there are not enough employees and those who are available often don’t possess the right kinds of skills. This is leading to deteriorating service standards and sometimes even open warfare between bosses, staff, and customers. This aspect of the labour shortage story hasn’t been covered in the popular media, which has focused on the shortage of workers affecting Asian manufacturing. But retail has copped it as well, particularly in Southeast Asia. Here, many jobs in the cities are, in normal times, taken by workers who come from the countryside and still have family homes there. Now, many are still hunkered down there and reluctant to come back, even as retail businesses, restaurants, and hotels reopen.  Lockdowns, unpredictability made workers bail The issue is a direct result of two years of governmental restrictions on the operation of businesses, border crossings, and the normal conduct of people’s lives. In the initial wave of lockdowns in 2020, many workers in services businesses hung around, hoping that things would quickly return to normal. Indeed things did normalise, and many of the temporarily unemployed went back to work. But before long there was a second, longer wave of lockdowns, which severely damaged worker confidence. Worse, it wasn’t like the lockdowns started and ended with clear bookends. Central and provincial governments were constantly tinkering with the rules, adjusting things like curfew hours, opening and closing hours, and check-in rules every couple of weeks. Worse, they fuelled rumours about which rules might or might not be relaxed or tightened in the next cycle. It seemed that anyone with a microphone just couldn’t help themselves, repeatedly putting out different and conflicting messages in the media. The result, inevitably, was that workers just gave up, went back to the countryside and stayed there. Now that the economy is being reopened, it’s like the boy who cried wolf: workers are in a state of disbelief. Many are staying right where they are. And many of those coming back are sharing digs with friends or have rented rooms but are not yet committing themselves to working again until they are sure that the government won’t throw everything into reverse. A number of restaurant owners I’ve spoken with told me that they regularly call former employees, pleading with them to return and take up their old jobs. So far they are having only limited success. In some countries in Indochina – Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam – huge swathes of urban service (and manufacturing) employees are not yet willing to return from rural areas or are returning and either not working, doing work on a gig basis, or trying to start their own businesses. Retailers, restaurants, and hotels are still attracting applicants but they are too often not up to snuff in terms of foreign language ability and the soft skills that are critical in customer-facing roles. The results are painfully evident: indifferent service in shops, customer problems not being solved or even addressed in hotels, and long waits and botched orders in restaurants. Add to this the perpetual unease surrounding safety and dining out has in some instances become an ordeal. Recently, at a popular restaurant where I have eaten countless times, I was almost rugby-tackled by two wait-staff as I went to take a seat outside: they wanted to see my proof of vaccination before I could sit. Some of the fracas I see in restaurants I just never experienced before 2020. At one busy restaurant, I witnessed a fight break out between an American customer and the burly Italian restaurant owner, after the customer rebuked the owner for not having enough staff and for openly shaming the few inexperienced employees for their mistakes. An aggravating factor in the labour supply issue is that migrant workers who were laid off early in the pandemic moved back to their own countries and have not been able to return because of restrictions on border crossing. On the surface, this is more an issue in the industrial and agricultural sectors but in a sense it hurts retail, too, since some of the workers who were formerly in retail are now, in the absence of migrant workers, choosing to do farm and factory work because it offers more stability. Certainty from governments will help Just as with the broader supply-chain issues that have been plaguing economies, the labour supply problem will gradually sort itself out as governments demonstrate more predictability in easing restrictions on businesses. Guaranteeing that businesses will be allowed to remain open, reinstituting normal hours of operation, easing restrictions on what can and cannot be served in restaurants, and other confidence-building measures will all help bring workers back who have the skills and experience to make shopping and dining out fun again. Border reopenings and easing of entry rules and requirements will also help tourism-dependent countries get back service workers, simply by boosting demand for retail goods and services. When shops and restaurants get busy, the word travels fast. Finally, governments and employers have to assure workers that their workplaces are safe, and that is one of the biggest challenges of all when it comes to luring people back to their jobs. The rumour mill is always busy, and anecdotes, true or false, are invariably magnified as they circulate by word of mouth. A concerted media campaign with a single unified message – perhaps partnering governments, professional trade groups, and business leaders – would help to reassure workers that everything is under control. Until there is consistent messaging, workers will continue to stay home.