are too many restaurants discriminating against hiring older servers?

Question

I have gone to a 'Chili's" resturant and others and notice that there are mostly college age help there. I know the servers get decent tips so we are not talking about a place where there is low pay where some jobs mostly have teens or younger adults working there. It's not that I don't want college age workers around but aren't those businesses purposefully leaving out experienced servers who are older? Some of these younger workers don't have the customer service down and you usually get good work ethic with somewhat older servers. These places aren't cheap to eat at so you would expect good and experience workers and yes I know some of them are already.

Answer 1

I like to think the older people move on to bigger and better things.

Answer 2

There are myriad reasons. For instance, older workers are already trained, but that's not good for the boss. They want kids who can be trained *their* way. Also, older workers have already probably been doing this for a long time and expect more money than the kid. The management may think that anyone older than a kid is slower. I'm 34 and had a hard time getting hired as a server because of experience and when I did get an interview I got "So you think you can adapt to a new place after working for *foo*?"

Answer 3

I don't work in the food industry, but I have noticed that when I go out, most of the servers are younger. I'm not sure if restaurants such as Chili's, or Ruby Tuesdays will take the younger work force and as the work force gets older they may move on to more sophisticated restaurants. My brother is a manager at Chili's, I'll forward this question on to him.