In Liberty County, workers who quit feel liberated, but the community discovers a powerful downside
Liberty County, a 45-minute drive southwest of Savannah, is Quit Town USA - one of many places across the country where the pandemic slammed the brakes on propulsive job growth and startling numbers of people have quit their jobs this year, including more than 12 million Americans this fall alone.
The result, according to business owners and county officials, is a place where people are thinking about work in new, sometimes revelatory, ways - but also feeling the pain of reduced services, pinched bottom lines and a diminished sense of community.
Workers who have stepped away from full-time jobs say the pandemic helped them discover they can survive on occasional gig work and government benefits. And many Liberty County residents left minimum-wage positions at restaurants, hotels and retail outlets to take jobs at the county's burgeoning warehouses and distribution centers.
The upside: as much as double the pay and more flexibility in work hours. The downside: severe strains at the mom-and-pop businesses they quit - and damaged or severed long-standing social bonds.
Maggie Towne quit her job as a hotel front-desk manager because the pandemic taught her she could squeeze by without her paycheck. Now home with her kids, Towne says her life is much improved, but at the La Quinta hotel she left, an exodus of housekeepers and front-desk workers forced owner Hasit Patel to close the swimming pool and fitness center and sharply reduce room cleaning.
Fannie Lou Brewton left her job as a cook because she didn't want to be around so many people anymore. She realized, she said, that "I did enough." She's delighted that the coronavirus pandemic drove her into retirement, but at Izola's Country Cafe, where the staff has plummeted from 42 to 12 workers, the owners had to eliminate breakfast, slash their hours and shut entirely on Sundays.
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Yikes
