The hospitality industry has been forced into playing what is essentially a giant staffing jigsaw puzzle, as venues across the city lose staff forced into isolation after either contracting COVID-19 or being deemed a close contact of the virus.
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Jeremy Norris, owner of the Byng Street Café - along with six other venues - says he's been lucky to keep his cafes open as NSW gets swept up in the latest COVID-wave.
He described rostering as "a constantly-evolving puzzle anyway" but the added strain of isolation with COVID circulating in the community has made that task infinitely more difficult.
"For example, one of our cafes we recently opened at Bloomfield Medical Centre, the current roster we've got, I mean ... the manager was the only one who didn't have COVID," Mr Norris said.
"[And at] the DPI café we own, [DPI staff] are all on work-from-home orders, so our baristas there we've had to move to other venues. It's just making the current puzzle work as best you can."
The Royal Hotel's Lillian Evans said staff rostering has also been impacted at their pub due to the current outbreak of COVID-19 in the city.
"Business has definitely been impacted here, it's really slowed down and workers have been sick even just in general as well," Ms Evans said.
"Some of us have been working longer hours to cover everything, but it's been manageable at this point and we haven't had to close down the bistro side of things, which is really good.
"We've just got to push forward and keep doing what we can."
Another of the city's pubs pushing forward through this COVID-clash is The Victoria Hotel. The pub released a statement on January 6 via its Facebook page announcing the forced closure of the venue for a week.
"Due to a household close-contact, unfortunately [The Vic] will be closed for seven-days," the Facebook post read.
The Vic Hotel will re-open on Tuesday, January 11.
Chief human resources officer for the Orange Ex-Services Club, David Carson said while the outbreak had presented a few challenges with rostering the club's capacity to trade hadn't taken a massive hit.
"Much like all local businesses, we've had a few challenges present, but we can maintain a roster and make sure we're providing a safe workplace," Mr Carson said.
"We're not tracking too badly at this stage, and just remaining vigilant with COVID-safety protocols; the key things is that we're continuing to abide by public health and safety orders and working with our COVID-compliance team, too."
With the ongoing viral outbreak at play in the city, Mr Norris said he's been fairly lucky to keep all of his venues adequately staffed as well.
Even though doing so seems outside of the realms of control at this point in time.
"We've somehow managed to keep all of our staff during COVID, and we've been lucky enough to be able to keep all seven of our venues open," he said.
"I think everyone's just going to get [COVID-19], and only then can we all move on; it's impossible to know who's going to get it and when, so I've jokingly asked my staff if they could all just try to rotate the virus by getting it one at a time."
Mr Norris added that his staff are being as careful as they can be, though, in reality, feels everyone is merely "delaying the inevitable".
"It's effecting some people badly, others mildly with just a sore throat and sniffle, but as far as business goes - the puzzle emerges, and we just need to make it work - we're all delaying the inevitable really, that's the reality," he said.
"I think we'll see another couple of months like this - which will definitely keep making things tricky - but hopefully we won't have to close any venues."
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