[HN Gopher] Restaurant workers quit at record rate
___________________________________________________________________
Restaurant workers quit at record rate
Author : boulos
Score : 250 points
Date : 2021-07-20 15:04 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| pm90 wrote:
| > That's because for many, leaving food service had a lot to do
| also with its high-stress culture: exhausting work, unreliable
| hours, no benefits and so many rude customers.
|
| I didn't realize that rude customers was that widespread.
| theonlybutlet wrote:
| I suppose you just need that one clown to come in and ruin your
| day. The odds are stacked against you.
| pphysch wrote:
| All you need is 1 jerk customer to have a bad work day, and
| those jerk customers are probably eating out multiple times a
| week at different locations
| shakezula wrote:
| Have you ever worked restaurant or food service? I worked at
| McDonalds a few years after high school and it was the most
| demoralizing, depressing, and abusive job I've worked. Bussing
| tables wasn't much better in comparison either. But at least
| when bussing tables people didn't talk to you like you were
| human waste.
|
| I had people actually tell me that I was stupid, I had someone
| throw an ice cream at me because they were mad I was parking
| them to wait for their order, I got screamed at far more
| regularly than you would think. That's just the tip of the
| iceberg, and management was usually worse.
|
| No exaggeration: I would be homeless before working at
| McDonalds again. Not because of pride, but because it put me
| into a really bad depression.
| Ajay-p wrote:
| Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9Cec9Fb6JI
| thrill wrote:
| It's even worse than the article touches on.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Go on a cruise and spend some time people watching. People can
| be awful.
| speg wrote:
| Cruisers specifically? People are awful everywhere :(
| Aboh33 wrote:
| Likely where the whole "Karen" Stereotype came from in part
| ashtonkem wrote:
| It doesn't take a lot of rude customers to really ruin your
| day. Even a 5% rate of toxic customers will weigh on your
| emotions heavily, given the outsized impact they can have. And
| the rate might be much higher than 5%.
| foxyv wrote:
| The terrible customers are rare. Maybe 1% of the public.
| However when you service 200 people you will have an ~80%
| chance to run into at least one terrible customer. If you don't
| feel protected or supported this can be soul crushing. Even
| worse if you come home to poverty.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| I think you're hitting the nail on the head here.
|
| 1) Lack of general(outside work) support for what essentially
| is an empathy job (care about the customer experience)
|
| 2) Lack of social enforcement of dont be a piece of shit.
| People used to call out people more for behavioral standards
| (swearing, presumption of positive intent, codes of dress, on
| and on the list goes...)
|
| Next time you see someone being treated poorly speak up.
| Everyone is too busy recording for youtube rather than
| interacting in the environment. We've become passive
| observers rather than active partakers in life.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| Part of it is a numbers game. One asshole per unit of time is
| stressful regardless of how many non-assholes you serve in that
| same unit of time. Now consider that a waiter working a 30 hour
| week can serve hundreds of individuals at even a modest
| restaurant.
|
| Less objectively, I feel like assholes are much more likely to
| express their negativity in a service scenario. You may run
| into these people all the time and not see their behavior until
| you're the one serving them.
|
| The ways some people not-uncommonly behave can be absolutely
| gobsmacking. It's hard to relate to what is going on in these
| people's emotional thoughts. Spontaneous stress reactions like
| road rage are at least _relatable_ , but the purposeful way
| some people treat others when being _served by them_ can be,
| frankly, totally alien.
| devwastaken wrote:
| In my experience out in more remote areas rude customers are a
| daily occurrence. People like to feel power over others, and
| have very little in terms of self control. Companies won't boot
| them because there's plenty of people whom are intentionally
| dishonest and will then label the company as being "sensitive
| liberals" or otherwise. Which then gethers people around it
| whom are just looking to take a bat to the "other team". It's a
| scapegoat for bad behavior I've seen multiple times.
| skibby wrote:
| Bring in the robots
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| Avoid this kind of mostly seasonal work, it's a chain of pressure
| all the way down. High rent pushes the restaurants to increase
| prices and reduce the good content of the menues. The food in the
| vast majority of restaurants these days is more unhealthy than a
| mc Donald's menu, they use a lot of oil, the meat is minimal, you
| get the fatty parts instead of the lean parts and they add the
| most economical sides like fries to fill the gaps. It contributes
| a great deal to obesity, people's lazyness, I simply do not
| support any of this. And all the jobs are unthankful, be it in
| the kitchen, waiter or door staff. If the quality of the food
| would be amazing, i would change my opinion. By amazing quality,
| my standard is the evening buffet , all you can eat events in a
| Hilton, and in most places it's a good price. You can include
| Marriott as well, but the vast majority of random restaurants
| serve worse food than mc Donald's(which at least is fairly
| priced, fast, clean premises and tasty enough). Tip or no tip is
| not the issue, it's a dead end job with zero perspective and
| requires shift work or worse , seasonal availability. You learn
| nothing that could advance your career in a meaningful way. Treat
| the job as such.
| moate wrote:
| Good.
|
| Here's my story from the industry I was a part of for a better
| part of a decade: One time while I was a line cook, I was
| cleaning a meat slicer and sliced 3/4ths of the way through the
| tip of my thumb (just the meaty part at the end, not bone or
| anything). I realized I had 2 options: Leave work, go to the ER,
| miss my shift/pay, and incur a bunch of medical debt I could
| barely afford OR; leave work, go to the CVS around the corner,
| buy a bottle of superglue, and patch myself back up. My boss even
| told me if I just needed to run to CVS, I wouldn't need to clock
| out, what a great guy! This was at an upscale Italian place on
| the Asbury Park boardwalk that was doing millions of dollars in
| sales every year.
|
| When I left the industry to go into tech, I never looked back. I
| will always have a love/hate relationship with the industry. I
| love the creativity, the people, the experience of dining. I hate
| everything about the exploitative labor practices. I wish
| everyone leaving the industry good luck on their new, hopefully
| better paths. I wish every manager crying poor and bemoaning that
| nobody wants their poverty wages in a physically crushing
| industry a very fuck you.
| himinlomax wrote:
| This is the most incredible thing about the US. Employers
| should be responsible for workplace safety and pay for it.
| sigstoat wrote:
| his employer surely had workers comp insurance, and big signs
| about it in the breakroom, which are required by law.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Workers comp insurance would have/should have paid for your ER
| bill, worst case you hire a personal injury attorney who would
| love the chance to sue a multi-million dollar business for a
| claim like that.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Do you not have workers comp? I sliced my thumb open working at
| a Kroger deli, never got even a hint of a bill. Workers comp
| covered everything.
| k33n wrote:
| Great servers at high end restaurants are making 100K a year
| because of tips. Why would they want to make $20 an hour?
| burnished wrote:
| They don't. Everyone else in the industry would prefer it.
| efa wrote:
| I've heard of servers making so much they can't afford to move
| to a white collar job (or would have to take a pay cut).
| Ajay-p wrote:
| I don't agree that "great servers" are making 100K because of
| tips, but instead it is because of the generalized _percentage_
| gratuity. Just because the food was $150 doesn 't mean the
| service was great, and just because the tip was large, doesn't
| mean the service was good.
|
| In my experience only half of the population tips based on
| percentage, and it's generally those who eat at high end
| places, or seem to be more affluent. The rest tip based on
| "service" and that could be 5% on a $150 bill, or 20% on a $15
| tab. I've seen both, and I think your example only applies to a
| very small percentage of wait staff.
| yurishimo wrote:
| I know for me personally, I tend to tip a percentage,
| regardless of the cost of the meal. If I go to a fancy
| steakhouse and the service is crap, chances are the server is
| still gonna get $20 out of me.
|
| I came from a food service background though and realize
| people have bad days, but it does put me in a bit of a
| conundrum on how to handle truly terrible service.
| Fortunately for my wallet, I don't frequent those upscale
| establishments so it's not a problem I think about often.
| yunohn wrote:
| Obviously, we should write economic policy for the masses based
| on the Temporarily Embarrassed Millionaire theory for
| restaurant waiters.
|
| /s
| boulos wrote:
| That's a fairly high end restaurant in NYC, San Francisco, etc
| (e.g., servers at Zuni did about $70k/yr including tips [1]).
|
| The person in the article though is in the back of the house.
| Those workers almost uniformly make minimum wage across the
| country.
|
| [1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/Legendary-Zuni-
| Cafe...
| brewdad wrote:
| Why would they only get $20 an hour? If they really are the
| best at what they do, high end places can and will pay more.
| moate wrote:
| Are you in the US? If not, let me explain, as a former US
| Chef, how comp works in the US for FoH employees:
|
| The vast majority (let's call it 99%) of all dining
| establishments pay whatever their local tipped minimum wage
| is (for the purpose of this we'll use the Fed min, which is
| currently 2.13 with a "made whole" rate of 7.25). This means
| all the owner is on the hook for, is: 7.25 - 2.13 - Declared
| tip total.
|
| What does this mean? It means sometimes waitstaff will
| actually have $0 paychecks, because the amount they earned
| actually outstrips the pay coming from their employer due to
| their tax burden on declared tips.
|
| Well we can't have that! So what's an enterprising waiter to
| to? Often, declare as little as possible of their tips. Now
| you can't get away with ignoring credit card totals (there's
| a paper trail!) but you damn well better believe that every
| server (EVERY SERVER) everywhere in the country is doing
| their best to hide that cash from the tax man. Often times
| the managers help them with his (because they were usually
| servers too at some point).
|
| TL;dr- Restaurants aren't paying servers who are making
| 20/hr. What's going on is that those places charge so much
| for their dining experience that it drives of tips (in the
| US, people typically tip as a percentage of their bill, e.g.
| 20 dollars on a 100 dollar meal is considered standard). It
| actually makes more sense for a restaurant to raise their
| prices if they want to their servers to make more money, and
| it STILL doesn't cost them more.
|
| High end places don't need to pay you more themselves to
| attract the best talent. There are only so many places in a
| given area where you can pull in 200-500 dollar nights. If
| you suck, they will fire you comb through the stack of
| resumes they have at any given time to find someone who seems
| likely to not suck.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| I imagine those who are making 100k (if any) are not the ones
| leaving.
| kube-system wrote:
| They are extreme outliers.
|
| The 90th percentile wage for waiters (excluding fast-food!) is
| $20.46/hr. The 75th percentile is $14.73
|
| https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes353031.htm
|
| The vast majority of waiters would love to make a $20 wage.
| gruez wrote:
| Does the BLS data account for under-reporting of cash-based
| tips? If I really was making $100k a year because of tips, I
| would be really tempted to not give 30% (marginal rate) to
| uncle sam.
| kube-system wrote:
| Not sure, but something like 80+% of restaurant
| transactions are electronic these days, and undoubtably
| even higher in expensive restaurants where the unbanked
| can't afford to eat. People pay cash in diners and fast
| food. Fancy restaurants are full of people paying with
| company credit cards or collecting points on their chase
| sapphire or whatnot.
|
| Even if everyone at 4-dollar-sign restaurants was making 6
| digits, that's still a small minority of restaurants.
| yepthatsreality wrote:
| The restaurant industry has known the solution for a long time
| but everyone wants to pretend it would be too difficult.
|
| Stop the tipping guilt trip placed on the public, raise your
| prices 20%, and pay your employees a livable wage. The public
| will still show up to eat in your restaurant.
| cmckn wrote:
| That's one issue, sure.
|
| I think another is the response by the service industry to the
| requirements of the ACA. Everyone I know that works in a
| restaurant had their hours capped just below the line at which
| they'd have to be provided health insurance. Now they have
| multiple jobs. Juggling more than one job is a PITA, but even
| more so when your schedules are constantly shifting. These
| folks need full-time work with a predictable schedule, so they
| can do things like go to the dentist or take their kid to the
| zoo.
| JMTQp8lwXL wrote:
| The pandemic has had me appreciating home cooking more. I still
| eat out occasionally, but for health reasons, I prefer the home
| cooked meal. Pandemic lasted long enough to shift my
| preferences long-term.
| edmundhuber wrote:
| Often tastes better too, tbh. Lots of restaurants overuse
| salt to make up for lack of flavor.
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| What we are observing is the Demand Curve shifting left (people
| less interested in eating out) and the Supply Curve shifting
| down (the people willing to work in restaurants for any given
| wage is going down). Remember that supply and demand curves
| cover all wages/prices and quantities, they are not specific to
| a certain price/wage or quantity.
|
| This is observed as a shortage - more customers willing to buy
| a restaurant meal than the restaurants are willing/able to
| supply at current prices. This must equalize to a new
| equilibrium with higher prices and fewer restaurants. .
|
| I've over-simplified a lot, but it's pretty much right out of
| an Econ 101 textbook.
|
| Some of this might be transient - for example the demand curve
| may shift right again after some time and with COVID well in
| the past.
|
| The supply curve might shift back up if, for example,
| government wage supports are reduced.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I don't think so. Hilton Head Island, SC is a great example
| of the trend that COVID accelerated.
|
| Hilton Head is a popular vacation destination, but as
| development started radiating inland towards I95, all of the
| workers are priced out. The housekeeper at the hotel I stayed
| at in 2019 commuted 2.5 hours daily, and restaurants started
| reducing hours due to labor shortages. COVID made it worse,
| but the problem existed because you can't work in most places
| without covering the cost of operating a car.
|
| My understanding this year is that popular restaurants
| require reservations 60+ days in advance.
|
| There may be some demand shifts at the low end from sit down
| to fast casual, but those are the places where tipped workers
| are paid the least. A waiter at a good steakhouse is making a
| good living, an IHOP waiter makes $10/hr or less.
|
| At the low end, I think those workers have shifted to
| curbside retail. I'd guess the average Target has 12-30 more
| staff to handle curbside orders alone.
| jihadjihad wrote:
| This isn't entirely correct. Your example refers to _two_
| demand-supply pairs, but your analysis equates them.
| Consumers demanding restaurant meals, and the supply of those
| meals constitute one pair. Restaurants _themselves_ demanding
| workers, and workers being reluctant to work for current
| prices constitute a second demand-supply pair.
|
| For the first pair, since the change in the supply (a shift
| of the curve itself, not a walk along the curve) of
| restaurant meals is negligible except in the case of
| restaurants closing in aggregate, a left and downward shift
| of the demand curve (as you note) has the net effect of
| downward pressure on both prices paid and quantities supplied
| of meals.
|
| The second pair's supply curve itself shifts _left and
| upward_ (not downward), which results in a net effect of
| increasing the prices (wages) of restaurant labor, and
| decreasing the quantity supplied (number of workers).
|
| A similar analysis could be performed from the new state of
| each pair: the first pair might actually see its supply curve
| shift left and upward due to these dynamics (restaurants may
| close in aggregate), causing the quantity of meals supplied
| to decrease further and prices of meals to rise, possibly
| though not necessarily up to the level they were before. For
| the second pair, demand for workers might increase in
| aggregate, resulting in a right and upward shift in the
| demand curve, which would further ratchet wages upward
| (barring another supply curve shift) and would help increase
| the number of workers to a level closer to what it was before
| any of these shifts took place.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Is it really a shortage? If the preferences of potential
| restaurant customers simply changes such that they're no
| longer willing to pay enough for a restaurant meal for the
| restaurant to stay financially solvent, that's not a
| shortage. It's only a shortage if something is preventing the
| market price from changing (in this case, the price of a
| restaurant meal increasing) or preventing restaurants and
| customers who are willing to transact from being able to do
| so. Is that the case here?
| dsm4ck wrote:
| "A shortage, in economic terms, is a condition where the
| quantity demanded is greater than the quantity supplied at
| the market price."
| https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/shortage.asp sounds
| like it fits the situation to me.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Indeed, investopedia's definition seems to include any
| time supply is insufficient with no regard for the
| _reason_ that the market price is not increasing.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Investopedia's definition treats the condition where
| price has not yet aligned to a new equilibrium as
| equivalent to one where there is a constraint preventing
| price adjusting to equilibrium. Leaving aside the fairly
| arbitrary question of whether it is correct to call both
| conditions "shortages", it is important to note that they
| are fundamentally different situations, especially from
| the perspective of "is a policy change needed to address
| it and what policy change would that be."
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| This is because the reason is irrelevant to whether there
| is a shortage or not. A shortage is when _at the given
| price_ a higher quantity will be demanded than will be
| supplied.
|
| The normal market solution to a shortage is to raise
| prices until there is no longer an excess of supply _at
| that higher price_
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| It is a shortage until prices rise, quantity demanded goes
| down, quantity supplied goes up and a new equilibrium is
| attained. This might take a few minutes, or even
| milliseconds, or it might take many months, or it might
| never happen.
| pixl97 wrote:
| does it matter if it's a technical shortage or just and
| observed one?
|
| The only thing preventing restaurants from changing their
| prices is the 'penguin on an iceberg' issue. You may be
| correct in raising your prices, but if other restaurants
| are willing to lose money longer before they raise their
| prices your business may suffer/fail because of it before
| the rest of the market changes their prices/wages.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I'm no expert in how economists use the term, but I
| suppose it could certainly be called a shortage if there
| is some systemic reason why restaurants can't (or at
| least think they can't) raise prices in the short term.
| Personally I don't find that likely, at least based in my
| region where restaurants have indeed raised prices and
| many seem to be thriving (although many others failed in
| 2020).
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > does it matter if it's a technical shortage or just and
| observed one?
|
| Yes. A so-called "observed shortage" is not a shortage,
| its just buyers wanting a good without wanting to pay the
| price it costs to buy in the present market conditions.
|
| A _real_ shortage involves either a constraint which
| prevents price adjustment to an equilibrium of supply
| /demand or demand and supply curves shaped in such a way
| that no equilibrium point exists (which, I guess, is just
| a very special equilibrium-preventing constraint.)
|
| The solution to an observed shortage of labor is
| "employers pay more and quit whining".
|
| The solution (if it is solvable at all) to a real
| shortage depends on what constraint prevents equilibrium
| from being reached.
| tshaddox wrote:
| There is a slight distinction here though. I would tend
| to only describe the situation as a "shortage" if there
| is insufficient supply to meet demand _at the actual
| price sellers are offering_. If restaurants double their
| prices and thus a lot of people are no longer willing to
| pay (and are upset), that 's not what I would consider a
| "shortage" (although it might certainly be described as
| such in headlines or in conversation). In my view that's
| no more a shortage than the ongoing lack of supply for
| private jets at the price of $10,000. I'd pay $10,000 for
| a private jet!
|
| But there can also be a fuzzy area here. There may be
| situations where most sellers have not raised their
| prices to respond to decreased supply (for a variety of
| reasons), and therefore other mechanisms (like who gets
| in line the earliest) determine who gets to buy. At the
| same time there may be a small number of sellers who _do_
| raise prices (think of the toilet paper hoarders who
| resell on Craigslist at huge markups). If you consider
| that higher reseller price to be the "market price" then
| that wouldn't wouldn't strictly be a shortage, but if you
| consider the unchanged price to be the market price then
| that would indeed be a shortage. (In fact, this is why
| for every natural disaster there are articles with
| headlines like "Price gouging is actually a good thing;
| it's the solution to shortages.")
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| "The solution to an observed shortage of labor is
| "employers pay more and quit whining"." - Keep in mind
| that going along with higher prices (wages), there will
| be a lower quantity (jobs). At least according to your
| Econ 101 book.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > "The solution to an observed shortage of labor is
| "employers pay more and quit whining"." - Keep in mind
| that going along with higher prices (wages), there will
| be a lower quantity (jobs).
|
| No, that would only be true if there was _not_ an
| observed shortage; that is, if the current market price
| was clearing the market with no unmet demand at the
| market clearing price.
|
| An observed shortage that is not a real shortage means
| that the market price can rise to the point of market
| equilibrium without reducing quantity traded. In fact
| with a normal supply curve shape, the minimum price
| increase to achieve equilibrium will _increase_ the
| quantity traded compared to the status quo, as quantity
| supplied will increase with price. Quantity _demanded_
| will be lower than in the status quo, but since the
| "observed shortage" is quantity demanded being above
| quantity supplied and, therefore, traded at the current
| price, that reduction is literally just reducing the
| "observed shortage" to zero, not reducing quantity
| traded.
| b3morales wrote:
| That seems to assume that the products are completely
| interchangeable. Even between restaurant chains I don't
| think that's true. And independent restaurants are _very_
| individual, even unique. Some people like one type of
| food or dining experience, some another, and they may
| forego dining out altogether rather than substitute.
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| Kinda, but not really. Remember that a shortage is an
| excess of demand at a given price. Meaning implicitly
| that, at the margin, prices could go up some small amount
| and there will still be a queue/line/excess of people
| willing to pay that marginally higher price.
|
| So as a restaurant, very roughly speaking, you basically
| can raise prices until the line starts to go away.
| Unfortunately customers can be very stubborn and would
| rather wait in a 1hr line somewhere else, or not go out
| at all, for quite a while before eventually coming around
| to the new normal and accepting your new, higher price.
|
| And you will still probably end up with fewer restaurants
| along the way, as those least-profitable and with the
| shortest lines outside, go away.
| wernercd wrote:
| > The supply curve might shift back up if, for example,
| government wage supports are reduced.
|
| This is the key... the problem isn't really the market...
| it's the market interference.
|
| First COVID and the "lockdowns" (effective or not)... and
| then the resulting "free" money that makes it more lucrative
| to be on unemployment than working a job.
| milesskorpen wrote:
| I don't think there's much evidence of a sustained decrease
| in demand for dining.
| dud7d7ueu wrote:
| People become servers because of the tips not in spite of them
| 9/10 times. Of the servers I've known every single one chose
| serving because it beat the hell out of the other available
| low-requirement options they had. Complaining about tipping is
| easily one of the most counter productive forms of woke culture
| I encounter on a regular basis.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Suppose I don't care about the workers and I just want the
| actual price I'm going to pay printed on the menu, with no
| additional charges and fees at the end? Does that make me
| "woke"?
| bluGill wrote:
| I care about service. It is a pleasure being able to reward
| good service.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Nothing about what I suggested would prevent you from
| doing that.
| kop316 wrote:
| That may be the case for some....but that is not the case for
| all. For one ancedote, my father in-law runs a restaurant with
| my aunt in-law (his sister). They are the only workers, and
| split the profits evenly. They are in the midwest (low taxes),
| and own the restaurant's property/building. They were able to
| completely shut down during COVID and restart back up, and have
| survived several economic downturns.
|
| They are still worried about the long term health of the
| business because of enternal cost increases (food, supplies,
| etc.), and are honestly thinking of just shutting down their
| restaurant and retiring rather than raising prices. They
| honestly think that if they raise their prices to get the same
| profit (NOT increase, just to keep it the same!) they have been
| getting, no one will come anymore because the cost is too much.
|
| They by comparision to a lot of other business are lucky! They
| don't have to worry about rent at all, and they only have
| themselves to pay. Both also have other external sources of
| income (their spouses works), and have absolutely zero debt.
|
| I can't imagine how it is for business that have rent (and
| possibly rent backpay) and employees they need to pay. I went
| to Northern VA (Reston) before and after COVID....so see almost
| all of the local restaurants and a great local grocery store
| wiped out because the property management were so unforgiving
| for rent.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| I'm sure things are more complicated than you describe, but
| it seems like they fear increasing prices will lead to
| closing, and to avoid this they're... just going to close?
| kop316 wrote:
| Sorry, should have been more specific! More correctly, they
| are debating if it's just time to retire now and be
| grandparents full time rather than risk losing a lot money
| in the restaurant due to increased prices, then being
| forced to retire.
|
| I assume "closing down the restaurant and retiring" means
| they will sell the restaurant (or at least the property),
| but I am not sure to be honest?
| ac29 wrote:
| Would raising prices 5 or 10% be so catastrophic to
| revenue that they couldnt even give it a few weeks? Or
| are they looking at a 50%+ price increase?
|
| If they want to retire anyways, then good for them. But a
| lot of businesses have had to raise prices this year,
| including grocers, which are arguably restaurants only
| competition. I think folks would understand.
| Arainach wrote:
| If raising the prices drives away customers, you have now
| lost a notable value if you try to sell. Brand perception
| is (almost) everything. Unless you offer something truly
| unique or exceptional, you're replaceable in just about
| every market.
|
| There was a local beer taproom/bottle shop that I
| frequented a lot for years. Even as craft beer became
| more prominent and there were more local options, I liked
| it enough to keep going, but fundamentally there came a
| point where they raised their prices enough that I
| started going elsewhere, and once I broke that habit
| there was never a big reason to go back unless I was
| meeting someone else there once in a while.
|
| In this case, "enough" was in the 20% range, but given
| what's happened to food prices lately I don't think 5-10%
| is a realistic number for a restaraunt either.
| ac29 wrote:
| > If raising the prices drives away customers, you have
| now lost a notable value if you try to sell. Brand
| perception is (almost) everything. Unless you offer
| something truly unique or exceptional, you're replaceable
| in just about every market.
|
| Agreed in general terms, but who is going to buy a
| business that cant even cover its costs? It sounds like
| this business has a negative expected value without
| raising prices.
| fumar wrote:
| Is this inflation creeping up in all the expected places?
| The value of goods is the same but the value of the USD
| is lower and thus we must increase costs. I don't see it
| impacting brand perception if all prices go up.
| wetmore wrote:
| https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/price_stickiness.asp
| syntheticnature wrote:
| They're just going to close... without risk of losing money
| by trying to raise prices and seeing what happens.
| bluGill wrote:
| There is a certain amount of investment needed to keep
| going. If you are going to close the restaurant next year
| you can keep the current tables, otherwise replace them
| before they get too worn out. Or maybe it is the fry
| machine at the end of life, replace it for $50,000. If the
| restaurant continues for a few more years it is worth it,
| to fix/replace things, but if the restaurant is doomed it
| is better to cut your loses.
|
| Even in the best of times restaurants are the hardest
| business to run successfully. These are not the best of
| times, and (as always) it isn't clear what the future will
| hold.
| patentatt wrote:
| I realize this was in hypothetical terms, but do fry
| machines really cost $50k!?
| teawrecks wrote:
| If your expected return on investment is negative, isn't
| the rational decision to not invest in the first place?
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| >> They are in the midwest (low taxes)
|
| Not in Minnesota, obviously.
| tarmon wrote:
| Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin are higher than much of the
| country.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_income_tax#/media/File:
| T...
| jklinger410 wrote:
| > shutting down their restaurant and retiring rather than
| raising prices
|
| Sounds good.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Business owners can raise their prices slowly. You know, boil
| the frog. Surely that prevents the harsh reactions that
| customers have to suddenly having the price raised?
| BuckRogers wrote:
| >They honestly think that if they raise their prices to get
| the same profit (NOT increase, just to keep it the same!)
| they have been getting, no one will come anymore because the
| cost is too much.
|
| That may be true, but you mentioned they're in the midwest.
| So am I. I'm in the heavy hitter, Chicago, but I'm from
| Smalltown, Midwest. I can say that NOTHING is free.
| Everything is a trade off. All those years of low taxes?
| Yeah, no one has any money in the midwest. Raising prices may
| well run people off. They already got the reduced-risk
| benefit of the midwest for decades, ability to own the
| building, lower taxes. Having a poorer local clientele was
| the price for those securities. That was part of the trade
| off.
|
| You aren't just flat out "getting a better deal" as they
| probably felt, doing business in the midwest vs coasts. It is
| absolutely not outright just a "better place to do business".
| Other than perhaps our environmental stability (the
| greenhouse effect matters less, no fires, abundant fresh
| water, no fault lines outside of the St. Louis locale, etc.),
| those things are starting to matter in a big way, but are of
| limited benefit to a restaurant.
|
| They already took the benefits from this area. All comes out
| in the end, but generally the midwest grants you more
| stability/security, while you end up poorer at retirement
| than someone that earned more dollars on the coasts. Same end
| result for them, just like the rest of us.
| posguy wrote:
| Sounds like its time for them to raise prices past what they
| deem to be a reasonable rise. Other restaurants in the area
| will likely do the same, and not pricing yourself to match
| can cause a drop in business as people seem to think the more
| they pay the better the quality (especially when your service
| or offering is priced on the low end of the market).
|
| You might look at this and say charging $4 for X item is
| already at the edge of reasonable, but when your neighboring
| restaurants are already at $6 to $8 there is little reason to
| offer screaming deals. Its just a sign that its time to
| reprice to $7 to $8 for your own offerings, providing more
| profit to interest the dual owners moving forward. Reducing
| hours would also be a good idea for a owner operated business
| like this!
| pixl97 wrote:
| timing the market is everything. Consider this the 'first
| mover disadvantage'. If you price yourself at the higher
| end of the market before the rest of the market moves, the
| lower price competitors will absorb your clientele.
|
| In addition, type of food matters a lot. A place that sells
| 'cheap slop on a plate' has lot less price flexibility than
| a boutique that sells fancy sushi.
| [deleted]
| namdnay wrote:
| Honestly, as necessary as that is, it's not a magic solution.
| People are quitting the restaurant industry in France too,
| despite having none of the tip silliness.
|
| It's just that people are realizing that there are easier
| minimum wage jobs than working in a kitchen
| jcun4128 wrote:
| hehe I escaped into tech, but I remember washing plates
| listening to podcasts
|
| listening to Changelog while riding my bike at night after
| getting out of the factory
| minikites wrote:
| >It's just that people are realizing that there are easier
| minimum wage jobs than working in a kitchen
|
| Exactly, so restaurant owners should raise wages to
| compensate. There's not a shortage of workers, there's a
| shortage of owners willing to pay the current market wage.
| FredPret wrote:
| I agree. It's a simple matter of supply and demand. Want
| more supply? Raise the price!
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| In france being a waiters is way harder than most others
| jobs. At most jobs you get to work 35 hours on regular days,
| with a lot of hollidays and a fixed schedule.
|
| Restaurants have a lot of legal exceptions because you need
| people to work on sunday, vacations, weird schedules, etc.
|
| So compared to other situations in the same country, it's not
| a good deal.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| >> Restaurants have a lot of legal exceptions because you
| need people to work on sunday, vacations, weird schedules,
| etc.
|
| Actually a lot of industries have this problem.
|
| I was a smartphone tech. I repaired phones. You know when a
| majority of our business was done? On weekends and
| holidays. Whenever my GF had a national holiday, I had to
| work because it meant the people who put off fixing their
| phones will take that day and come it for a repair because
| it was way more convenient than during or after their
| working hours.
|
| I also had to work until 7pm every night for the same
| reason. My owner was banking on people coming home from
| work and stopping, so we stayed open an extra two hours.
| Some days I had five people in my office. Other days? Maybe
| one or two. But those two hours generated a lot more
| revenue than you probably think over the course of a month.
| yepthatsreality wrote:
| Sure but this goes beyond restaurants in my opinion. Look at
| these states that had mass migration of people during the
| pandemic. You will find the (big) sky-rocketing cost of
| living where those who are moving in on a whim are also not
| seeking jobs in the state. However all these businesses need
| employees to handle the new increase in customers. The
| employers aren't raising their wages either, which is also
| not attracting people to work. When the lower classes are
| forced to move elsewhere (Outside the cities) then this
| problem will get worse.
|
| Return to office might have some reverse effect but online
| remote employees can be one of the biggest generators of this
| problem.
| mmcgaha wrote:
| The local DQ sign says $16/hr all positions, so yeah I
| think they are.
| [deleted]
| conductr wrote:
| > The employers aren't raising their wages either
|
| They are. It takes time but they are. I work in a business
| that is having a hard time hiring entry level healthcare
| workers because Walmart and Amazon warehoueses is now
| paying $15-20/hr when it was only $12 pre-covid. Walmart
| and Amazon would only raise wages if they truly had a labor
| supply issue, which they do, we all do.
| andechs wrote:
| Walmart and Amazon raising wages allows them to exercise
| their huge scale to further crush their competitors.
|
| With their huge efficiencies of scale and deep cash
| reserves, they are better able to offer higher wages than
| competitors. During the pandemic, both Walmart and Amazon
| have seen huge growth. They can continue this growth
| post-pandemic by squeezing their competitors on wages,
| and eventually emerging with less competitors.
| j7ake wrote:
| Being able to be more efficient and pass down savings to
| low prices and higher worker wages seem like a good
| thing.
| the-dude wrote:
| Until there is only Walmart and Amazon left.
| bluGill wrote:
| It isn't hard to start a new business. There are a ton
| off niches that Walmart and Amazon don't server well.
| Find one and serve it, then use profits to expand into
| the much larger (though lower margin!) areas that Walmart
| or Amazon serve. Good luck - it is not easy to run a
| business.
| the-dude wrote:
| Just wait until either Amazon or Walmart or both block
| your account for _reasons_.
|
| No soup for you.
| gruez wrote:
| I'm skeptical that you can build a profitable competitor
| by reselling amazon/walmart.
| gruez wrote:
| > Walmart and Amazon raising wages allows them to
| exercise their huge scale to further crush their
| competitors.
|
| Sounds like they're in a no win situation.
|
| If they don't raise wages: "boo they're paying their
| workers slave wages!"
|
| If they do raise wages: "boo they're using their huge
| scale to further crush their competitors!"
| brutal_chaos_ wrote:
| Amazon/Walmart are capable of raising wages to add
| more/retain employees. Other smaller business aren't able
| to adjust as quickly, thus the big box stores take on way
| more workers. If everyone raised wages at the same time
| (a la minimum wage increase or otherwise), then Amazon
| nor Walmart would look like that much of a better place
| to work, eliminating the "boo they're using their huge
| scale to further crush their competitors."
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| I do see a bit of improvement. CVS starts out at $15/hr.
| I have a feeling that is only in certain zip codes?
|
| Kroger decided to close a store because it didn't want to
| pay a covid front line temporary increase of $4/hr.
|
| I don't see a big increase in wages, and I work a lot of
| lousy jobs.
|
| If job conditions were a bit better, a lot of employees
| will stay at a low paying job because they actually like
| their fellow employees, and sometimes the job.
|
| I don't know why being nice/respectful is so out of
| fashion in corporate america?
|
| I grocery shop at Safeway, and The Nugget markets.
| Safeway employees hate their job. They even have a hard
| time retaining new immigrants. When I shop at Safeway, I
| sometimes need to move to another line if I feel the
| checker is having a bad day. (I overheard an employee
| state a manager wanted him at a store 70 miles away at 5
| am the next day, and he told that manager he didn't have
| transportation other than the bus. I wanted to grab the
| phone and lay into that "Manager".)
|
| As opposed to The Nugget, which is notated as one of the
| best 100 places to work. It's like going back to the
| fifties. The employees are nice. It might be they hire
| people whom will have better jobs one day?
|
| Anyways, it's not just about wage. I have had lousy low
| paid jobs I liked, and well paid union jobs I despise.
| vkou wrote:
| > Kroger decided to close a store because it didn't want
| to pay a covid front line temporary increase of $4/hr.
|
| If you're talking about Seattle, Kroger closed that store
| because it was underperforming for years, not because of
| a temporary wage increase that affected every grocery
| store in the city. Weeks later, they started advertising
| open positions with wage increases for nearby stores they
| didn't close...
|
| When it comes to political decisions, firms lie all the
| time about their motivations. I don't understand how
| anyone can take what they say at face value, without any
| means to verify their claims.
|
| The reality is that nobody closes their grocery business
| because labour costs went up for them _and_ their
| competitors. Customers still need groceries to live, and
| you and your competitors just pass the costs directly to
| them, without any change to profit margins or market
| share. Closing your grocery over this is as nonsensical
| as closing your grocery because the spot price of milk
| went up to $15 /gallon.
| archduck wrote:
| Kroger also elected to close three locations in Los
| Angeles rather than hike their employees' pay $5/hr in
| accordance with a new (temporary) hazard pay during
| covid.
|
| It gets argued again and again that the profit incentive
| is necessary for cutting inefficiencies, and looking at
| it from Kroger's perspective, this appears to be another
| such example. Yet this is only the case for Kroger - when
| considered in its full context, as a supplier of
| necessities for working class folks, it's the total
| opposite. It's the composition fallacy at work: just
| because companies with a profit motive evolve to cut
| inefficiencies wherever possible (such as by
| externalizing costs) does not mean that society as a
| whole reaps the same benefits.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > When it comes to political decisions, firms lie all the
| time about their motivations
|
| Of course they're not going to say "we're closing because
| we don't want to pay our employees a decent wage", that
| would be bad optics. You can be pretty sure that if you
| ask employees at the store, they'll say that whatever the
| stated reason, the intended message from the parent
| company is "we ain't gonna pay you more".
| ac29 wrote:
| I'm curious where in the US are healthcare workers
| getting less than $15/hr and what kind of work it is.
| Even the sort of jobs that require no certification, no
| degree, and no experience seem to pay quite a bit more
| than that.
| Kluny wrote:
| Possibly home-care workers, people who look after
| invalids with the type of arrangement where they drive to
| several different houses and provide a couple of hours of
| care at each. It doesn't require any particular
| qualification, but it's difficult and draining work that
| is not usually well-paid.
| pessimizer wrote:
| https://work.chron.com/much-hospital-orderlies-make-per-
| hour...
|
| > Salary and Years of Experience
|
| > Based on the May 2017 salary information from the
| Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), orderlies make a median
| wage of $13.07 an hour or $27,180 a year. Half of
| orderlies receive more, and half make less. The lowest-
| paid 10 percent make less than $9.73 an hour or $20,240 a
| year, while the highest-earning 10 percent get over
| $19.52 an hour or $40,610 a year. Orderlies employed in
| psychiatric and substance abuse hospitals are paid the
| highest average wage of $17.21 an hour or $35,800 a year.
| Nursing care facilities pay one of the lowest average
| wages of $12.00 an hour or $24,950 a year.
|
| > Wages often start out low for entry-level orderlies and
| grow with experience. Some orderlies complete additional
| training and state requirements to advance to higher paid
| nursing assistant or registered nursing roles. In July
| 2018, PayScale.com showed this hourly pay progression by
| experience for nurse aides, orderlies and attendants:
|
| > 0 to 5 years: $8.19 - $15.24
|
| > 5 to 10 years: $8.28 - $15.83
|
| > 10 to 20 years: $8.84 - $17.16
|
| > 20 or more years: $8.73 - $20.00
| FireBeyond wrote:
| EMTs and paramedics.
|
| Often working 24, 36 or even 48 hour shifts.
|
| Often for $15/hr or less (many places will pay EMTs
| literally minimum wage, and tell their employees, "you
| can have as much OT as you want").
|
| Part of it is supply and demand. Private EMS is often an
| in-road or holding pattern to a more "cushy" unionized
| fire department EMS position (where firefighter
| paramedics can make into the six digits). So private EMS
| has little motivation to be competitive - "there's a line
| of 21 year olds who will happily take your job".
| conductr wrote:
| We pay CNA's $12/hr in some markets. Their job is like
| daycare but geriatrics instead of toddlers. It's a lot of
| hands on service on both ends of the gastrointestinal
| tract. There are RN's around in fewer numbers that earn
| more and do the actual clinical parts.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| EMTs make a pittance. Last time I looked it was something
| like $12-15/hr.
| lamontcg wrote:
| everything about that analysis of the situation is
| backwards.
|
| the problem is the restaurants are seeing fewer customers
| due to the pandemic so they can't raise wages, while the
| upper 1/4 or so of the population hasn't been financially
| impacted by the pandemic and housing and rents have
| continued to climb. restaurants can't raise prices in this
| situation and they can't raise wage, which squeezes the
| workers who are now not putting up with it any more.
|
| return to work means continued increase in housing prices
| and if restaurants fully open they're going to have to pay
| more and that means that those wage and rent increases for
| the businesses will have to get passed on as rising prices.
|
| if there's a switch to remote work then that will make
| cities more livable again at current wage costs and menu
| pricing. you lose some disposable income from the seriously
| high wage earners that have left the city, but they'll
| mostly take the distortion of the housing market with them
| while the bulk of the population that makes less than $150k
| will have more left out of salaries to eat out at the
| restaurants.
|
| short term the effect of popping housing bubbles would be
| recessionary, of course, but it'd act more like Volker's
| popping of the 70s stagflation bubble, give it 5 years and
| the "new normal" of consistent housing prices would take
| over.
| foobarian wrote:
| With the SV housing prices what they are, seems like a
| hourly worker can't possibly afford a reasonable place to
| raise a family. Maybe they will end up paying restaurant
| workers a "hazard" wage and treat it like working on an
| oil rig. Do a tour of duty for a month at a time, go back
| to family in a not-insane location.
| anonAndOn wrote:
| This was already happening with gig workers. I've met
| several drivers who were sharing a hotel room with a
| bunch of friends in SF for a week or two to try to earn
| as much as possible before returning home.
| ajross wrote:
| This is exactly it. This is a second order effect of the
| pandemic flight, not a "restaurant" thing at all. People
| facing long term unemployment/underemployment over the past
| year had _huge_ incentives to "move back home" (or
| wherever) to places with lower cost of living.
|
| And who feels that pressure the most? _Service workers_ ,
| who had jobs in the cities, sure, but didn't reap any of
| the economic benefits of all that urban wealth
| concentration. They're overrepresented in the population
| who fled, which means their jobs are now underserved.
|
| Long term, this will probably just be viewed as a
| correction to a few overpopulated urban cores. We'll find
| equilibrium again, though not at the same state as before.
|
| But regardless, the fix here is the same: pay more for the
| jobs and you'll find people willing to do them.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Perhaps the industry is not sustainable then.
| imtringued wrote:
| The modern service job isn't meant to be sustainable in the
| first place. It's entirely based around the idea of having
| surplus labor using it inefficiently.
|
| Any sane economist that has to solve for the constraint
| "everyone has to provide for themselves" aka the mythical
| republican "responsibility" would first start by creating
| enough jobs to reach full employment. When you leave
| everything up to responsibility you also have the duty to
| provide everyone with the ability to live up to their
| responsibility.
|
| Society as a whole doesn't benefit from exploitation or
| unsustainable businesses.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I agree. It seems that most people's "solutions" to this
| "problem" are various ways to make people's live more
| miserable and keep them desperate enough to work shit jobs
| for low pay. I guess a lot of people are just fine with
| having a slave class as long as it means they don't have to
| be inconvenienced in any way.
|
| If this industry literally cannot afford to pay people a
| living wage, if no one wants to work for them and they
| can't remain profitable by making working conditions
| better, then they just shouldn't even exist.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Most eye opening part of the pandemic was the fact that
| in the US the majority of people dubbed as essential and
| forced to work were also the people paid the least.
| Grocery workers standing there with 2 masks on making
| minimum wage while the rest of us waltz in take what we
| need and return to the relative safety of our remote
| work. Then making fast food workers essential instead of
| paying them unemployment was just taking things to
| another level of pettiness.
| rusk wrote:
| Maybe a cut in VAT would help? Although that probably
| doesn't help in the states ...
| Hjfrf wrote:
| If you're taking about the UK, the obvious starting point
| would be ending subsidies for buy-to-let.
|
| In a pandemic with vast spending deficits, the government
| is giving out mortgage holidays, 95% mortgage scheme,
| stamp duty holiday etc.
| bencollier49 wrote:
| I think some of this might be down to a lot of pensions
| being invested in property. It feels a little bit like
| the dam is bursting in several places at once; I'm not
| hopeful.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| It used to be. When ordering food in a restaurant was a
| special thing for special occasions. It was expensive to
| eat out and the workers were compensated for it. Then we
| got to a place where food was supposed fast, cheap and
| accessible to everyone at any time. And suddenly you
| couldn't charge a lot for your food and worker wages
| stagnated. Sure more people work in the restaurant industry
| than they ever did before, but that's what happens.
| Quantity over quality in almost any service industry always
| means abundance of the service at the expense of the
| workers. Take a look at the rideshare business.
| danaris wrote:
| I mean...to what extent does this correlate with the
| _nationwide_ stagnation of real wages?
|
| If your average American working a full-time job can't
| afford to eat out at high enough prices to keep
| restaurants afloat while paying decent wages, that sounds
| like a systemic problem--and we already know that one of
| those exists here.
| namdnay wrote:
| I guess it depends how often you expect to eat out. If
| it's once a month, I think most can afford more expensive
| restaurants
| bluGill wrote:
| Once you learn to cook you won't eat at anything less
| than the most expensive. It is really hard to enjoy a
| meal when you are thinking "I could have done this better
| myself at less cost". Chains and fast food just don't
| provide the quality I demand for the most part, and even
| the independents are hit and miss.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| In this case you're trading out your effort for the cash.
| I'm happy to trade my money, which I earn much more
| efficiently at my job than I can save by cooking, for the
| food so I don't have to put in effort and can enjoy my
| evening out with friends. I'm also more than happy to pay
| a couple of dollar premium to eat fast food than try to
| recreate it on my own while I'm running to work.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Even if you can learn how to cook, it doesn't mean you
| enjoy, or want to spend the time doing it.
| ska wrote:
| > Once you learn to cook you won't eat at anything less
| than the most expensive.
|
| This isn't really true. Restaurants exist to fill a bunch
| of different needs; experience, novelty, convenience etc.
| And expense isn't a particularly good predictor of
| quality.
|
| I do agree that once you can cook well you're much less
| likely to be happy at an overpriced generic version of
| something... which is right where fast casual and big
| chain casual is aimed. But sometimes you go for the
| company and not the food, etc.
| lashloch wrote:
| There's something amusing to me about the idea of an
| industry that "used to be" sustainable. Guess it wasn't
| sustainable after all.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| McDonald's and similar jobs used to be an entry level job
| for teens and college students. When I was 16 I was happy
| to work there for minimum wage ($3.35/hr at the time).
| Nobody other than the mangers did it to support a family.
| It was never understood to be that kind of job. I don't
| know how we got to the point where a no-skills-required
| job that anyone with a pulse can learn to do in a few
| hours suddenly became required to support a family of
| four.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > Nobody other than the mangers did it to support a
| family. It was never understood to be that kind of job
|
| Wrong.
|
| "From the beginning, the minimum wage was meant to be a
| living wage--meaning families could live off of the pay
| comfortably, rather than struggling paycheck-to-paycheck"
| https://www.lendio.com/blog/minimum-wage-livable/
| mortehu wrote:
| The linked article doesn't really substantiate that
| claim, and even so it doesn't actually contradict GP's
| claim about the McDonald's job.
| cratermoon wrote:
| You're correct, McDonald's (and plenty of other large
| employers) probably never thought or cared whether or not
| their minimum wage jobs were for teenagers or parents
| with families. To them, it was just the least they were
| legally allowed to pay, and therefore just a cost to be
| minimized as much as possible.
| hed wrote:
| There are claims that it was meant to keep black people
| out of the workforce.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/carriesheffield/2014/04/29/o
| n-t...
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| _I don 't know how we got to the point where a no-skills-
| required job that anyone with a pulse can learn to do in
| a few hours suddenly became required to support a family
| of four._
|
| Deskilling, derisking, outsourcing. Companies used to run
| their own email, which required a competent mailadmin,
| nowadays you outsource it to Google or Microsoft.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| _Companies used to run their own email, which required a
| competent mailadmin, nowadays you outsource it to Google
| or Microsoft._
|
| Most companies didn't hire a competent mail admin, their
| IT guy would run Exchange on the company fileserver as a
| part of his other duties.
|
| Most of the large companies that used to hire a competent
| mail admin to run their mail servers still run their own
| mail servers.
| watwut wrote:
| It used to be that most jobs were easy to learn.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I don't know where you grew up, but it still looks that
| way in fairly affluent suburbs. In the city, the fast
| food workforce is 75% immigrant single mothers.
| yupper32 wrote:
| > McDonald's and similar jobs used to be an entry level
| job for teens and college students. When I was 16 I was
| happy to work there for minimum wage
|
| And who worked the day shift?
| bluGill wrote:
| Spouses who needed to get out of the house while their
| other half was at work. They loved going to work with the
| same friends every day, chatting while cleaning up after
| the lunch shift... There was enough work to not be bored.
|
| There are a lot of people who like having a job, but
| don't really need the money. Those that need the money
| move up to management if they can.
| watwut wrote:
| Many of those spouses in fact needed money.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > I don't know how we got to the point where a no-skills-
| required job that anyone with a pulse can learn to do in
| a few hours suddenly became required to support a family
| of four.
|
| That's an odd way of looking at it. Surely what happened
| first isn't that the expectations of fast food jobs
| changed out of the blue. Could it instead be that _other_
| jobs which adults worked to support their families went
| away?
| lrdswrk00 wrote:
| It is as a behavioral habit.
|
| People always need to eat.
|
| It's not fiscally viable closed system. Restaurants
| operate on tiny margins and come and go as frequently as
| software startups.
|
| We keep trying to hitch biological necessity to
| ridiculous memes of social capital accumulation,
| inventing more abstract and Byzantine math as if literal
| reality will implode if the rich can't earn a profit.
|
| Like healthcare, the routine is eating is obviously
| necessary. Is the industrialization?
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| >> Restaurants operate on tiny margins
|
| If you are a KFC/Burger King/McDonalds franchisee then it
| seems to work but I have lost count the number of
| establishments that open/closes in that one spot of our
| local mall.
|
| Pub/Indian/Pizza/Chinese/Fish & Chips/ - they come and
| go.
| coredog64 wrote:
| I would draw a further distinction. Some franchise
| operations (thinking Subway and Little Caesars) don't
| really care if you make it: They get their money up front
| and you have to pay to get out.
|
| McD is more strategic: They want a good business plan,
| location, etc. and are very picky at the cost of some
| false negatives.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| >> people are realizing that there are easier minimum wage
| jobs than working in a kitchen
|
| A lot of jurisdictions showed them this when they paid almost
| the the same as their FT take-home pay during Covid. I don't
| think they've left for something better; I think they're
| mostly not doing anything.
| alexott wrote:
| Same in Germany
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| Food is expensive enough as it is, if restaurant prices went up
| 20% overnight I would never go to one again. Tipping is
| irrelevant for fast food.
| distances wrote:
| How expensive are they over there then? I feel restaurants
| aren't best for everyday meals, but rather once a week/month
| social events with friends/SO. That makes price definitely
| less important for me.
|
| Also, I consequently completely avoid chain restaurants. I
| haven't entered McDonald's since 2008 or so.
| refurb wrote:
| The folks I've talked who were wait staff _preferred_ tips.
| They made $10 /hr ($80 per shift) but could pocket $200 in tips
| on a good night.
|
| Doubling their rate to $20/hr would be a pay cut.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I'm quite sure that less than 100% of cash tips are reported
| as income to the IRS and state revenue departments.
| bluGill wrote:
| There are a few exceptions who report it all I'm sure.
| However a good waiter/waitress can make as much as a good
| software engineer working less hours. Good is key though,
| most don't have the personality to rake in the tips. It is
| a pleasure getting good service where the 25% tip is
| deserved, it is painful having to give a 10% tip for bad
| service.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| Seems like an oversimplification to me. If the owners could
| simply raise prices by 20% and suffer no economic consequences,
| I have little doubt they would. Thus, I can only surmise that
| it is not as simple as that.
| Aunche wrote:
| Owners most likely can raise prices 20% right now, but
| there's no guarantee that restaurant demand will continue to
| be so high. When demand falls, people will still remember the
| inflated prices and may choose to not eat there even if
| prices fall back down again.
| munificent wrote:
| _> If the owners could simply raise prices by 20% and suffer
| no economic consequences, I have little doubt they would._
|
| If all the restaurants did at the same time, they could. But
| if only some do, then the restaurants that underpay their
| workers will have lower prices and outcompete them out of
| business.
|
| You can look at this an yet another example of the core
| problem where consumers don't have visibility into the
| externalities of the purchasing choices. When picking a
| restaurant, you see the food prices, but you don't see that
| one restaurant is more expensive because it treats its
| workers better. That's an encapsulated abstraction. So we
| choose based on price, which inadvertently incentivizes
| restaurants to treat employees like crap.
| handmodel wrote:
| The article says about 5% of workers quit each month. If you
| raise pay by 20% - then maybe this goes down to 3%? I'm not
| sure - it obviously doesn't eliminate the problem entirely
| and either creates the problem of having to raise prices or
| get by with less staff.
|
| I think people on HN may be forgetting the restaurant
| industry does not have the same margins as tech ... and close
| to no one working these jobs (on the employee side) is ever
| hoping to stay there for decades.
| jlarocco wrote:
| Then maybe restaurants aren't a viable business?
|
| I know it sounds crazy because we've had them for so long,
| but maybe it's not sustainable to have so many of them?
|
| In any case, this seems like a great area to let the market
| figure it out. If restaurants go out of business the owners
| and employees will find something else to do.
| Andrex wrote:
| > In any case, this seems like a great area to let the
| market figure it out. If restaurants go out of business the
| owners and employees will find something else to do.
|
| I'm not sure more corporate concentration would be a better
| situation.
| [deleted]
| jlarocco wrote:
| I don't think my comment implies more corporate
| concentration.
|
| And even if it does, why should restaurants be held to a
| higher standard than other sectors? It's fine for Google
| and Facebook to buy up everything, but restaurants can't
| consolidate?
| huehehue wrote:
| Your tone is quasi-facetious, but you do not realize that
| Taco Bell was the only restaurant to survive the
| Franchise Wars, so...now all restaurants are Taco Bell.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| I do think that if it's persistently difficult to find
| workers for non-distortionary reasons, prices will likely
| increase gradually with whatever attendant effects there
| are from that.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| tarr11 wrote:
| A lot of this article is about fast food workers, who don't get
| tips.
|
| The answer is automation, logistics and supply chain
| improvements so you can service more customers with fewer, but
| more specialized employees who can be paid a living wage.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| So is it better to give 10 people some wage, but not a living
| wage, or 5 people a living wage and have 5 people with no
| wage?
| imtringued wrote:
| Automation doesn't cause unemployment or low wages. You can
| always give all people a living wage. Always and I mean it.
|
| I don't know how to express this but it frustrates me a
| great deal.
|
| Money is akin to a video game. It's not real. It's just a
| token that allocates work. It doesn't decide how much work
| there is. People decide. You can spend the same dollar an
| infinite amount of time and thereby create an infinite
| demand for work.
|
| Therefore work becomes a philosophical or an existential
| problem. We work for our own benefit to satisfy our needs
| and desires. To do so we have to do "productive" work,
| meaning work that helps someone else satisfy their needs
| and desires by proxy. What if you have already done enough
| to meet the basic needs of everyone? Yes, we are reaching
| the edge of humanity. The realm of philosophers. Why do we
| live? To work? We already worked enough to live. Beyond
| this point all activity including work is meaningless. When
| you accept that life itself is meaningless then so is the
| work that you do to sustain yourself.
|
| How have humans dealt with this in the past? They did
| wholly pointless work. The pyramids weren't built because
| they were needed, it's because rulers decided to build
| them. Another way is to simply start a war. Once there is
| urgency, politicians are ready to spend whatever it takes,
| no matter how pointless the war. The Chinese just build
| infrastructure and housing even before there is a need or
| purpose.
|
| Here, I'll do it. I'll prove that there is no lack of work
| and it is purely a political problem: Climate change
| prevention requires the creation of a huge amount of jobs.
| Yes this one sentence is a bomb. How does more work,
| research and technological progress make us poorer? It
| doesn't. The whole climate change denial/skepticism thing
| can't be explained by economics because we will end up
| better off by preventing climate change and I am not even
| talking about the benefit of preventing climate change.
| Just the benefit of creating more work. The powerful
| combination of economics and climate should make any
| capitalist immediately support the effort.
|
| The only people who actually benefit from denying climate
| change are those directly working in the fossil fuel
| industry. Germany once gutted 100k jobs in the renewable
| industry to keep 20k coal jobs alive. It's 100% not about
| economics.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Tell me: why do we use backhoes to dig ditches instead of
| armies of workers with spoons?
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Well, if we have a morality of "work is virtue" then
| obviously it's best to spread that virtue to the most. If
| we want to spread wealth to the most to avoid social
| upheaval in the context of that morality, then more
| people employed would be better over fewer with a living
| wage.
|
| Of course UBI or other safety net would be a good way to
| avoid social upheaval as well.
| pwinnski wrote:
| I would respond to your false dichotomy by saying it's
| better to pay a living wage to every person, however many
| people that ends up being.
| Raidion wrote:
| That's a false dichotomy, because those people can go and
| do something else.
|
| Even if we make an assumption that it IS a zero sum game
| (and that there are no other jobs), then we're into a
| wildly different conversation around how we deal with
| allocating finite resources in a culture that supports
| property rights, and no one is going to solve that in a
| hacker news comment chain.
| bsder wrote:
| > That's a false dichotomy, because those people can go
| and do something else.
|
| That is not automatically guaranteed.
|
| Part of the problem with the Western economies is that
| the mills/mines/etc. used to employ a _LOT_ of people.
|
| A good example is the Natrona Heights steel plant. It
| used to employ something like 10,000 people at its
| height. After automation, it will now employ a couple
| hundred.
|
| Where do 9,500 people switch employment to?
| ModernMech wrote:
| This is why we need to get past the idea that everyone
| needs to work to earn a living. Why does anyone need to
| _earn_ the right to live? Our society has enough empty
| homes to house the homeless, and throws away enough food
| to feed the hungry. Why are people still homeless and
| hungry then?
|
| Take your example of the steel plant. Presumably when the
| 9500 people were laid off, productivity remained the same
| (or increased) and costs went down. Where did the extra
| profit go? Was it dispersed among the remaining 500
| workers? Was it used to help the displaced workers who
| devoted years building the steel mill and keeping it
| running? The very people who designed, forged, and
| brought on-line the machines which replaced them? No, the
| upside went to the owners, because they have a slip of
| paper that says they own the mill.
|
| Our problem is not that we're automating away jobs, it's
| that the displaced workers don't get to share in the
| benefits of that automation. Eliminating a job is seen as
| a disaster, rather than a victory. We should _want_ to
| eliminate terrible jobs, not keep them around just so
| someone can stay busy. And I guarantee you, people who
| don 't have to work will find something to do. There's
| _always_ work to be done, just not all of it is
| profitable (e.g. raising children, taking care of the
| elderly, volunteering, open source coding, etc.)
| jhou2 wrote:
| heh or go the other way with more immigration of cheap labor
| who are willing to absorb the abuse.
| edgyquant wrote:
| I'm in favor of immigration but I don't think we should
| incentivize anyone absorbing they abuse.
| Ajay-p wrote:
| That has not worked out so well in other industries.
| Immigrant labor is badly abused, perhaps you said this in
| jest, but I do not think it is something to be taken so
| lightly. This article from the New Yorker may change your
| thinking: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/08/exp
| loitation-a...
| yepthatsreality wrote:
| Automation doesn't solve every problem. Sometimes you want
| human interaction and there's no reason that can't be a part
| of the cost.
| nightfly wrote:
| This just doesn't always work, if you lose more than 20% of
| your customer base when you raise your prices 20% you aren't
| doing yourself a favor.
|
| Anecdotally I've stopped eating at restaurants/food carts that
| I absolutely loved when they've raised prices about that much
|
| ---
|
| You aren't gonna get all restaurants onboard with this at once
| unless you outlaw tipping, and I don't see that happening.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Restaurant work sucks, it's not tipping's fault. I don't work
| nearly as hard as a software developer compared to when I was a
| waiter or cook. Software development is lower stress most of
| the time too.
| daenz wrote:
| I knew someone who was mad at their partner because their
| partner was a software engineer and "didn't work as hard as
| they do" at a lower skill job, and yet made a lot more money.
|
| I'm not sure where this idea comes from that hard work is as
| valuable/more valuable than skilled work. But it seems to be
| a pervasive idea.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I'm not saying it's more valuable, just that it's less
| enjoyable.
| danaris wrote:
| It comes from classism.
|
| Historically, the people doing "hard work" were peasants,
| serfs, and other lower-class people.
|
| The people doing "skilled work" were the educated sons of
| nobility, and later of wealthy merchants.
|
| An awful lot of the unhealthy and destructive dynamic in
| our modern work can be traced to feudalism.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The skilled work went to the guilds.
| ardit33 wrote:
| it is not, but carry on.
|
| Skilled, in late antiquity/mediaval times, meant the
| engineer doing trebuchet, or building ships, or building
| high quality steel, etc.. et.c.. it was actually hard
| work.
|
| None of them were things that the ruling
| class/aristocracy did. They just paid for it (with the
| levies/taxes they took from their land).
|
| Eventually another higher skilled level arised, as
| thinkers/scientists became hired by the court of a
| monarch, or baron.... and being a patron (paying for
| someone to do poetry, science, etc) was a sign of status.
|
| The skilled workers have always been the middle class. It
| took the industrial revolution, where they could become
| rich themselves, and monarchy started becoming
| irrelevant.
| qubidt wrote:
| You aren't refuting the class distinction the parent
| commenter was actually pointing out (serf/peasant class
| vs merchant/"middle" class). That there exists another
| distinction between the ruling class and "middle class"
| in feudal society does not negate the hierarchical
| relationship between said middle class and the laborer
| class.
| cmckn wrote:
| I don't think "hard work" and "skilled work" are useful
| buckets, there's a lot of overlap.
|
| It really boils down to how much money a business can make
| from your outputs. A line cook makes the business less
| money than someone building an AWS service. This is not a
| law of nature, just the status quo.
| FredPret wrote:
| I think the difference in leverage between a software eng
| and a line cook does have a law-of-nature quality to it.
| Line cook serves dozens a day, software serves minimum 0
| and maximum the whole planet a day, _and_ that service
| could stick around for years without degradation
| falcolas wrote:
| Skilled work is not the antonym of hard work. You can work
| hard doing skilled work.
|
| Knowledge work does look different from physical work, but
| you can work hard at both; you need to work hard at either
| to be successful.
|
| As for why hard physical work is so valued - only a century
| or two past, it was the only practical method to prevent
| the starvation for yourself and your family. Knowledge work
| being a viable means of survival (for non-nobles) is pretty
| new, all things considered.
|
| Even my own parents never really understood how knowledge
| work could be as valuable as getting out and working with
| your hands; and they were born in the early/mid 1900's.
| lrdswrk00 wrote:
| I worked in a restaurant through high school and have
| been coding professionally for 20 years.
|
| After a certain point, programming becomes less hard. It
| becomes a set of very familiar syntax snippets to
| copy/paste around.
|
| Rushing around a kitchen in the heat, and often toxic,
| juvenile environment all week never changes... versus
| programming in your house?
|
| Give me a break. You're not coming close to putting the
| same real pressure on your body.
| bluGill wrote:
| There are different hards. I've worked construction: you
| come home at night tired, but your brain is awake and
| ready to think (which is why so many veg on the couch -
| it keeps the brain busy and body resting). In software
| the hard jobs leave your brain tired, but your body is
| ready to go - this is a hard place to be in as your brain
| can't figure out how to get the needed exercise your body
| wants.
|
| Programming can be copy/paste, but the hard days when you
| have to figure out how to eliminate some mutex across
| some threads so the whole performs without a race
| condition - that will always be hard.
| FredPret wrote:
| It took you...
|
| - 20 years of work
|
| - x years of study
|
| - being born with the right nature/nurture mix for
| computer work
|
| ...to get to this point. That's a very significant
| initial hump in difficulty that restaurant work doesn't
| have.
| pessimizer wrote:
| You're equivocating on the meaning of the word
| "difficulty." It's impossibly difficult for anybody but
| me to be exactly me, but that doesn't mean it's hard work
| for me to be me.
|
| I've worked in a factory as a machine operator, and in a
| company as a programmer, and they're not comparable in
| either difficulty or compensation.
| bigbob2 wrote:
| They never said it took 20 years for programming to
| become less hard
| tester756 wrote:
| yet compare entry level for programming and waiter job
|
| people with engineering degree struggle to find job as
| SE.
|
| let alone that you need to put hundreds/thousands of
| hours into it in your free time
|
| and then still learn a lot as dev in order to move up
|
| i'm not saying that it makes SE harder, just different.
| daenz wrote:
| True, hard work and skilled work are not opposites, but
| you can work less hard doing skilled work (it's almost
| the definition of skilled work), and still have a bigger
| impact than someone working very hard at unskilled work.
|
| I probably should have used the phrase "unskilled work"
| in my original post, but I was trying to convey the
| person's frustrations about "hard work." From an
| outsiders perspective, a skilled knowledge worker doesn't
| look like they're working very hard, but we know that's
| not true.
| blooalien wrote:
| Some "skilled work" intersects with "hard work". There's
| a ton of work in the construction industry that requires
| a very high level of specialized knowledge that sometimes
| takes years of college and practice in their industry to
| learn, just for example. Even more reason that it's
| strange that some people find one type of work somehow
| inherently superior to the other in generalized terms. I
| tend to think that the skill and care that one puts
| behind their craft is maybe what should be more
| important.
| cwkoss wrote:
| > Knowledge work does look different from physical work,
| but you can work hard at both; you need to work hard at
| either to be successful.
|
| Classist wage disparity is a real problem in America
| today. Often knowledge workers who don't work hard earn
| more than physical workers who do work hard.
| elliekelly wrote:
| I suspect it comes from the "truism" that hard work pays
| off. It's understandably frustrating for people when they
| inevitably realize it's not as true as we were led to
| believe. A person can work like a dog their entire life and
| still be poor.
| qubidt wrote:
| Except the measurement of "skill" that accounts for the
| income disparity is not so much "lower skill" vs "higher
| skill" but more "expensive skill" vs "cheap skill". I could
| spend the same amount of time and effort training in
| culinary arts and not approach the income I make writing
| software. That difference isn't "amount of work" or "amount
| of skill" but just the market price of said skills.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > I knew someone who was mad at their partner because their
| partner was a software engineer and "didn't work as hard as
| they do" at a lower skill job, and yet made a lot more
| money.
|
| Wait until they learn about passive income and proper usage
| of leverage!
| pessimizer wrote:
| > I'm not sure where this idea comes from that hard work is
| as valuable/more valuable than skilled work. But it seems
| to be a pervasive idea.
|
| It comes from well-paid workers also liking to pretend that
| they are hard workers. It's required for the moral
| superiority.
| abaracadab wrote:
| I have spent thousands of hours honing my software craft
| outside of work/school hours. I guarantee you most folks
| working those minimum wage jobs are not doing the same in
| their field. If they were passionate about it (whether
| front of house or in the kitchen) they would also hone
| their craft and work their way out of minimum wage.
|
| The problem is that the turnover rate in restaurants is
| ALREADY very high. Most employees see it as a "stepping
| stone" while they get their careers on track.
| moate wrote:
| Hi there. I went to a 2 year college, spent hours outside
| of work reading and working on my craft and was still the
| highest paid line cook at a multi-million dollar
| restaurant at a WHOPPING 15 dollars an hour in 2016 in
| New Jersey.
|
| The industry is terrible. If you didn't work in it, your
| solutions sound a whole hell of a lot like "bootstraps".
| I think "there should not be such thing as poverty wages"
| or "if you can't afford to pay people you can't afford to
| run your business" are better
| qubidt wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > Low wages are the most common reason people cite for
| leaving food service work. But in one recent survey, more
| than half of hospitality workers who've quit said no
| amount of pay would get them to return.
|
| > That's because for many, leaving food service had a lot
| to do also with its high-stress culture: exhausting work,
| unreliable hours, no benefits and so many rude customers.
| abaracadab wrote:
| Some folks would say the same thing about software
| development sucking.
|
| I think it probably depends on which restaurant you work at
| and on your skill set and ability to thrive in that fast
| paced environment.
|
| The difference is that software is easier money if you have
| the knack for that type of work.
|
| But it's like anything: you have folks who are passionate
| about cooking but not business savvy. They might be excellent
| cooks but the potential customers just eat greasy shit and
| don't appreciate nuance of vegetables and spices--and so the
| chefs are at the mercy of substance-less customer demands.
| How can one be excited about that?
|
| Anyway, I don't think the folks quitting their jobs fit this
| category because talented chefs can make a lot more than
| minimum wage. But it's still relevant as one must be excited
| to go to work in the morning.
| blooalien wrote:
| > I think it probably depends on which restaurant you work
| at and on your skill set and ability to thrive in that fast
| paced environment.
|
| Equally true of software development, systems/network
| administration, etc. It can _totally_ suck, or it can be a
| source of joy, growth, and profit, all depending on where
| you 're workin' and who for. Some of the best jobs I've had
| in both industries have been almost like "gettin' paid to
| play" because the whole crew was doin' stuff they already
| enjoyed doin' and doin' it for a boss that knew how to
| motivate in positive ways and how to join in and be part of
| the fun of it all. That _plus_ a paycheck and benefits? Why
| would anyone ever want to go back to a shit job after
| knowing _good_ jobs exist out there.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| In the end restaurant work is completely unfulfilling,
| largely because tons of customers treat you like shit. I've
| never experienced that as a software engineer. It's not
| even about the pay.
| ketzo wrote:
| I think this is a little ignorant of the actual, moment-to-
| moment realities of working these jobs.
|
| Software development is done from a laptop, in whatever
| air-conditioned room or office you'd like.
|
| Restaurant work is, by definition, hot, loud, and
| surrounded by people who treat you like a servant.
|
| You could take two people who have the exact same "knack"
| for each profession, and one of them would still be much
| more miserable.
|
| It just sucks more to be in a restaurant than it does to
| write code. I think that's kind of tough to argue.
| wyager wrote:
| For me, job stress has little to do with being extremely busy
| in the moment and a lot to do with thinking about far-flung
| high-leverage consequences of mistakes (will this system
| crash in the middle of the night 2 weeks from now, costing
| tons of money and causing someone to call me in a panic?).
| With something like being a cook, failure feedback is usually
| pretty immediate, which IMO is nice for stress levels.
| rocgf wrote:
| Have you ever worked in a kitchen or are you just assuming?
|
| I personally haven't worked in a restaurant, but I see how
| the staff and chefs are always running around, doing 20
| things at once. Stimulants use like cocaine and amphetamine
| is endemic in the industry as well, probably for that
| reason.
|
| As a restaurant worker, the pay is usually terrible as
| well. So while some super rich corporation won't lose
| millions off of your mistakes, you can lose your job and be
| forced to live off of your inexistent savings. That sounds
| very stressful to me.
|
| Your assessment for what constitutes stress seems to be, at
| best, highly subjective.
| throwmamatrain wrote:
| Ex-deli/pizza shop worker here, you can leave it all at
| the store when you leave. Your slicer will not send you a
| message at 2am that everything is burning.
|
| For some people, server jobs are a between what they're
| doing. Especially for artists/filmmakers it's money
| between the gigs that don't pay. I met tons of people as
| a barista doing exactly that.
|
| Worked through college, and yes conditions need to be
| better overall. A concern would be if it's now a FT 40h
| something or other, it squeezes out people who take 6
| months making coffee to get to their next acting gig.
| Also, barista jobs are a dime a dozen once you make some
| friends. Very easy to get rehired, people talk.
| cle wrote:
| I cooked in professional kitchens for years before
| becoming a software engineer.
|
| For me, the _cumulative_ stress of the software industry
| is a lot higher. I can never quite "turn off" and in the
| long-run it's a lot harder for me to control my
| psychological stress, than when I was working in a
| kitchen.
|
| (And of course these are highly subjective, I'd expect
| nothing less from a psychological phenomenon. Anecdotes
| will likely be all over the place.)
| rusk wrote:
| I worked in very busy bars for a number of years. It's
| hard sometimes back breaking work but it was certainly
| much more "fun". Up until the point where you end up
| working for penny pinching gradgrinds who see your "fun"
| as an externality to be eliminated. At least as a
| software developer I've a good bit more leverage around
| matters of occupational convenience.
| conductr wrote:
| I wouldn't be a good cook, but I get what you're saying. I
| miss the jobs I had when I was young that were just
| repetitive tasks, once muscle memory was established, you
| could work a shift and have a fresh mind with no stress as
| soon as the shift ended. I suppose it would be nice if I
| had my current income with that type of job but alas it was
| also very unsatisfying to do for a long period of time and
| I think I'd feel a bit unaccomplished for doing that job
| for a career.
| pphysch wrote:
| I don't think higher wages alone will do it.
|
| Profit sharing, on the other hand...
| abawany wrote:
| Blackstar Co-Op in Austin (https://blackstar.coop/) is a
| great example imo. The service is great and the missing
| begging bowl is a great relief. Hopefully there are more
| examples.
| flir wrote:
| I wonder if a McDonalds has ever been run as a co-op.
|
| I wonder what McDonalds would do if you tried it.
| okprod wrote:
| I think the Shake Shack founder tried the no tipping-- increase
| prices route at his fancy restaurant and ended up reversing the
| decision.
| megameter wrote:
| Ending tipping needs a top-down enforcement of norms akin to
| pandemic response measures. The restaurants that try to go it
| alone confuse and sticker-shock their customers,
| unfortunately.
| GongOfFour wrote:
| It's going to need to be more than 20%. There are no shortage
| of jobs where servers make enough to live because they make
| unreported cash tips.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| or automate 99% of the business and free these poor souls from
| a mundane existence. Also, I think we should support them w/
| safety net (see basically andrew yang's platform).
|
| I don't see anyone screaming about ditch digging jobs or
| dishwashers saying we should "save those jobs!" . Backhoes and
| automatic dishwashers have freed people from meaningless work.
| We should do the same for everything we can. There's a
| stereotype of struggling artists working at fast food/coffee
| shops, imagine how much better human life could be if we freed
| them to do their real work (the arts).
| wyager wrote:
| It's not socially efficient to spend all our effort trying to
| automate things. This happens naturally as wages required to
| hire people for a given task increase and automation gets
| cheaper. The natural progression of the situation in the
| article is that wages go up, increasing the viability of
| automation, so you'll get your wish (in this context) soon
| enough.
|
| If we "freed" people from work with welfare, 99.9% of
| recipients would smoke weed and watch cartoons, not create
| art. It might still be preferable to having people work low-
| engagement jobs, but let's not be too idealistic.
| blooalien wrote:
| If society actively encouraged the creation of more
| positive ways to contribute positive things, I bet we'd see
| an "organic" growth in numbers of people choosing to do so.
|
| Example; There've been some pretty positive things
| happening around community gardens in some places (when
| they're not being attacked by self-appointed neighborhood
| Nannies that don't like to see people gathering together
| around something beneficial).
|
| Example 2; I remember "maker" clubs and similar community
| groups doin' lots of really fun activities that benefited
| more than just the group itself (free community virus
| cleanups, operating system install parties, community LAN
| parties - everyone's welcome).
|
| I'm sure that if enough positive activities were presented
| to society as a whole, you'd just naturally find a growing
| percentage of humanity doin' good things for each other
| that _used to be_ considered "work" at some point in the
| past before whatever "safety net" made it unnecessary to do
| for survival's sake anymore. People might even still do
| some of those things at a higher level of quality than
| others and net themselves some personal gain out of it.
|
| Problem is that humans aren't willing to cooperate with one
| another enough to even approach any sort of Utopian ideal,
| and they're often too ready to jump at all the reasons such
| a thing is "impossible" without being willing to even
| consider any ideas that might lead to it bein' a reality.
| imtringued wrote:
| You could introduce a negative income tax (to implement
| UBI) and then increase your tax credits by joining
| community groups or going to college. Competitive groups
| could then receive more tax credits based on their
| ranking.
|
| Instead of career tracks you will be offered volunteer
| tracks.
|
| However, this is a complex solution to the problem and it
| is prone to being gutted because it will be seen as
| socialist and once there is full employment politicians
| will demand everyone to quit their clubs the same way
| they demand welfare recipients to quit today.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| I think that the leverage of automation is so high that we
| can afford it. Look at how much money the top founders of
| companies have...
|
| FTR I also think the social safety net should be bare
| minimum existence, for a single person something like a
| bunk bed, 3 minimum nutrition meals (simple food like
| beans, rice etc not steaks...), clothes from a thrift store
| etc. -- It's more complex when kids are involved because
| you have to consider that you're essentially growing the
| future generation so have to consider the repercussions of
| underinvesting in formation.
|
| This bare minimum would still leave lots to be desired and
| thusly incentivized (such as money for weed and a
| tv/netflix) ... But they'd have the time and basic support
| to do something contributing that only humans can do (at
| the moment at least) .
| leereeves wrote:
| > Also, I think we should support them w/ safety net (see
| basically andrew yang's platform).
|
| Which raises the question of why anyone would work, if doing
| whatever you want and still living a comfortable life was an
| option.
|
| It sounds like a lovely future, but I don't the automation
| exists yet to replace all the jobs.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Which raises the question of why anyone would work, if
| doing whatever you want and still living a comfortable life
| was an option.
|
| People with literally billions of dollars of wealth still
| devote time and energy to earning more. I don't think its a
| stretch to think that people who merely have enough for
| tolerable food, clothing, shelter will continue to do so.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| But there are very few people with that kind of wealth,
| because very few people have the innate drive to do what
| it takes to attain it. Most people don't have that drive.
| Most people just want a paycheck and a low-risk life.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Most people don't have that drive. Most people just
| want a paycheck and a low-risk life.
|
| If I look at the size of the median house, the price of
| the median car, that doesn't seem true. If most people
| would be satisfied with a basic income scheme and nothing
| more, why aren't most middle class people trying to save
| half their paycheck and retire before 50?
| oscardssmith wrote:
| Ah yes. The innate drive to inherit a couple million
| dollars.
| imtringued wrote:
| Use free market logic instead of making things up. If a
| billionaire has enough money to do nothing then why would
| he do something? It's because the tradeoff is worth it.
| Business owners have a large stake in their business.
| They can get billions out of a company.
|
| For a minimum wage worker it is absolutely trivial to see
| that the tradeoff isn't worth it and subsequently they
| behave predictably like a lazy person. People acting
| according to free market logic deserve the stick. Do you
| see the problem?
| handrous wrote:
| > Which raises the question of why anyone would work, if
| doing whatever you want and still living a comfortable life
| was an option.
|
| You work to be able to afford nicer clothes, more vidya
| games, fine whisky, more-comfortable retirement when you
| _do_ stop working, vacations, better school for your kids,
| a nicer house with a view, and so on.
|
| The carrot remains the same, the stick is just somewhat
| smaller.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > Which raises the question of why anyone would work, if
| doing whatever you want and still living a comfortable life
| was an option.
|
| Let's say you got $20k/yr[0] for free. Do you think you
| could live comfortably on that? Would you be willing to
| work to improve your comfort level?
|
| [0] full time US minimum wage with no time off is about
| $15k/yr
| jlarocco wrote:
| > or automate 99% of the business and free these poor souls
| from a mundane existence.
|
| I agree on one hand, but there's a lot of hand waving and
| hopeful/wishful thinking built into that answer.
|
| It's very easy to say, "Do something else," but if it were
| that easy, it wouldn't be an issue in the first place. And if
| 20 million food service workers all get CS degrees, guess
| which will be the next industry with plummeting wages and few
| job opportunities?
|
| We have more people on earth than ever before, but we also
| have more automation and less need for those people than ever
| before. It seems like at some point society is going to have
| some hard questions to answer about employment, pay, etc.
| mrob wrote:
| There is already an enormous oversupply of art. The
| struggling artists' real product is something rarer:
| authenticity. If they did not struggle then they would not be
| able to produce it.
| shoemakersteve wrote:
| Pretty weird take. I guess every classical composer didn't
| make anything authentic because they were all nobles from
| rich families.
| mrob wrote:
| How is that related? I only claimed that struggling
| artists were manufacturing authenticity. I made no claims
| about other sources.
| verall wrote:
| This is an interesting take, but most of my favorite
| artists grew up comfortably middle class, because it gave
| them the time and space to develop their art, compared to
| people who had to get jobs as teens or watch their little
| siblings.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| Is suffering the only source of authenticity?
| mindslight wrote:
| You've got the causality backwards. Authenticity means
| steering clear of the siren call of mass market appeal. An
| overwhelming focus on creating things, despite their lack
| of commercial expedience, is what causes the struggling.
|
| The analog in software is working for a surveillance
| company versus architecting your software to cut out
| needless middlemen.
| imbnwa wrote:
| I worked in hospitality for 10 years before formally getting
| into software engineering.
|
| The customers can suck, yes, but more often than not your boss
| has the same sociopathic qualities of that mythical asshole
| geninus founder except you're not working at a startup, you
| have no equity, you're being paid bare bones, and the boss is
| not a fucking genius.
| partiallypro wrote:
| This is happening in more than just the United States... so
| your theory doesn't hold up. Also, at least near me, people
| living on tips make REALLY good money. Some make 6 figures.
| I've talked to some bar workers specifically that are totally
| against the idea of getting rid of tipping and the wage
| structure. They make really good.
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _Stop the tipping guilt trip placed on the public, raise your
| prices 20%, and pay your employees a livable wage._
|
| FYI, one of the reasons restaurants don't do this is the tax
| impacts. When someone tips 20%, there is no sales tax assessed
| on the tip -- the full 20% goes to the worker. If you increase
| prices by 20%, that is subject to a sales tax (roughly 10%
| where I live), which amounts to a 1%-2% increase in the total
| price.
|
| On top of that, moving tips to wages results in more income and
| payroll taxes being taken out (most workers do not fully report
| all of their tips, which saves them both income and payroll
| taxes).
|
| It might not seem like a lot -- just a couple percent here and
| there -- but restaurants have pretty thin margins.
| _delirium wrote:
| > most workers do not fully report all of their tips, which
| saves them both income and payroll taxes
|
| I wonder what percentage of tips are still cash tips, which
| is the only case where you can get away with that. I imagine
| the percentage of tips that are on a credit card (or even app
| like Doordash/Seamless) vs. cash has been increasing over
| time, but I can't find solid numbers.
| nickff wrote:
| Most credit and debit card tips are paid out to servers
| with cash from the register at the end of the day. The
| amount of the tips is recorded, but the recipients are not,
| and taxes are not assessed against the tips. Technically,
| servers are supposed to declare the cash they receive as
| income, but it is accepted practice not to do so.
| [deleted]
| mlonkibjuyhv wrote:
| They could probably save even more in taxes by never
| registering as a business in the first place!
| [deleted]
| jbluepolarbear wrote:
| The pay generally isn't the issue; especially, tipped
| positions. It's the work conditions, treatment by management
| and customers, the inconsistency in hours, and no benefits.
| We're seeing here in Portland that people still don't want
| return to restaurants at $15/hr. Restaurants suck to work at.
| pizza234 wrote:
| At least in Europe, paying the salary off the book in large
| part, is very common.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| And the hours are often longer off the books, since things
| like cleanup are sometimes not counted as worked hours.
| mjevans wrote:
| I think restaurants pull that crap in the US too, by not
| scheduling enough on the clock hours for cleanup after
| the store closes. It's why you'll see places lock the
| doors even 30 min or more before the listed closing time.
| stevejb wrote:
| Guilt trip? I have never felt this ever. I pay a tip
| proportional to the service. 10% bad, 15% average, 20-25% for
| very good.
|
| As an American living in Australia, I really do miss tipping. I
| think that on average the restaurant service here is a lot
| lower. At most restaurants at the medium level (e.g. $25
| hamburgers) you pay in advance, and then a waiter will bring
| the food to you when its ready. Do you need more water? Get it
| yourself... Ketchup, you have to ask but it won't be offered.
| The waiters don't care because they are making good money
| anyway. The only place you get American style service is at the
| very high end places.
| jclulow wrote:
| As an Australian living in America, the expectation that
| there will be a person to refill your water cup is pretty
| uncomfortable. The need to tip is a ridiculous abdication of
| the responsibility for labour laws to ensure staff a living
| wage. If you don't like the service at a restaurant, don't
| go! There are other restaurants that will compete for your
| custom. If no restaurant is sufficiently servile for your
| tastes, then your expectations are likely out of step with
| local culture and how it treats people.
|
| Individual service persons should not be held hostage to your
| interpretation of their service for their wage. If they're
| routinely underperforming they'll be sacked.
| yesenadam wrote:
| Thank you, that's wonderful writing.
| ipaddr wrote:
| 25 dollar hamburgers? That sounds so strange.
| valarauko wrote:
| Genuine Q: is $25 a lot for a burger in a restaurant
| (including tax, like in Australia)? I ask because I see
| burgers in mid range restaurants for $14-$20 here in NYC,
| and then there's the 8.825% tax. 25 AUD is ~ $18 USD, which
| seems about right.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Could be AUD but that's still $18. Australia has a high
| COL.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Plus if more of the tip is baked into the price, that's a
| standard-NYC-fare $15 hamburger with a 20% tip.
| brankoB wrote:
| The fact you're tipping 10% for bad service shows the guilt
| trip is working
| yesenadam wrote:
| The waiters "don't care" about what?! Things you expect from
| another country's customs? That is a strange way of thinking.
| And complaining about a country because you have to ask for
| sauce if you want it sounds so.. entitled.
|
| Although I'd never pay $25 for a burger. (Sydney here)
| bluGill wrote:
| It is nice getting a servant for just an hour to take care
| of you. Though culture is of course a factor, sometimes you
| miss the pleasures of home.
| dendriti wrote:
| If the biggest downsides to paying workers a living wage you
| can think of are asking for ketchup and fetching yourself a
| glass of water at a midrange restaurant... I think that's a
| fine tradeoff.
| dionidium wrote:
| Even if this is true, "the industry" is made up of individual
| actors who stand to lose a lot in the short term by moving
| first.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| This has been tried many times, you are ignoring the reasons it
| did not work. The employees hate it because they make less
| money, forcing the restaurant to go back to tipping. It was
| effectively a pay cut for employees. It is not wage/revenue
| neutral because it changes customer behavior.
|
| Generally speaking, Americans are more generous when the money
| goes to directly to a service person than to a faceless
| business that sets itself up as a middleman in that
| relationship.
| moritonal wrote:
| Whilst that might be true for Americans, as a European I find
| your culture of tipping(as part of a waiter's salary) a
| negative for everyone but the faceless business. I still tip
| waiters who do a great job, but don't have to be guilted into
| thinking they will go hungry if I don't.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > This has been tried many times, you are ignoring the
| reasons it did not work. The employees hate it because they
| make less money, forcing the restaurant to go back to
| tipping.
|
| Yup. A couple of restaurants in the Seattle area tried this.
| "20% price increase, no more tipping".
|
| Over time, their employees left, saying they were being paid
| less.
|
| Remember this the next time you hear the "if you tip 15% or
| less I'm literally paying to serve you!" (which is also BS.
| The IRS, if you don't disclose tipped income, assesses a
| standard rate. If you're truly earning less than that in
| tips, you can document it and pay less. But almost no-one
| wants to do that because the IRS is behind the times, and
| almost all servers make more in tips than that standard
| rate).
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| As a tipped employee, I can tell you this is not exactly the
| real reason. There are at least two more important: -
| Historically (less so now), tips are a tax dodge - they often
| aren't reported, or greatly under-reported. - Tips are less
| egalitarian than wages would be. Nominally, front of house
| and back of house have similar wages, but front of house gets
| far more tips. Even in the normal shared-tip-pool model this
| is true.
|
| Changing this would mean making explicit and obvious things
| that were previously implicit and looked past: Front-of-house
| would need/want/demand a far higher hourly wage than what the
| back-of-house workers would/cloud, and everybody would have
| to report ALL their income for taxes.
|
| There is also the problem that unprofessional service staff
| might not try as hard to please the customers, though maybe
| those get filtered out over time.
| mariodiana wrote:
| I can't articulate the details, down to the last detail, but
| the worst thing to happen to tipping is the change the IRS
| made, some years back. If I understand correctly, the IRS
| always used to estimate tip for a server based on a table's
| bill. (The custom is 15-20 percent, and I think the IRS used
| to average lower than that.) But the IRS always used to
| collect its cut on tips from the server.
|
| The change is that the IRS now holds the restaurant owner
| accountable for the taxes due on the tip. The result is that
| instead of the money going to the server directly, it first
| has to pass through the hands of the business owner. I don't
| know if this still goes on, but some years back I recall
| hearing that some restaurant owners would then "distribute"
| those tips to other members of the staff -- the busboys,
| kitchen help, etc.
|
| Traditionally, waiters always "tipped out" the busboys and
| bartenders they worked with, on any given shift, and better
| service (theoretically) promoted more generosity from the
| waiter. But now that the business owner has his hand in it,
| the business owner will operate according to his own
| interests. The waiter is cut out. The waiter has less
| control, and less direct incentive. The waiter has less of a
| payoff.
|
| Rumor has it (or, if you will, common sense has it) that some
| owners abuse their role as middleman.
| donatj wrote:
| I don't know if there's been case law behind it, and I
| certainly wouldn't want to be the one to try it, but I feel
| like there's a strong argument to be made that tips are
| gifts from the consumer to the wait staff.
|
| That said, gifts totaling under $15,000 are non-taxable.
| smachiz wrote:
| This isn't an IRS change. It was a public behavior change.
|
| The owners always had to withhold taxes from their wait
| staff, just as your taxes are withheld by your employer.
|
| The difference is that since almost all tips are now on
| credit cards, the business owner doesn't need to assume the
| % sales to withhold, and withholds based on virtually all
| of their employees tips.
|
| The end result is that the wait staff can't commit tax
| fraud by not reporting tips. The business owner didn't have
| to report cash tips, only withhold based on a % of sales.
| They still withhold on % of sales if actual tips are less
| than the % of sales.
| ruined wrote:
| That's not a problem with a tipless system, that's a
| management decision to lower wages. If management simply paid
| employees what they were netting before, or better, there
| would be no pay cut and no departures.
| tolbish wrote:
| How much money did they make with raised wages and no tips?
| Was the wage still not comparable to other jobs?
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| I have several good friends that work in this business in
| Seattle, where several restauranteurs tried the "no
| tipping" model. Anecdotally, in a popular quintessentially
| Seattle restaurant, a good front-of-house person may net
| around $40/hr after tips, some more and some less. I don't
| have a lot of sample data for the "no tipping" restaurants,
| but my general impression is that it was on the order of a
| 10% reduction in pay.
|
| One reason several of them have mentioned is that many
| customers are happy to regularly tip much more than 20%,
| and this is often correlated with the highest spending
| customers. Making it a non-discretionary 20% puts an
| artificially low cap on how much they earn from the
| customers that pay the most. At one time some customers
| would leave extra cash on the table after paying the "no
| tipping" bill, but no one carries cash anymore.
|
| Places that net $40/hr have enormous difficulty hiring
| right now. These are not poorly paying jobs but the broader
| lifestyle is pretty terrible even at good restaurants, made
| even more terrible because of the employee shortage.
|
| One overlooked issue is that many restaurant workers in the
| big cities are originally from "flyover country". When the
| restaurants closed during COVID, a large number went back
| home. I was talking to a waitress in the middle-of-nowhere
| Iowa a few months ago and she had just moved back after
| several years working in New York City restaurants.
| tolbish wrote:
| One would think a sign out front that said _" Now hiring:
| Wait staff, starting pay @ $40/hr (or even $30/hr)"_
| would have no trouble finding and retaining talent, even
| in big cities like Seattle.
|
| I don't think I've ever seen a sign advertising anything
| near that for restaurants.
| tashoecraft wrote:
| This would have to be put in place at the government level,
| otherwise it won't work. A restaurant by me tried it and
| struggled to keep waitstaff because they can make so much
| elsewhere..in untaxed cash. If they doubled their prices no one
| would come
| wusher wrote:
| I think realistically it would come down to an increase of 30%.
| Most of the time, only a small amount of tips show up in taxes
| and now that it's part of the pay, the employer will also have
| to pay taxes on the increase.
| boulos wrote:
| If you're interested in the topic, I recommend the MIT living
| wage research [1]. They've got probably the most useful
| calculator, letting you compare multiple scenarios.
|
| [1] https://livingwage.mit.edu/
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| This is a great resource. I'd nitpick that the childcare
| expense is IMO a terrible evolution of society. People used to
| take care of eachother's kids while they were at work (eg, work
| less hours or compressed days and trade day care days with a
| friend. ). It's far better for children to have stable adult
| support (ie same small set of people stably over time) than a
| revolving door of new employees, whomever is working that shift
| etc. So we're being less resourceful _and_ giving a worse setup
| to the next generation.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| That requires friends or local family and America has another
| massive issue with friendless people on the rise.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| super agree. But for some reason our government seems
| focused on fixing this by paying for childcare rather than
| encouraging community...
| clairity wrote:
| children used to just go to the workplace with adults and/or
| spending time nearby playing with other kids. it's the
| separation of children from adults that creates a problem,
| not the accounting of it (e.g., childcare cost figures), an
| extension of a victorian sterility to public life, trying to
| cast perfect images of idyllic lives for others to admire
| rather than living carefree.
| corpdrone2021 wrote:
| Most of the historical community building was done at faith
| communities, and by stay-at home parents in the past. As a
| society we fell hook line and sinker for "The two income
| trap," and are unwilling to contemplate the horrible idea of
| allowing families to collect the childcare subsidy to pay the
| parent providing childcare is upsetting to enough different
| groups to be a non-starter.
|
| Right wingers are upset because "it's socialism" and folks on
| the left who I've discussed the idea with have repeatedly
| expressed fear that it will undermine feminism.
| didgeoridoo wrote:
| Hmm just ran this for my area (Essex County, MA) and it spat
| out that NO job pays enough on average to have 3 kids (required
| 130k, max job average 121k for "management"). This seems a bit
| pessimistic, as I know plenty of people with 3 kids and pretty
| typical jobs...
| handrous wrote:
| > This seems a bit pessimistic, as I know plenty of people
| with 3 kids and pretty typical jobs...
|
| "Living wage" may include having enough margin to save such
| that one may retire at something resembling a typical
| retirement age. If so, it's very easy to under-cut it and
| still be apparently doing fine, until age 70 when you have to
| keep working, through illness and pain, as a Wal-Mart
| greeter.
|
| This also means responsible savers have to compete with
| borrowing-against-their-future types with no retirement
| savings, for things like housing or (relatedly) various
| scarce benefits for their kids. IMO it's a pretty strong
| argument against "freer" personal retirement account systems
| being the main mechanism of retirement savings, and for
| mandatory, strong public pension schemes.
| gruez wrote:
| >"Living wage" may include having enough margin to save
| such that one may retire .
|
| Doesn't seem to be.
|
| >[The living wage model] does not provide a financial means
| for planning for the future through savings and investment
| or for the purchase of capital assets (e.g., provisions for
| retirement or home purchases).
|
| https://livingwage.mit.edu/resources/Living-Wage-Users-
| Guide...
| handrous wrote:
| I stand corrected!
|
| Must be childcare costs & housing making it so high,
| then. I gather childcare costs vary quite a bit from city
| to city, and in my cheaper location those are easily the
| two biggest expenses, with childcare eclipsing housing by
| a fair margin, for 1-parent and 2-parents-both-working
| categories on the calculator, with 3 kids.
|
| FWIW only the "management" category's average income is
| (barely) above the "living wage" for a single-adult
| household, for three kids, here. Since that's pre-tax
| income, yeah, I'd say that's about right. Kids are crazy-
| expensive.
| amcoastal wrote:
| Yeah they probably have two income that get pretty close to
| 130k, or they get government subsidies and credits to make up
| the difference. Raising kids is extremely expensive but also
| subsidized heavily, and those are probably not accounted for
| in the "required salary" from this tool.
| gruez wrote:
| >Yeah they probably have two income that get pretty close
| to 130k
|
| yeah if you check the hourly earning chart, the hourly wage
| required for a dual earner household with 2 adults and 3
| kids is only $32.29/hr.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| This doesn't seem right. I plugged in San Francisco, and it
| quoted a $12.00/hr minimum wage. The actual minimum wage here
| is $16.32/hr.
|
| They're using state level minimum wages, but that's just as
| inaccurate as using the federal minimum wage.
| nostromo wrote:
| I'm sure it has nothing to do with the government paying people
| to sit at home - something NPR forgot to mention in their
| article.
| downrightmike wrote:
| People don't want to get covid, and the food service workers
| took the brunt of cases. Not surprising they don't want to go
| back as it could literally kill them. Here is an article with
| graphs showing their higher infection rates:
| https://www.marketplace.org/2021/01/27/food-workers-greatest...
| Also the people going out now, are assholes:
| https://www.metrotimes.com/table-and-bar/archives/2020/12/07...
| k33n wrote:
| It's hilarious that this perfectly rational and fact based
| remark is downvoted. This place has gone full blue anon.
| amcoastal wrote:
| Its hilarious that you don't read the article to realize the
| comment is wrong. Surprise, confirmation bias strikes again.
| gruez wrote:
| >Its hilarious that you don't read the article to realize
| the comment is wrong
|
| Sure, if you take the article at face value. The key
| argument seems to be "more than half of hospitality workers
| who've quit said no amount of pay would get them to
| return". On the surface that might suggest that people are
| getting out for non-monetary reasons (ie. not related to
| pandemic relief), I'm skeptical whether that's actually the
| case. It's easy to tell yourself and the pollster that "no
| amount of pay" would make you go back when the government
| has been paying you unemployment for the last 16 months.
| When unemployment ends and the bills pile up, I suspect a
| good chunk of them would eventually go back.
| glasss wrote:
| To be fair, it isn't entirely fact based - the article
| highlights someone who collects / collected unemployment.
| luffapi wrote:
| It's neither rational nor fact based. The government isn't
| "paying people to sit at home" it's providing the bare
| semblance of a social safety net (kind of, not really) in the
| middle of an unprecedented pandemic. Hopefully these changes
| become permanent because automation continues to decrease the
| need for workers and wealth inequality continues to pressure
| the working class at historically high levels.
| k33n wrote:
| It's entirely rational and fact based, but it does threaten
| the worldview of the people who parrot everything they hear
| in mainstream media. Americans will never let "the new
| normal" be permanent, and only the grossly uninformed hope
| otherwise.
| gruez wrote:
| >It's neither rational nor fact based. The government isn't
| "paying people to sit at home" it's providing the bare
| semblance of a social safety net (kind of, not really) in
| the middle of an unprecedented pandemic.
|
| That might be the intent, but that's irrelevant to the
| actual distortionary effects that it causes on the job
| market that gp is talking about.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| As I understand it, you don't get unemployment benefits if
| you quit, making it irrelevant flamebait on an article about
| quitting.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Based on my discussions with barber-shops and other lower wage
| earners... at least in my area... people are still afraid of
| COVID19 and don't want to work in a public-facing role during a
| pandemic.
|
| I'm not sure how money would change that. Even if you doubled
| wages all of a sudden, if people are literally fearing for
| their lives, you can't actually get them to come in.
|
| -------
|
| In resort areas (beaches, etc. etc.), a lot of these workers
| were also seasonal. I visited the beach and instead of being
| greeted by poorly speaking German folk (No offense, but its
| often obvious when you're interacting with a seasonal
| worker...) in my favorite restaraunt... I was greeted by
| Americans (far far fewer of them, because they couldn't find
| enough workers).
|
| German seasonal part-time workers won't come over because of
| COVID19. Asking them to risk an airplane flight for some money
| just isn't worth it.
| karlkatzke wrote:
| The #1 career field that died of COVID during the pandemic is
| restaurant cooks.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Well, you don't usually interact with cooks, so that's a
| bit harder for me to gather information about :-)
|
| You can actually gain a hell of a lot of information with a
| brief 30-second talk with a cashier, someone stocking the
| shelves at a store, waiter, or barber. Keep it brief:
| they're still on the clock and you don't want to waste
| their time.
|
| Its also their job to respond to you (ex: talk about
| checkout, to point you in the direction of where items are
| in a store... or to serve you a meal or cut your hair). So
| its not very hard to translate a natural interaction into a
| brief 30-seconds or so question about their perspective in
| life right now.
|
| Sometimes, you don't even need to talk with them. Like the
| German seasonal workers at my local beach area: I know it
| without even talking to anyone. The Germans are gone this
| year: I didn't see any of them. I normally see lots of them
| (often shy workers who respond "I don't speak English" when
| you try to talk with them), but I saw literally none of
| them this past week when I went to the beach.
|
| I also studied a basic level of Spanish and German. I'm not
| conversational, but I can recognize when people speak those
| languages. So hearing random German discussions between
| seasonal workers in the background is common under normal
| times, and that's just missing this year.
| moate wrote:
| OP was pointing this out:
|
| https://www.advisory.com/en/daily-
| briefing/2021/02/10/covid-...
|
| (IDK about you, but 3 seconds of googling is easier for
| me than conducting my own personal polling of people I
| see out and about)
| dragontamer wrote:
| > (IDK about you, but 3 seconds of googling is easier for
| me than conducting my own personal polling of people I
| see out and about)
|
| Information gathered from the Internet doesn't always
| match my personal spot-checked polls. I was able to call
| the BTC peak when I noticed that randoms I'd poll were
| talking about BTC for example, while the internet was
| damn sure that BTC would keep going up.
|
| When my Bank-teller is able to talk about her Bitcoin
| "investments", I know we've reached the peak. Besides,
| people are excited to talk about their viewpoints and its
| always fascinating to me. (I do visit the banks on
| occasion still: gotta collects $5 bills and coins and
| ATMs don't always dispense those)
|
| Its not a lot of effort and yet gets me tons of
| information. I don't really see any downsides in just
| doing it on occasion. I'm not like a newspaper reporter
| or anything (so this isn't my job), but having a quickie
| pulse on what other people are actually thinking is
| really helpful in making my own decisions about the
| world.
|
| This is just the simple "what's the talk around town"
| sorta thing. Its not hard to start conversations and
| enjoy another person's point of view.
|
| --------
|
| Besides, when we start talking about innately political
| subjects (ex: is the current shortage due to unemployment
| checks vs the current shortage due to a lack of
| immigrants??), it helps to do some on-the-grounds fact-
| checking. Asking random strangers a quickie question
| every now and then results in far higher quality. Sure,
| the strangers remain biased according to their own
| viewpoints, but... there's still huge amounts of
| information from their perspectives.
|
| And its not always politics. Asking about "hey, what's
| that food you're eating? Is it good?" is a good way to
| find new restaurants. Or "When is your next shipment of X
| coming in?" is a great one to ask in stores, so you know
| when some hot commodity is shipping (ex: GPUs at
| Microcenter or PS5 at Target). Its not like the internet
| knows when the specific Target at my street-corner is
| getting the next shipment of PS5s.
|
| --------
|
| What do you think of "X new product" (useful in
| determining my next stock purchase: is there on-the-
| ground buzz about the Ford Maverick? Should I buy the
| stock F??). Etc. etc. There's just always good
| information to be gained from helpful strangers. And more
| often than not, I think people are happy to have a bit of
| smalltalk in the day (as long as you keep it short).
| moate wrote:
| What does this have to do with the number of dead cooks?
| dragontamer wrote:
| Well, I guess I haven't really asked around how many
| cooks have died. Long story short. That's just not a
| statistic I've personally gathered (and such a statistic
| would be socially awkward to discuss).
|
| A lot of what I was talking about in the top comments
| were just the anecdotes that I could personally verify
| with these spot-checks.
|
| Waiters / Barbers / etc. etc. _ARE_ afraid of dying. Not
| necessarily the ones serving you, but their former
| coworkers aren't coming back because of the fear. Maybe
| dead-cooks have something to do with it. But I can say
| for sure that front-line workers are willing to talk
| about their fears (or their viewpoint on the fears of
| their former coworkers).
| pphysch wrote:
| If you want to go that far, you might as well mention how the
| "American Dream" has been dying since 2008 and took a major
| shock in 2020. Why work hard and bust your butt in a country
| and real economy that is falling apart and currently has no
| long-term prospects?
| wutbrodo wrote:
| In what sense did the "American Dream" take a shock in 2020?
| Iirc, by far the greatest %-age net worth growth in 2020 was
| among the bottom 50%: greater than the growth in the top 10%
| or top 1%.
| luffapi wrote:
| > _Iirc, by far the greatest %-age net worth growth in 2020
| was among the bottom 50%: greater than the growth in the
| top 10% or top 1%._
|
| That's not true at all. By far most gains were captured by
| the wealthy:
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/23/how-much-wealth-
| top-1percent...
| sokoloff wrote:
| > That's not true at all.
|
| What they said was technically/precisely true, despite
| not being particularly meaningful.
|
| https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2021/07/net-worth-gains-
| in-2...
| gruez wrote:
| >That's not true at all. By far most gains were captured
| by the wealthy:
|
| The problem with that analysis is that it implies a 1%/1%
| growth (for rich/poor respectively) is preferable to a
| 2%/6% growth.
| [deleted]
| pphysch wrote:
| That wealth increase came from acute government
| intervention and was mostly ephemeral (look at inflation in
| car/house prices).
|
| Outside the West, 2020 represented the decisive death of
| neoliberalism. No one is looking to America for the future
| anymore.
| handrous wrote:
| > Outside the West, 2020 represented the decisive death
| of neoliberalism. No one is looking to America for the
| future anymore.
|
| Interestingly, even America had its only explicitly-anti-
| neoliberal (in rhetoric, at the very least) President in
| the last 3+ decades in office at the time. Think what you
| will of him--I certainly have _some thoughts_ --he was
| notable for that _highly_ unusual, for a national-level
| US politician with the backing of a major party, policy
| stance.
|
| That aspect of that particular _phenomenon_ hasn 't
| received a ton of attention (to be fair, there was a lot
| of stuff to focus on) so I'm not sure whether it
| represents any kind of trend, but neoliberal policies are
| actually fairly unpopular among voters across the board,
| though _very_ popular among leadership in the two major
| US political parties for quite some time.
| pphysch wrote:
| He got elected on a reactionary populist platform, and
| _if_ he (or Bannon, rather) had any desire to shift
| American policy, he inevitably got discouraged from doing
| so by Washington 's unelected bureaucracy. So he ended up
| using his largely ceremonial 4 years of power to enrich
| his family and friends.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| > was mostly ephemeral (look at inflation in car/house
| prices).
|
| It was driven largely by real estate appreciation. How do
| you figure that this is ephemeral?
|
| Your second paragraph contradicts your first. America's
| policy in 2020 was decisively _not_ neoliberal, and was
| in fact one of the most generous in the world[1]. This is
| in part due to necessity borne of a smaller safety net
| than other OECD countries, but it's a huge mistake to
| interpret this as simply canceling out the scope of the
| fiscal action; at the very least, describing a government
| capable of specific spending bills at this scale and
| reach as committed to neoliberal orthodoxy is ridiculous.
|
| Similarly, "neoliberalism" is an absurd description of an
| administration whose agenda is based on the increasing
| acceptance of steady-state gargantuan deficit spending
| (as we begin to cautiously accept that inflation is not
| appearing to nearly the degree we've feared for the last
| decade).
|
| There's a large contingent out there engaging in a
| combination of wishful thinking and blind extrapolation
| of an outdated impression of USGov fiscal habits. It's a
| good fit for a post-truth world (I've lost count of the
| number of dumb friends who think that the extent of covid
| fiscal relief was a flat $600/1200 payment). But HN
| hasn't quite reached that level of disconnection with
| reality, so let's not steer it that way..
|
| [1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/busines
| s-52450...
| pphysch wrote:
| Come on! Real estate appreciation only matters for people
| that own multiple properties and can therefore afford to
| sell without compromising the roof over their heads, i.e.
| landlords.
|
| My sole property doubling in value, along with every
| other house in comparable neighborhoods, is 100%
| ephemeral, because there is no way to realize that value
| without liquidating my family's quality of life--a
| counterproductive maneuver.
|
| **
|
| Trump Admin was paradoxically nationalist at home and
| neoliberal abroad (probably because he's a professional
| clown with no understanding of governance); US foreign
| policy has not meaningfully changed since 1991/2001. It's
| all about securing the conditions for global
| neoliberalism, i.e. American military and financial
| imperialism, which ensures I can buy a jar of premium
| African tree nuts from Costco for a fraction of an hours
| labor, even though it required many hours of labor to
| produce.
|
| Anyway, that pyramid scheme called neoliberalism is
| collapsing, and it's only going to get worse domestically
| in America as a sad but necessary result.
| gruez wrote:
| >because there is no way to realize that value without
| liquidating my family's quality of life
|
| not really. you can reverse mortgage it when you retire.
| devwastaken wrote:
| Whom are they paying to sit at home?
| k33n wrote:
| Currently, tens of millions of people. Or were you looking
| for a list of names?
| devwastaken wrote:
| Okay, _whom_? What common factor do they share? Is it a
| government service?
| Kluny wrote:
| FYI, the word you want here is "who".
|
| https://ielts.com.au/articles/grammar-101-who-vs-whom/
| namdnay wrote:
| Were you only paid if you didn't work? From what I understood
| the checks were given to everyone?
| yesiamyourdad wrote:
| They're referring to unemployment benefits. I was surprised
| to find out that a friend's kid has been collecting them for
| a year - this person has a STEM degree and lost their job due
| to a fire at work, not COVID. Doesn't matter, the state gave
| blanket extension to unemployment benefits. In the past you
| could collect for only a few (maybe 6) months - not sure of
| that particular state's laws.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| That makes sense though, because a blanket unemployment
| benefit extension is probably cheaper to implement than a
| bureaucratic mechanism to determine which jobs were lost as
| a result of COVID.
| nomrom wrote:
| If a survival stipend competes successfully against a low-
| paying, high-stress, and absolutely miserable job conditions
| then the problem isn't the stipend, is it?
| wutbrodo wrote:
| Regardless of one's opinion on the wisdom of the policy, it's
| still a glaring oversight in a news article about the
| dynamics of the labor market.
|
| I've been a UBI supporter my entire adult life, but that
| doesn't mean that what's effectively a lie of omission is
| good for the discourse. Then again, it's hard to expect
| otherwise from a rag like NPR.
| gruez wrote:
| >conditions then the problem isn't the stipend, is it?
|
| It's laughable to make that comparison when the "survival
| stipend" is money for doing nothing. I'm not sure how any
| private enterprise can compete with that.
| nemetroid wrote:
| > I'm not sure how any private enterprise can compete with
| that.
|
| By paying more, of course.
| Kluny wrote:
| Except they're not doing nothing, are they? They're raising
| their kids, fixing their car, cooking healthy food, going
| to the doctor, visiting their mom, and any number of other
| things that a person working minimum wage can't make time
| for. The survival stipend gives them not only money, but
| time. When you see that, you start to realize how much
| those crappy jobs COST people.
| gruez wrote:
| What are you arguing here? Everything you said is
| consistent with "money for doing nothing".
| repsilat wrote:
| A zero sum concept of blame isn't really helpful IMO. It's
| better to just try to figure out the policy consequences
| without the moralizing.
|
| The simplest model of utility (linear in money) basically
| says "people will take these jobs if they pay $X more than
| unemployment." With unemployment in the US paying $300/week
| more than it used to, jobs now need to pay about that much
| more than before to stay competitive -- about $7.50 an hour.
| So for a $15/hr job, the employer needs to pay $22.50 now.
|
| A perhaps more realistic utility model has diminishing
| returns to money. The classic example is log($). Put simply,
| "people will work a job if it pays X _times_ what
| unemployment does. "
|
| In that model, the $15/hr job at 40 hours/week pays $600
| before tax. Say unemployment used to pay $300/week, so the
| job paid 2x unemployment, and now with the extra $300 of
| supplemental employment benefits it pays $600, so the job has
| to bump its pay up to $1200/wk or $30/hr to stay competitive.
|
| That's a modeled kinda space of policy consequences -- wages
| go up 50% or 100% or there will be employment shortfalls even
| before thinking about childcare shortages, reduced
| immigration etc. That situation can be spun as "benefits too
| high" or "pay too low" to score political points or drive
| policy, but these effects are clearly _explanatory_ either
| way.
| zxspectrum1982 wrote:
| Exactly. This is not about tips, it's about waiter salary being
| too close to free money to stay at home. We are seeing this
| problem with waiters at other countries too, where employees
| are paid "full salary" and tipping is not even a thing.
| luffapi wrote:
| The answer to any labor shortage is to pay more. Either take
| the profits currently captured by the owner and use them for
| salaries or raise prices and do the same. No consumer should
| ever be responsible for an entrepreneur's failing business
| model.
| _jal wrote:
| Interesting that you believe the government's job is to coerce
| people into taking jobs they otherwise wouldn't.
|
| Or did I miss the post where you were complaining about aid to
| other tax brackets and businesses?
| sjg007 wrote:
| Nor those forgivable PPP loans...
| kube-system wrote:
| Those measures are expiring, or already have expired in many
| places. It'll be interesting to see how many people come back.
|
| There are also high numbers of people retiring and lots of
| alternative low-skill job options these days. Many people are
| changing careers upwards as well. Lots of well-paying employers
| are also short on labor. COVID was a catalyst for many to
| reevaluate their job situation.
| mason55 wrote:
| Of course people only put up with it because they had no better
| option.
|
| The question is, should we force people to take the option of
| "low pay, no benefits, rude customers"? If those jobs are
| really the only alternative to the gov't paying workers, then
| do we as a society think the correct option is "low pay, no
| benefits, rude customers"?
|
| To me, it seems like the options should be "restaurants provide
| a reasonable employment" or "we don't have restaurants". One
| way to do this would be to make laws that force restaurants to
| do certain things (min wage, benefits, etc). Another option
| (and a much more "free market" option) is to provide
| competitive benefits from the gov't and let restaurants compete
| with that.
|
| Either way, if we as a society aren't willing to pay enough to
| eat at a restaurant such that the restaurants can provide
| reasonable employment terms then we should maybe rethink how
| restaurants fit into our society.
| chomp wrote:
| Some people did decide that benefits are better than working
| yes, but the reality is more complicated than that -
| https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/texas-restaurant-...
|
| I personally know 3 people who left the restaurant industry (1
| RNA certification, 1 barbering, and one realtor) last year. I
| know of one person who spent their time during shutdown working
| on IT certifications who is currently planning an exit. I don't
| blame these people for not working in food service. I did my
| time there, it's miserable on all fronts.
|
| I think the bigger problem is shutting down the industry and
| starting it back up. People who had to go elsewhere to make
| ends meet aren't going to go back. It's going to take a long
| time for these restaurants to recover lost talent. They are
| going to have to offer a lot more than the old status quo if
| they want to woo workers back.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| This is why furlough schemes (done for ages in Germany, and
| much of Western Europe during the pandemic) are a good idea.
| chomp wrote:
| I don't know about that. I do think it's way way better
| than helicopter money and PPP loans, but I don't think it'd
| help this particular issue. Flushing people out of a local
| maximum (in terms of effort to compensation) will just have
| them searching for a new local maximum. A lot might find
| that their old local maximum was one of the least optimal.
| Furloughing people gives them time to better optimize.
| Which in my opinion is good for the workers, but I think
| you'd still see some people hunting around- they just
| wouldn't have a fire lit under them.
| gwern wrote:
| It does hint at how generous the rushed stimuli were:
|
| "Cornett, off work for a few weeks, realized he received enough
| money through unemployment benefits to start saving -- for the
| first time. He wondered if the work he loves would ever entail
| a job that came with health insurance or paid leave."
| heywintermute wrote:
| Except it literally does?
|
| >Cornett, off work for a few weeks, realized he received enough
| money through unemployment benefits to start saving -- for the
| first time. He wondered if the work he loves would ever entail
| a job that came with health insurance or paid leave. "I was
| working what I decided was going to be my last kitchen job,"
| Cornett said.
| nostromo wrote:
| Re-read my comment and then re-read that quote.
| fleddr wrote:
| I think in the coming year, we're going to find out that the
| "return to normal" isn't going to be very normal.
|
| I spot a longer term "convenience" trend in consumers that has
| been further propelled by the pandemic, creating permanent shifts
| in demand.
|
| There's many examples of it regardless of the pandemic...
|
| Visiting a theater to see a movie is on the decline, as people
| use Netflix on increasingly large and capable screens.
|
| ecommerce has marginalized physical stores.
|
| And so on. We were already on this trend, and the end game for
| pretty much anything is smartphone-level convenience. If I want
| something, it should in most cases not require more effort than
| the push of a button. Even to change the light in the house, of
| which the switch is 3 feet away from me.
|
| The pandemic has "delivered" new services, or existing ones that
| we now got used to.
|
| There's going to be far less business travel, as now every rank
| in every company has been forced to make remote work operate
| somewhat efficiently. This will permanently change office real
| estate and business locations.
|
| Not to mention the car industry, as a lot of usage is based on
| commutes.
|
| Gyms may also see structurally less demand, as people found
| alternatives, and got used to them.
|
| In my country (Netherlands), ecommerce was already normalized yet
| now even the less tech savvy got accustomed to it, further
| accelerating the decline of physical stores.
|
| Luckily, people still did grocery shopping at the store itself.
| Not anymore. Now many people have tried home delivery of
| groceries and are unlikely to give back the time won.
|
| Finally, restaurants. Before the pandemic, all you could get
| delivered here was junk food. Now you can get a high quality
| meal. Further, home cooking is back, the convenience type where
| they ship fresh high quality stuff with clear instructions.
|
| Surely, visiting a restaurant is still a rich and social
| experience, but I would not be surprised if demand is
| significantly reduced if the home option is pretty good.
|
| As for the convenience trend, a cynical view is that people are
| lazy. A more optimistic view is that people optimize their time,
| which is scarce. Speed and convenience wins, and will take over
| everything.
| jokoon wrote:
| I live in france, and I recently went to some presentation by
| some "restauration job industry" school director, who tried to
| encourage us to apply. I was open to other jobs and I discovered
| that it was mostly about working in a restaurant after arriving
| at the presentation.
|
| It's summer, france is a destination for tourism and there is a
| big shortage of workers. Post covid, people want to go out and
| have a good time.
|
| I've talked several times with skilled and competent cooks in the
| industry I met, and apparently it's hell on earth. That industry
| has the most drug users: you work at times when others are having
| a good time. Competition is very high in france, restauration is
| a big big industry here, the culture of food is amazing and I'm
| pretty sure we're one of the best of the world.
|
| In my view, preparing food for others is a form of slavery. It's
| one the most obvious form of social inequality. Of course people
| love to eat good food, sitting nicely in a cozy place in a nice
| terrace. Of course people are going to spend their money for
| this.
|
| Except it's hard work, and there will always be a culture of "I
| pay, I decide, you work".
|
| Honestly the more I eat at restaurants, the more I realize I'd be
| ready to eat slightly expensive frozen MRE and some picnic just
| to not make those poor people work like that. Plus there are many
| people out there who cook nice meals for their friends.
|
| I love that part of the french culture, but honestly, clients
| will quickly realize eating at a restaurant is expensive for good
| reasons.
| ocschwar wrote:
| It's not really slavery, but it's true that too many people
| rely on restaurants to reassure them about their place in
| society, which means the waiters have to make a show of being,
| um, in a different place in our society.
|
| It got really obvious when people objected to having to put on
| a mask for the safety of the waiter serving them, and I can't
| blame anyone for noping out of that noise.
| randycupertino wrote:
| > apparently it's hell on earth. That industry has the most
| drug users
|
| I spent 3 years as a waitress, prep cook and dishwasher at a
| mid-range chain. Our regional manager would literally hand out
| speed pills to the staff if we were working a double or
| otherwise tired. Oh, having a rough shift? Here, have some
| trucker Yellowjackets I picked up just for this scenario at the
| sketchy truck stop just over the border.
|
| Also, employees would steal literally everything that wasn't
| racheted down. Steaks, frozen fish, margarita glasses, people
| stocked their houses with the dishware and cutlery.
|
| It is a _tough_ industry to survive in. Forget thrive.
| bitwize wrote:
| In English we have a saying: He who pays the piper calls the
| tune. People who pay for a service expect, within reason, to
| decide how that service is to be rendered.
|
| The opposite is what was depicted in the show Seinfeld as the
| "Soup Nazi": a person who renders the service only a particular
| way (and may even throw you out of their shop if you object).
| But even on Seinfeld the Soup Nazi only got away with how he
| acted because his soup was particularly good and it was worth
| conforming to his idiosyncratic etiquette on how to order, etc.
| So having such autonomy is uncommon and reserved only for the
| greatest -- even, say, in software: John Carmack can expect to
| have working conditions as he desires. You or I will have to
| settle for open plan offices and constant meetings.
|
| That said, food service is indeed grueling and physically
| taxing work. My sister and her boyfriend both work in the
| industry. The boyfriend is a chef and smokes a lot of dope --
| conforming to your observation about drug use. So I do what I
| can to make life easier at the restaurants I patronize, mainly
| being polite to the staff and, as America is a tipping culture,
| tipping them generously.
| LunaSea wrote:
| > the culture of food is amazing
|
| It really isn't. France has lots of delicious recipes but the
| food that gets actually produced in the average restaurant in
| France is terrible.
| Gortal278 wrote:
| It's not slavery, that's a ridiculously naive and dumb
| statement. It's a shitty job, but it's not slavery.
| rollcat wrote:
| Where's the line, if a "shitty" job is about the only one you
| could get, and you can't even afford to stay without one for
| say, one month?
| [deleted]
| xyzzyz wrote:
| How many people are we talking about here? How many
| restaurant workers literally have no other job or other
| option available to them whatsoever? Have you ever actually
| looked into that, or are you just hypothesizing based
| purely on feeling-inducing narratives? Or is it just a
| trolley-problem style hypothetical, not meant to represent
| real world conditions?
| dsr_ wrote:
| There's no inherent reason why it has to be a terrible job,
| either.
| amiga-workbench wrote:
| They're dealing with the general public, they're nowhere
| near well compensated enough to put up with that.
| acomjean wrote:
| Our cafeteria at work is union. There is something about
| getting a decent wage which seems to inspire them. The food
| is really good (the best cafeteria of the 4 I've had at
| work) and they're quite pleasant.
| dsr_ wrote:
| If you see the same people every day, it can become
| natural to treat them as coworkers rather than staff.
|
| Treating people well starts with paying them well, but
| has to continue with respecting them.
| erdos4d wrote:
| It promises to suck every shred of energy from you in
| exchange for a poverty wage, and you get treated like utter
| shit by society if you don't go along with it. I think there
| are some parallels here actually.
| cortesoft wrote:
| > Except it's hard work, and there will always be a culture of
| "I pay, I decide, you work".
|
| Isn't that every job, though? In return for money, you do
| something you wouldn't do if you weren't paid?
| jokoon wrote:
| Sure, except restauration is one of the most obvious form of
| exploitation, where one works directly for the pleasure and
| luxury of one other person's desire.
|
| Most people know how to prepare food for themselves.
|
| I'm not against it, I'm just saying it's an expensive luxury
| which requires hard work.
| ozim wrote:
| Well it is not one other person's desire.
|
| There is bunch of restaurants/joints offering me to buy a
| burger or buy some food with them. Yes it is more expensive
| than cooking myself. But no one is making them to offer
| those. I am not going around making people to bring me
| food.
|
| Making food for one or two people is not that hard work as
| I mostly do it for myself or my GF or she is cooking.
|
| Making food for hundreds of people is hard work and it has
| load of regulations to meet safety - that is why it is
| expensive. Almost everyone can make food, almost everyone
| can be a waiter that is why pay is not that great, if
| someone wants to make more money he can do something that
| is more complex, like making super good food like celebrity
| chefs.
|
| If I would like to be nasty (as I am not and I agree it is
| hard work) I would go with explanation that there is bunch
| of lazy people who are not willing to learn anything more
| complex than making food and want to charge extra for that.
| posguy wrote:
| Restaurants by and large are not high revenue businesses. Most
| small grocers generate more revenue in 1 to 2 months than a
| restaurant will generate in a year.
|
| It seems like restaurant owners in the US turn over often,
| varying from every few months to 3 years on the outside. Seems
| like a really stressful industry that can have good margins,
| but maintaining profitability is hard and consumers are quite
| fickle.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| Also look at how many chain restaurants are structured in
| their financing and it is not great. Usually some portion
| (40% or more) of the net goes to the parent corp. Then out of
| that you pay the lease on the building, any required
| decorations, and buy from locked in vendors. Both all owned
| by the parent corp or some sister corp. Then out of what is
| left you pay your employees, taxes (on the net), and
| yourself. You are looking at maybe 10-15% of the net to do
| that with too.
|
| People can say 'oh just make the wages better'. But that may
| literally be the difference between there being a restaurant
| and nothing at all.
|
| Many gas stations run the with the same model. The twist is
| the gas companies own the land, and the pumps, and set the
| price. You just run the business.
|
| Basically most of these places someone 'bought a job'.
|
| Think I heard somewhere that places like McDonalds is one of
| the largest land owners in the world. Yet most of their
| stores are not 'corporate'.
| minikites wrote:
| How is this a justification for paying workers less than a
| livable wage?
| xanaxagoras wrote:
| The only justification required is their willingness to
| accept it.
| almost_usual wrote:
| Sounds like restaurants are obsolete if they can't afford
| living wages.
| rayiner wrote:
| > In my view, preparing food for others is a form of slavery.
| It's one the most obvious form of social inequality.
|
| This is an odd sentiment, the byproduct of living in
| economically segregated places. Where I live, an hour east of
| DC, there isn't a restaurant in town where someone who worked
| there couldn't afford to go there at least on special
| occasions. I was getting a hair cut the other day, and it turns
| out that my barber likes the cocktails at the nice restaurant
| (right on the water) where I like to take out of town visitors.
| The people who clean our house live a few blocks away.
| (Although the Fed money printing machine is causing our real
| estate prices to go up, and causing DC's inequality wasteland
| halo to keep expanding outward.)
|
| There is, of course, nothing intrinsically coercive about
| someone cooking food for the person who cuts their hair. An
| economy is people doing stuff for each other for money. It's
| only in a handful of metropolitan areas where you have
| outrageous inequality and economic segregation that creates the
| situation you're talking about.
| oliv__ wrote:
| _" Food service jobs have been 'plagued with low wages for an
| extraordinary long period of time'"_
|
| Plagued? Isn't that just how supply and demand work, ms
| "economist"?
|
| The only reason workers are quitting at record rates is because a
| new business opened up in town with unlimited resources handing
| out free dollar bills.
| sethammons wrote:
| > rude customers, whose abuses restaurant staff are often forced
| to tolerate
|
| Service workers in general, I'd love it if more managers and
| companies would support front line workers in refusing service.
| The customer is not always right. People should not have to put
| up with literal abuse.
|
| The Alamo Drafthouse theater is famously known for kicking
| someone out who was using their cell phone and other customers
| appreciate it.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| _This_.
|
| "Customer is king" mentality should die. Far too often it leads
| to disgruntled frontline workers and customers walking around
| as if they are doing a business favour just by being their
| customer. Even something seemingly as simple as "smiling" is
| tiring if done all day.
|
| In a business transaction all parties are equal. No one is
| doing anyone else a favour.
|
| I quite liked it when I saw signboards in Singapore that said
| abusing a store keeper is a punishable offence.
| acomjean wrote:
| I saw someone try to return 5 subs and get them replaced with
| 5 wraps.
|
| The store worker "If we made the mistake, we'd fix them, but
| your wife watched us make these and didn't say anything"
| words were exchanged and the customer left, leaving
| sandwiches behind without a refund.
|
| Not knowing they're were dealing with one of the brothers
| that owned that sandwich shops led that customer to think
| they could bully the employee.
|
| Employee owned shops are the way to go. They really care but
| don't have to put up with crap.
| blooalien wrote:
| > "Customer is king" mentality should die.
|
| Totally agree. My first computer store boss had a general
| rule that he repeated often to us: "The customer is always
| right _until they 're wrong;_ That's when you hand them over
| to me." When the day finally came that had to be tested, we
| watched him actually "86" (perma-ban) a customer from the
| store. That customer then tried to spread false rumors about
| the store that literally _no other_ customer was willing to
| believe, because they all already _knew_ our boss was a fair
| guy and wouldn 't have banned someone without a mighty good
| reason. Still to this day wish that type of boss was more
| common rather than a total rarity.
| nostromo wrote:
| It's way too risky to do that in today's environment. Companies
| get sued or spark angry Twitter mobs.
|
| Starbucks is a recent example of a company that had to do major
| damage control after asking some non-customers to leave their
| store.
| calebm wrote:
| Several years ago, I realized that "act professional" roughly
| translates to "act like a servant".
| sethammons wrote:
| I would not agree. You can disagree and push back and be
| professional. As a servant, your job is to say yes.
| atty wrote:
| I worked in one of the largest grocery store chains in the US
| for about 8 years before going full time into a PhD program.
| Almost very problem we had to deal with was caused by one of
| three things: not enough work hours scheduled, supply chain
| issues, or not being able to say no to a customer. I actually
| really liked my job - I got a lot of joy out of making nice
| displays (I worked in produce), cleaning, organizing, etc. But
| being forced to be a servant to every customer, no matter how
| rude, abusive or unreasonable they were, and never being able
| to confront them without first talking to management was the
| most dehumanizing part of any job I've ever had.
| luffapi wrote:
| While this is absolutely true, it would also make the job very
| stressful (and potentially dangerous) if front-line staff, or
| any staff really, has to eject people on a regular basis. I
| definitely wouldn't want to do it, the people who you'd be
| refusing service to would be the worst of the worst and likely
| not take it well.
| njovin wrote:
| Maybe if enough businesses did this it would drive a societal
| shift. I've had the pleasure of firing a small handful of
| customers from my very small SaaS business when they were
| outrightly rude or vulgar. I feel terrible whenever I see an
| employee at any business having to be sanguine with an
| abusive customer, it shouldn't be tolerated.
| luffapi wrote:
| It shouldn't be, but just be aware that you're asking
| people to put themselves in harms way. I'd rather grin and
| bear a jerk customer than get shot by one waiting outside
| after my shift because I personally had to kick them out.
|
| I totally agree abusive customers are a huge problem
| though.
| [deleted]
| pessimizer wrote:
| We obligated minimum wage service to do mask enforcement, and
| it got a lot of them assaulted and murdered.
| WalterBright wrote:
| On the other hand, for those who go out of their way to be nice
| to service workers, it's fun.
| RyJones wrote:
| Yup. It's nice being able to get a table when there aren't
| any open; be nice, and people are nice.
| WalterBright wrote:
| One thing one learns in getting older is how well being
| nice works.
| lrdswrk00 wrote:
| Covid has made me question eating out at all.
|
| It's trivial to cook something that's better tasting and
| healthier than fast food, most cafes. With all the practice in
| the last year, it's not hard to come close to my favorite upscale
| restaurants for 1/4 of the price.
|
| I don't need to find a recipe, I can "just cook" now.
|
| Eating out seems like an antiquated division of labor given how
| streamlined procurement (grocery delivery from anywhere), and no
| commute have made my life.
| Bhilai wrote:
| Yes agreed. I hate cooking but I decided to bite the bullet
| during covid and learnt to make simple meals. The whole chore
| of cutting, cooking, cleaning up, dishes and utensils still
| seems like a burden to me but I enjoy eating home cooked meals
| and have improved overtime to modify internet recipes to my
| liking. Eating out now seems expensive and unhealthy in most
| cases and I often doubt the quality of ingredients too.
| SonicScrub wrote:
| Agreed. Especially when a big part of the value proposition of
| a restaurant, the time savings, are negated when I can do my
| cooking while simultaneously in a meeting. Plus I can be in my
| underwear the whole time!
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Agree. My consumption of restaurant food basically stopped in
| March 2020. I have eaten out or gotten take out maybe once a
| month since then. Pre-covid I was eating at least one meal from
| a restaurant almost daily.
| xanaxagoras wrote:
| Agreed. Restaurant food is generally speaking unhealthy and
| overpriced. Low quality ingredients are doused in fat and salt
| to make them palatable and I'm expected to pay an exorbitant
| fee for someone to remember what I asked for and carry it
| across the room. It's cheaper and easier to eat real, whole
| foods at home. There are too many restaurants and we've come to
| rely on them for our daily sustenance. A healthy relationship
| to restaurants would make it a once or twice a month kind of
| proposition, yet it's not uncommon for people to use
| restaurants as their primary source of nutrition (don't even
| get me started on F-ing delivery).
|
| The more of them that shut down after COVID and don't come
| back, the better.
| lfmunoz4 wrote:
| These types of jobs should be done by 14-21 year old as they are
| unskilled and help develop social skills. Always found it weird
| that we have so many career restaurant workers.
| bawana wrote:
| It's actually worse for physicians. Incomes not only declining
| due to increases in expenses, but reimbursements in Medicare
| dropping too, in nominal non inflation adjusted dollars. Yet the
| corporate side of organized healthcare is seeing healthy pay
| raises. Bottom Line: anyone who actually does the work gets
| shafted. Those who delegate win.
| Rd6n6 wrote:
| The title cites a record rate, but I can't find where they say
| what the previous record rate was. It makes sense for a time like
| now to be when a record number of people are changing jobs. Is
| this a massive increase though, or a slight one?
| BuckRogers wrote:
| There is only one thing to do in this situation! We have enough
| people available. So raise wages until the labor shortage is
| resolved.
|
| Pretty simple, let's go, Team USA.
|
| Hello? Team?? Oh, I'm sure we're all onboard with the plan and in
| this together.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| Wages/insurance/tips are an ongoing concern of food service work,
| but I want to set that aside and talk about the other half of the
| article. Customer entitlement is _out of control_ and anybody who
| works with the general public will tell you it's gotten even
| worse since the pandemic--and it wasn't trending in the right
| direction before. Flight attendants, park rangers, government
| clerks, the anecdotes are everywhere, in whispers and on social
| media.
|
| A good friend of mine is a doctor and he has a hair-raising story
| for me nearly every day, often indistinguishable from fast food
| customers' behavior. I'm trying to get him to retire before he
| gets shot by somebody who was told they'd have to wait 3 days for
| an appointment.
|
| What's going on? I have my own theories but I want HN's take.
| Kluny wrote:
| I find it very strange too, but I find it even stranger that
| management mostly continues to tolerate it. A business has the
| right to refuse service. If someone is abusing your staff, why
| not kick them out and ban them immediately? Public shame is the
| best cure for bad behavior, and staff will be loyal a manager
| who has their back. Instead of that, assholes mostly seem to be
| allowed to keep on being assholes until they get to the point
| of physical violence.
| oramit wrote:
| I think there has been a general rise in selfish behavior now
| that pandemic restrictions are being lifted. You have people
| who never took the pandemic seriously and now that things are
| back open, but are not the same, they are lashing out. That's
| one part of this.
|
| I also think you have another camp, which I'll admit to being a
| member of. I did everything I was supposed to do. I stayed at
| home, used masks everywhere, took no trips, and had very few
| social engagements for more than a year - and it sucked. Now
| that things are open all I want to do is go out. Even though I
| know that I should lower my expectations, I can't help
| emotionally but feel entitled to having a good time now.
|
| The thought rolling around my head is: I did everything that
| was asked of me for a year and a half, I _deserve_ to have fun
| now.
|
| As I write that I know intellectually how self-centered,
| selfish, and delusion it is but I _feel_ it intensely.
| vmception wrote:
| I suggested the bold idea of going to the movies this Friday,
| in theatres
|
| And my friend replied "I don't think theaters are a problem
| after the orgies"
|
| From my experience over the last several months hosting
| parties in reopened areas, people are open to anything. Even
| people that would be considered squares are taking the
| opportunity to live it up alongside the wild vagabonds
|
| I've never seen anything like it
| [deleted]
| motohagiography wrote:
| After a year of piety, it's possibly just "moral licensing."
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-licensing)
|
| I can't remember the other term, but there is a related
| concept where we do things like separate our recycling, then
| fly private. Someone with a job helping other people becomes
| an abusive disaster at home. Or the classic relationship
| anti-pattern of partner who "does things for you, and now you
| owe them," (covert contract?) It's related to indulgences and
| self-licensing, and there is a calculation where we decide
| our past or even current good behaviour justifies poor
| behaviour now because we have an imaginary idea that we are
| somehow bargaining with the universe and it owes us
| something. (It doesn't care.) It's not the universe, it's
| your mother, and people are rude because they are caught in a
| psychological feedback loop of expectation, shame, and rage.
|
| For years I thought it was economically broken that even
| restaurant and cafe jobs required a college degree, but now I
| don't understand how anyone _without_ a psychology degree
| could be equipped to work with the public. We are hell.
| oliv__ wrote:
| _As I write that I know intellectually how self-centered,
| selfish, and delusion it is but I feel it intensely._
|
| Almost as if there was some kind of flaw in the initial
| premise...
| oramit wrote:
| Care to share the flaw instead of being vague?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| i_love_music wrote:
| I really appreciate the honesty in your comment. I can relate
| to it closely and have had the same thought.
| apozem wrote:
| More anecdata: my wife is a veterinarian and deals with endless
| angry customers who think she's trying to rip them off or waste
| their time or is just plain wrong. I don't know if there are
| more, but there are a lot.
|
| But, she has an out fast food workers don't. She tells the
| worst offenders, "If you're not happy with the care you're
| receiving, we'd be happy to give you Fido's records so you can
| take him somewhere else."
|
| They shut up when you remind them you don't _have_ to fix their
| sick dog.
| ngngngng wrote:
| I wish more businesses would allow their employees to do
| this. One of my first jobs was at a call center, and as soon
| as the customer stopped being professional, I would give them
| a single warning, and then say "since you can't remain
| professional, I'm going to end the call" and hang up. It was
| amazing! Why should your employees have to take verbal or
| other types of abuse from your customers?
| dimgl wrote:
| I'm not sure what's going on, but on the flip side I've noticed
| a general lack of care from service workers at restaurants
| lately. Anecdotal evidence, obviously, but my meals have often
| had wrong ingredients, incorrect items, missing items, low
| quality items... the list goes on. This really doesn't inspire
| confidence or give credence to the argument that they deserve
| more money if they can't get basic details correct.
| claudiulodro wrote:
| As they say: pay peanuts, get monkeys.
| diob wrote:
| My opinion is it's due to the growing inequality. Folks have
| almost zero support, and the past year has probably hammered
| that in more than ever.
| unstatusthequo wrote:
| General entitlement is out of control. There are also plenty of
| restaurant workers who just don't get jobs right now because of
| "free" money from the government. Their problems will compound
| with that Great Inflation, where everything consumer will cost
| more.
|
| Also, service generally blows. Even at your doctor friend's
| place. I bet he has an 8 page HIPAA form that's only fillable
| on paper and has duplicate entry requirements. How does this
| reduce frustration?
|
| Companies, regardless of size, have started assuming consumers
| will keep paying for shitty service. Want my cash? Provide
| something I want. Going to be a rude prick? Quit and go on the
| dole, then. Save us all the trouble. I'll happily take my
| business elsewhere. It's not like there aren't other options
| available for services.
| imtringued wrote:
| >There are also plenty of restaurant workers who just don't
| get jobs right now because of "free" money from the
| government.
|
| What are we going to do about it? End the program? How about
| in september?
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I don't know why, but I've seen people becoming more anti-
| social lately in the past 5 years or so. I've always thought of
| myself as anti-social, but I wouldn't anymore. As I make an
| effort these days to be friendly to people I haven't met yet,
| they don't always reciprocate in kind. So these days, I feel
| less anti-social, but only because the bar seems to have
| lowered.
|
| I'm not certain why, but when I was younger, I feel like the
| tenor of stuff on our screens, message boards, TV, etc. was
| more positive than it is now. People celebrated stuff they
| liked more. That definitely still exists today, but more and
| more people are excited to celebrate a shared hate in
| something: sports stars (I can't watch shows like First Take on
| ESPN), reality tv (which seems to mostly revolve around petty
| conflict), politicians, I even used to use Facebook to find
| people to go to shows with, but I've since deactivated my
| account because it's not very social anymore, etc. When the
| people we look up are famous for being argumentative or being
| jerks, it makes us think that is what leads to success, or
| something along those lines.
|
| After realizing this, I've definitely tried to base my
| relationships on stuff that I like (OK, I allow myself some
| bashing of the Dallas Cowboys :D ).
|
| _A good friend of mine is a doctor ... I'm trying to get him
| to retire before he gets shot by somebody who was told they'd
| have to wait 3 days for an appointment._
|
| I'll be honest, the receptionists at my PCP have very poor,
| whatever the equivalent of bedside manner is for them. When I
| try to make an appointment, or get a referral, I get thrown
| around a lot of technical terms that I don't quite understand
| and they don't seem to have the patience to explain to me what
| such and such a number is, and who I have to give it to and
| when. Healthcare in the US is very confusing, and when you're
| sick or your kid is sick, it's not always easy to deal with all
| that red tape. I mean, I wish I only had to wait 3 days for an
| appointment, but it's like, I need to make an appointment weeks
| in advance, give someone a number, but not too far ahead of my
| appointment's date, then no one can tell what any of this is
| going to cost, etc. It is very stressful.
| [deleted]
| Invictus0 wrote:
| My theory is that erosion of community leads to people
| increasingly not caring about how they are perceived by others.
| Previously, social pressure made people feel ashamed of their
| bad behavior. Now, there are no consequences for bad behavior,
| and it takes some modicum of effort to be nice to people you
| don't care about, and so the bad behavior continues.
| bigbob2 wrote:
| Great point. If more people did what the Cart Narc does the
| world might be a better place.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Folks are nervous and tense. It was a tense year.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Customer entitlement is out of control
|
| It's not just customer entitlement. It's been a steadily rising
| thing throughout society for my whole life.
|
| People are less and less willing to accept responsibility for
| their choices, and more and more it's always someone else's
| fault.
|
| For example, a person who chose to go $300,000 into debt to go
| to Columbia film school, where the starting salary upon
| graduating is $30,000, claims to be a victim of the school.
| YinglingLight wrote:
| Why not? When the media we consume promotes Victimhood over
| taking Ownership of one's problems, isn't this behavior
| inevitable?
| zipiridu wrote:
| I've changed my mind on this a few times, but I think schools
| or creditors should have some duty to not give out loans of
| this magnitude to 17-year olds with little to no financial
| literacy. The same way that a bank would not give you a huge
| loan with bad credit. Schools should also be extremely
| upfront about this type of financial information.
| WalterBright wrote:
| These were Masters degree students, not 17 year olds. They
| had SIX years to type this into google:
| Starting salary for film degree
|
| I would think an educated student would know how to use
| google? But I bet they actually did know this, and went
| ahead anyway, and now just want to blame others.
| imtringued wrote:
| A loan of that magnitude is a very sharp knife. Some
| people will injure themselves and it's inevitable. Some
| want people to injure themselves.
| echelon wrote:
| It's taking longer than I would have thought for this
| meme to soak in for the general public. I knew this back
| in college, but that was a bit ago...
|
| There isn't a lot of room at the top in film (at least
| until the creator economy table flips Hollywood).
| Likewise, there aren't many paid positions for
| historians, philosophy professors, etc.
|
| Kids need to understand that their top priority should be
| to understand the shape of the economy and how to make
| themselves a valuable, indispensable part of it. Doing
| this early affords much greater freedom and leisure later
| in life.
|
| Basically, kids need to understand supply and demand for
| careers. If they don't, it greatly impacts their future
| stability and happiness.
| pingpongchef wrote:
| Bankruptcy should help with this but student loans are
| currently a special case
| dtjb wrote:
| You seem to be bringing some foreign baggage to this
| conversation.
| diob wrote:
| This seems like a wild take to be honest. Humanity over the
| generations remains much the same beast, it's just that as
| you get old you forget the lessons your generation had to
| learn by experience (rose tinted glasses so to speak). You
| also fail to see that the context of the humans being raised
| today is different from yours, and their experiences /
| opportunities different as well. Heck, even those in your
| generation likely had wildly different experiences /
| opportunities compared to you.
|
| It's also weird to present such a wild off the wall example
| at the end. I don't think such people are common.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Common or not, I regularly see stories about this in the
| newspaper. The students change, the stories are the same
| "but nobody told me I couldn't get a decent job in this
| major, look at all the debt I have now."
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| In the past you didn't end up with a $100,000 of debt.
| That's what's changed. If you failed you could try again.
| Now you get your one chance with an education and that's
| it.
| diob wrote:
| Always consider why you should trust them or what their
| ulterior motive is (selling papers, stoking outrage,
| etc.).
|
| Talk with some folks from the new generation and build a
| connection beyond what someone else wants you to feel /
| think about them, you might be surprised what you have in
| common.
| imtringued wrote:
| That person clearly is not a victim of the school, rather
| that person is the victim of a predatory loan.
|
| Just think about it. A degree doesn't have to cost $300000
| but the bank financed it anyway, with the clear intention of
| working that person down to their bones. Why would a bank let
| someone take a debt that takes 10 years of work to repay?
| Because they want to force that person to work for 10 years.
| If the law were sane the debtor would default as soon as
| possible.
| eric_b wrote:
| I agree with you, 100%.
| flunhat wrote:
| But in that example, Columbia made students big promises that
| it simply couldn't deliver. It's more like a deeply dishonest
| salesman than a hapless waiter who gets your order wrong.
| From James Stoteraux:
|
| > Many of the students in my class who didn't turn their
| degrees into industry success were insanely talented, but
| Columbia traded on its reputation to sell them big dreams
| that it could never deliver.
|
| > During my 2nd year I suspected that the school wasn't
| providing a launching pad to a career -- most of the
| instructors were struggling to establish a career themselves
| & many weren't even much more experienced than their
| students. A 4th yr student taught our cinematography class.
|
| > The brass ring the program dangled was that your film could
| be chosen for the annual festival where, in theory, big-time
| agents would see it and maybe sign you. But it was cutthroat
| to even be selected for the festival. And tuition didn't
| cover the cost to make those films.
|
| ...
|
| > I slowly begin to realize this IS the deal. He made it
| pretty clear if I wanted my degree, I needed to help him sell
| his tv pilot. Yep, the Chair of Columbia's prestigious
| graduate film program tried to shake me down in order to
| jump-start his own stalled out career.
|
| The full thread is here: https://twitter.com/jstoteraux/statu
| s/1413326562821246978?s=....
|
| Students definitely deserve some blame for signing onto these
| expensive programs without doing any meaningful research. But
| university admins can be corrupt, too, and it's likely that
| they used their reputation as "Columbia" to sell students
| something they knew was fake.
|
| Anyway, in response to the original point -- I don't think
| that's a good example of entitlement since "scam" is a more
| appropriate word. I think they had stuff like "people being
| mean to waiters and flight attendants" in mind, which is a
| different sort of entitlement.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > scam
|
| There is a legal concept called "due diligence" where a
| party to a contract is expected to take reasonable steps to
| know what they're doing.
|
| Googling "starting salaries for [my major]" is a very, very
| low bar for due diligence.
|
| The posts in this thread absolving the student from making
| any effort whatsoever at due diligence is illustrative of
| the point I was making.
| olyjohn wrote:
| You expect a 15-17 year old to have the life experience
| to deal with this? They've been told exactly what to do
| their whole lives. Then they have been told how amazing
| and great and awesome they are, surely they won't be the
| ones coming out at that bottom wage.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| I agree customer entitlement is growing but I disagree with
| your example.
|
| We created a society where we tell people they should chase
| their dreams and anything is possible in America. Then, when
| they chase their dreams and fail we tell them how stupid they
| are that they did that and they should have done something
| more practical. I don't think teenagers should be blamed for
| doing exactly what they were told to do and they're right to
| be angry at the system.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Not checking starting salaries for one's major is stupid.
| I'm being blunt, but there's no other word for it.
|
| > teenagers
|
| Masters degree students are not teenagers.
| ambrose2 wrote:
| Students often need to decide during undergrad to apply
| to grad school and at that point many are 19 or 20 years
| old. Not teenagers is a little pedantic.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| That doesn't change the fact that we push people to go to
| college. We tell people anything is possible in America.
| We say this is the land of opportunity and you can do
| whatever we want and to follow your dreams. Then, we
| charge people a hundred thousand dollars to follow their
| dream and tell them that dreams are stupid and they
| should have been practical and googled salaries and
| career expectations.
|
| America is still designed for when a college degree was
| payable with a minimum wage job. We either need to fix
| our schools or acknowledge the American dream is dead and
| we tricked a generation into giving us money for
| something they could never have.
| reader_mode wrote:
| The problem with your argument is the assumption that
| societies are designed.
| 29083011397778 wrote:
| Here's hoping people's behaviour improves, as getting your
| friend out won't save everyone. It certainly didn't save one
| Albertan physician [0]
|
| [0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/red-deer-clinic-
| doct...
| fpgaminer wrote:
| One thing to consider is perhaps a bias: could there be some
| phenomenon that makes these "entitlement" events _appear_ to be
| more common than they previously have been? Or are they
| actually more common lately?
|
| To that end, I saw an interesting statistic thrown around: "The
| Federal Aviation Administration said it had fielded 1,300
| complaints of unruly passengers since February, the same number
| of enforcement actions it took against passengers in the past
| decade." (Source:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/10/travel/faa-unruly-
| airline...)
|
| That lends statistical credence to what you're saying:
| customers/people have gotten more entitled and, I'll interject
| my own phrasing, crazy. A 10x increase in "unruly passengers"
| is ... just hard to wrap my head around.
|
| Of course, that 10x spike could be primarily attributed to
| masks and not necessarily an increase in broader entitlement or
| "freakouts". That's really what we're concerned with, because
| the mask rules will go away eventually. So what we're all
| really worried about is, are people getting "crazier" in
| general? Or is just the mask rules rubbing a lot of the
| population the wrong way?
|
| That's harder to say. But I thought it important to at least
| address the bias question. I know myself I figured things
| couldn't be getting as bad as the internet makes them seem. I
| thought it may have been the "video camera in everyone's
| pocket" bias or something. But the stats point towards this
| possibly being a real shift.
|
| As for why people might be getting out of hand? Well I don't
| have specific sources for this, but I've seen a few articles
| and quotes that suggest that isolation can cause permanent
| psychological damage. I know many people expected lock downs to
| have negative effects on our psychologies, but I think few are
| aware of just how damaging it's been. And it likely had a
| disproportionate effect on people with existing mental illness
| or mental "fault lines" as I like to call them. Combined with
| many society's lack of support structures for mental health
| and, well, it's perhaps no wonder that we're seeing a lot of
| public "freakouts". And as you've said, customer service
| workers bare the brunt of that.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Fear.
|
| When people feel up against the wall, all social protocol and
| laws go out the window.
|
| In the US, a faction of politicians are pushing apocalyptic
| thinking so hard, that everyone is getting the fear: not just
| the doomsayers and their followers.
|
| But it actually is getting worse. We're in a new pandemic due
| to to ignorance, half of the US is on fire, cost of living
| there is through the roof, there are armed militia rising with
| a political bent, and their supporting politicians are
| encouraging violence.... Basically, the Karens of the US are
| being told it is their patriotic duty to be entitled. This all
| comes out as panic and "me first" behavior in everyone, not
| just Karens, but the people that have to deal with them, it
| accumulates.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Along similar lines there's been a significant increase in auto
| fatalities despite the fact that miles driven went
| significantly down. Most of this can be attributed to people
| driving more aggressively and recklessly. Then there's the 30%
| rise in violent crime.
|
| The truth of the matter is that America has become a much
| angrier society since the pandemic started.
| legitster wrote:
| I wonder if tipping took a huge hit in 2020.
|
| The kinds of people still eating in person at restaurants were
| often not paragons of conscientiousness in the first place. And I
| could see a lot of people cutting back on tipping when just
| patroning a place could feel like an act of charity in itself.
| boulos wrote:
| Actually, IIUC people were more generous tippers "during" the
| pandemic [1]. Some of the reopening discussion included a note
| that average tipping went down.
|
| [1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/article/Data-show-the-
| pand...
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Actually, IIUC people were more generous tippers "during"
| the pandemic [1]. Some of the reopening discussion included a
| note that average tipping went down.
|
| Yeah, previously I wouldn't tip if I had to order my food
| from a counter, but I changed that during the pandemic
| (especially if it was a smaller mom an pop restaurant).
| TheFreim wrote:
| My tips have significantly increased since business has started
| to pick up again. Making way over my wage now.
| dgudkov wrote:
| All those people who write "Just raise wages!" clearly never
| managed a restaurant.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Have worked in various restaurants for short periods of time. One
| of the most miserable jobs IMHO, would never go back. No wonder
| people are quitting.
| sprafa wrote:
| Let us keep remembering that there is no evidence that raising
| minimum wages increases unemployment (The Big Lie the economists
| use to defend their hypothetical model of how this works).
| a123b456c wrote:
| Here is some evidence.
|
| https://www.nber.org/papers/w23532
| browningstreet wrote:
| I think some businesses are going out of businesses because they
| stubbornly refuse to raise their wages.
|
| In the vacation community where I live, there are two
| grocery/delis about a mile apart from each other. One is at a
| marina, the other is at a beach. They have almost the same
| business offering. Traditionally, both are fully mobbed during
| the sunny seasons.
|
| Two weeks ago, I visited the one I usually go to -- at the
| marina. They had a sign at the front door, "Due to the labor
| shortage..." and they weren't operating their deli counter. No
| sandwiches. When I sent inside, it was empty. No customers. The
| one employee at the register was on their phone. Nothing going
| on. A couple of people pulled up in their cars, read the sign,
| pulled out and left immediately.
|
| Drove up the road a mile to the other one. No sign -- it was busy
| like it usually was. Full house, busy counters and registers.
|
| My son asked me why the other place wouldn't just raise their
| wages.. I couldn't answer, but I guessed it was more on a matter
| of principle than calculated reality. There's no way they were
| surviving or thriving. I joked that maybe the owner was an old
| cahoot who remembered when a soda was $0.05 and there was no way
| they were going to raise their hourly wages to $15 or more.
| Aloha wrote:
| It's not just wages - like alot of what we can do is making
| shitty jobs less miserable, ensuring everyone gets some amount
| of vacation and sick time, insuring everyone has cheap or free
| healthcare access, ensuring everyone has relatively fixed
| schedule - eliminate punitive workplace policies, on stuff like
| attendance and other shit that makes being there miserable.
| Like, you can do a hell of alot to reduce peoples day to day
| misery.
|
| There used to be some sort of a tradeoff, there used to be a
| ton of jobs that didnt pay well, but they were not miserable
| places to work at, that was kinda the tradeoff, you know - you
| like, didnt get a ton of money, but the workplace wasnt awful.
| Those jobs still exist but they're rarer.
| mjevans wrote:
| Healthcare, retirement, everything required for living should
| be socialized. Old people today have Medicare and Social
| Security, but we need to finish the progression to Star Trek
| and just make sure there's enough to go around and that it
| does go around.
|
| The other part is that misery, fire bad customers and bad
| managers. It really isn't that difficult to be polite.
| vletal wrote:
| Last week we went to a great local restaurant. At least it used
| to be in the pre-covid times. Now most of the stuff had a
| "temporary worker" or an "apprentice" sticker on their chest. You
| could see their hands shaking while serving heavy glasses of
| beer, improper way of serving food. They forgot about us at one
| point. We kindly asked to get served. The new hires were not even
| able to take our orders without being apologetic. After that a
| young waitress passed me a boiling hot soup over a head of our
| 3yo son!
|
| Just a year ago, this was one of the most professionally stuffed
| family friendly restaurants in Prague. Now they have to train a
| new crew and build their reputation from scratch again.
|
| Was working as a waitress here in the Czech Rep. / EU really that
| bad that the ones who managed to find a different job during the
| pandemic do not want to go back?
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Why wouldn't they?
|
| Customers have lost their minds. The notion that "the customer is
| always right" has combined with what can only be described as a
| mass-psychosis among a population of patrons. The level of
| behavior among these customers is borderline criminal in terms of
| attacking staff and restaurant property. Why deal with that for
| minimum wage?
| partiallypro wrote:
| I've gone to multiple restaurants of late that have had to close
| early (even very early, like 3pm) because they are so short
| staffed. Other restaurants have people waiting but have empty
| tables because there is no one to work them.
| minikites wrote:
| There are plenty of people to work them, the owners are just
| not willing to pay a market wage.
| ngngngng wrote:
| It's difficult for one restaurant paying living wage to
| compete with those relying on people working poverty wages.
| The businesses paying good wages will not be able to compete
| on costs and that benefit might not be passed to the
| customer. Certain businesses, for whatever reason, are more
| effective at hiring and retaining workers at low wages.
| Instead of forcing businesses to do the right thing and try
| and compete with lower prices due to horrible wages, we need
| to mandate living wage so all the competition has to move
| together.
| Paul_S wrote:
| Restaurant owners refuse to pay higher wages because that would
| remove a huge profit source for them - variable pricing.
|
| As long as part of the wage is in tips the owner effectively is
| capable of charging customers different prices. Rich people pay
| more but poor poeple also visit. If you raise the price to pay a
| good wage without tips and abolish tipping you lose the poor
| customers.
| atty wrote:
| You seem to be under the impression that rich people tip more.
| From what I have seen, and from many friends in the service
| industry, this is simply false. You're far more likely to get
| no tip from someone driving a Mercedes than someone driving a
| junker, at least around where I am.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Rich people don't get rich by giving away money for nothing,
| so expecting rich people to be more inclined to do so
| is...odd.
| arcturus17 wrote:
| Eh, how is variable pricing a source of profit for the
| restaurateur? Their profit is calculated on a fixed price. Also
| from what I've observed in the US, everyone is morally
| obligated to pay a tip... Rich people may go above and beyond
| the average (citation needed) but having tips arguably does not
| raise demand from more modest people, since they are still
| expected to pay base price + tip. There is no real price
| segmentation at play as far as I can tell...
|
| Modest people also eat out in Europe or in Japan, where morally
| mandatory tipping does not exist, so there is that.
| red_trumpet wrote:
| > Eh, how is variable pricing a source of profit for the
| restaurateur? Their profit is calculated on a fixed price.
|
| More people dining means more profit probably.
|
| > (citation needed)
|
| Yes, that may indeed be a problem.
| arcturus17 wrote:
| > More people dining means more profit probably.
|
| I gave a precise argument to why I think tips do not
| increase demand for the service - _most_ people in the US,
| regardless of wealth, pay at least the minimum tip.
|
| GP's argument that there is a substantial price
| segmentation would only hold if poorer people did not pay
| the tip.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| This would apply to all industries and yet every one else seems
| to be able to figure it out. Also I have never been to a
| Restaurant where I got a different menu based on my W2.
|
| Edit: I missed the point, my fault.
| kristjansson wrote:
| >Also I have never been to a Restaurant where I got a
| different menu based on my W2
|
| That's OPs point? Tipping allows for a degree of price
| discrimination since people that can't afford the full cost
| (menu price + tip) are allowed to pay less.
|
| I'd quibble about the degree of that effect, but it makes
| sense directionally.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| I've never worked harder than in restaurant work. It is the worst
| job with the worst people with unattainable expectations.
|
| The only time it's worth it is if you don't care about walking
| out even in the middle of a shift.
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| I go to a breakfast shop a lot, they lost around 1/2 of their
| staff permanently due to COVID, It majorly jostled the restaurant
| sector around here. I asked the owner, "Well, why'd they leave?".
| He claims "They're getting more on unemployment than if they
| worked."
|
| Well, why is that the case? Don't you provide them with enough to
| live on? If they're getting $500 a week from unemployment, that
| would mean you're paying people less than $24k to work for you,
| without healthcare or retirement benefits, might I add.
|
| He later stated if minimum wage was $15 an hour, he'd have to
| raise his prices and lose some staff who aren't efficiently
| employed time-wise. He stated this like it was a huge negative,
| but to me, he should pay great employees a great wage to work
| hard, not have extra employees all of whom are paid poorly to
| stand around a bit on the downtimes. And anyway, as a customer,
| I'd happily pay $10 instead of $5 for breakfast, if I had the
| option to support the employees properly.
|
| $5 vs $10 for us in technology? Many of us make $30 hour, or FAR
| more, so these $5 differences are much smaller to us than to
| restaurant workers.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Folks raise that spectre when a living wage is mentioned. "So
| many service jobs lost!" I shake my head at that - folks who
| imagine themselves Free Market advocates, and here they are
| agreeing with Karl Marx that a capitalist system can't survive
| without a slave-wage class to prop it up.
|
| Paying everybody a living wage should be the _minimum bar_ for
| any economy. If ours can 't do it, we need a different one.
| gruez wrote:
| > and here they are agreeing with Karl Marx that a capitalist
| system can't survive without a slave-wage class to prop it
| up.
|
| The employers aren't obligated to employ anyone. What do you
| think happens to the "slave-wage class" when the job
| disappears entirely?
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Issue is that the only reason this slave wage class exists
| in food services is because of a coordinated lobbying
| campaign to influence politicians to keep it like that.
| Most people in this thread would be pretty upset if all
| tech companies got together tomorrow and decided to
| artificially cap salaries and bought politicians to enforce
| it.
| gruez wrote:
| >Most people in this thread would be pretty upset if all
| tech companies got together tomorrow and decided to
| artificially cap salaries and bought politicians to
| enforce it.
|
| Are you claiming that wages in the restaurant industry
| are kept artificially low because of companies
| artificially capping salaries, and that politicians are
| enforcing it? If so, is there a source for this? AFAIK
| the pay is bad purely because of market reasons (ie.
| there are more people willing to do it than there are
| positions).
| abeyer wrote:
| I don't think it's as common any more, but for many years
| a lot of states had "tip credit" laws (which were
| strongly supported/lobbied for by the restaurant
| industry) that allowed companies to pay tipped employees
| less than minimum wage with the assumption that they made
| up the difference in tips.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > The employers aren't obligated to employ anyone
|
| And we're not obligated to provide them with people
| desperate enough to work their shit jobs either.
| Frondo wrote:
| No specific employer is obligated to employ a specific
| employee, but we as a society have an obligation not to
| allow a slave-wage class to exist. We can do this, but we
| choose not to.
| _moof wrote:
| Indeed - and if people are _quitting_ at record rates, that
| potentially exposes the image of willfully unemployed
| restaurant workers lazing about on piles of unemployment cash
| as a myth.
| bena wrote:
| Be aware that you can't entirely trust his perception of the
| situation. He has a vested interest in under-paying his
| workforce.
|
| He is going to doom and gloom any situation that results in him
| potentially losing money. And him losing out on profit to pay
| his staff probably doesn't enter his mind. If he made $X of
| profit last year, he wants to make $X+ this year. So he figures
| if he has to pay people Y more, he will have to charge Y more
| so he can still profit what he wants to.
|
| To your opinion on what he should do regarding "extra"
| employees, I'm going to refer you to the book, Slack. While
| those employees are technically standing around being extra,
| they're needed to accommodate the bursts of activity that
| happens in a restaurant. Restaurants aren't busy all day long,
| they're busy in spurts. When you need people, you need them
| now.
|
| And I think that may a major issue. The tipped minimum wage
| makes things _feel_ like they 're running efficiently, when
| it's really just shifting the money around in a way that is not
| optimal for the customer and causes them to overpay.
| nunez wrote:
| just remember that _you_, presumably a tech worker making great
| money, would easily pay $10 instead of $5. Many others are
| extremely price-elastic and will literally give up years of
| patronage for Denny's or something with a move like this.
|
| One could argue that they could market to a higher-earning
| clientele, but that might not exist where you are, and they'd
| still have to pay to (maybe) earn that market.
|
| it's a huge catch 22.
|
| i feel like i should add that I usually tip 50-100% (since
| COVID started) regardless of service and want to see restaurant
| workers paid much better across the board. tips are not
| commissions.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Those others would be exhibiting price-elastic behavior, not
| price-inelastic. (A high change in demand for a change in
| price is elastic.)
| nunez wrote:
| Thanks for the correction!
| ruined wrote:
| you do not get unemployment if you quit your job voluntarily.
| when managers say employees leave in order to collect
| unemployment, it's a lie.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| It is more that when the pandemic hit, most restaurants let
| go of their working staff, given they couldn't furlough or
| keep them on payroll when the restaurants were closed.
|
| Since they were fired, they got unemployment. Now,
| restaurants are open again, but folks don't want to go back
| for the meager pay (and likely the extra freedom in their
| time is welcome as well).
| ruined wrote:
| that's not the situation of "employees quit to collect
| unemployment", which is commonly claimed and is what i was
| calling a lie. the article at the root of this discussion
| documents that employees are indeed actually quitting,
| which disqualifies unemployment.
|
| but anyway, for those who do collect unemployment, job
| search requirements are in effect now. unemployment offices
| are requiring workers to apply to jobs and document their
| search. they cross-reference with employers and will
| actually revoke unemployment if job offers are declined. if
| restaurants still can't hire staff under these forced
| conditions, it's because they are simply worse than other
| jobs available, and perhaps even worse than no income.
| usaar333 wrote:
| The covid rule changes to UI were more flexible. You could
| leave/not take a new job due to covid concerns: https://www.s
| fchronicle.com/business/networth/article/Califo...
| andylei wrote:
| but you still can't get unemployment if you voluntarily
| leave your job
| ruined wrote:
| ok, sure. but then once again it's on the managers, who
| have apparently failed so badly to remedy their dangerous
| work environment that the state considers the employees to
| have been forced out.
| txsoftwaredev wrote:
| When you pay people to stay home what do you expect?
| acover wrote:
| Would a Costco style membership work for food?
|
| Attract better behaved customers, match fixed vs variable
| expenses better, attract more regular customers.
|
| Though you run into restaurants being a terrible industry with
| too much competition.
| Ajay-p wrote:
| I worked a long, long time in the food service industry and it
| was the tipping that drove me away. I just could not smile and
| bear it anymore. I never got angry at a customer, never lost my
| cool in front of them, and did my best to be polite and humble,
| but it just wore me out. I felt like every day I was begging,
| hoping for them to like me so I could pay rent. If I didn't have
| to worry about that I could do the job professionally and know my
| pay was not tied to if the customer liked me or not.
| minikites wrote:
| Tipping is filled with issues of discrimination. Tipping also
| allows for the owner to steal from workers more easily (wage
| theft).
|
| https://www.eater.com/a/case-against-tipping
|
| There's no good argument in favor of tipping. It's a bad
| practice that we should stop immediately.
| ngngngng wrote:
| I've literally never tipped anyone less than 20%. Tipping might
| be a terrible practice, but to me it's an unwritten contract
| that since I'm accepting service from you, I'm going to tip at
| least the standard amount. I'm in a pretty privileged position
| now but this was the case when I was living on poverty wages as
| well. I just can't imagine telling someone "you don't deserve
| to be paid for the service you offered me today." I can't
| believe anyone is comfortable with that notion, but I suppose
| it's probably more out of apathy than spite.
| lawnchair_larry wrote:
| I'm sure many get low pay, but the women I knew were making $50k
| - $70k in their 20s. That was when housing was far, far cheaper
| too. Hardly min wage.
| monkeydust wrote:
| Maybe this will lead to adoption of automation in kitchen and
| front of house? There are a number of startups and concepts in
| this space and this might be the catalyst for meaningful
| adoption. Not sure I find it appealing as a guest.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| Anecdotally I've seen "counter service" restaurants and fast-
| casual eats popping up more and it definitely helps without
| sacrificing all of the human element. I'm sure it helps drive
| down personnel costs allowing you to have a single front of
| house and just runners for the food
| ianbicking wrote:
| I feel like a company like Sodexo could create some vertically
| integrated restaurant or delivery service that radically
| changes the margins and process.
|
| While the result would feel a bit dystopian I suspect I'd still
| go along as a consumer.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Every time there's an SF Bay area thread, you get libertarians
| pointing out how the lack of enforcement against shoplifting has
| destroyed the ability to run stores in the area. From afar in
| Canada, I have no idea if this is true or not.
|
| But you can see the reflection of that in this mess - the lack of
| enforcement of cultural norms about being a nasty piece-of-work
| to waitstaff and other front-of-house jobs has raised the labour
| expectations to the point that it's no longer a worthwhile
| employment option for many people. There are similar jobs with
| similar pay but less emotional labor.
|
| This is the price of ignoring the emotionally laborious. And yes,
| "laborious" has a two different meanings when applied to people.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| as i've observed it is true in some kinds of stores like
| CVS/walgreens (like a shoppers drug mart in Canada). But I've
| never observed such behavior in, say, a Trader joes or a FF
| restaurant.
| yurishimo wrote:
| Yeah, CVS/etc are a special kind of case. They have a lot of
| the same products as a big box store, even alcohol, (but a
| limited variety). Because they're so much smaller, they can't
| justify dedicated resources for loss prevention.
|
| Often times when I visit one of these stores, they have 1 or
| 2 employees working in the entire store, maybe 3 or 4 during
| a shift change or busy time. Never more than 2 people on a
| register.
|
| I think these companies could alleviate the theft problems
| with more employees, but they don't want to pay the labor
| costs.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| I think the bean counters are missing lost sales because I
| dont want to go in a CSV/Walgreens anymore.
| janitor61 wrote:
| Why not bring back the Automat to take the increasingly-rude
| public out of the equation?
| petra wrote:
| Efficient technologies, some new ones also, exist.
|
| Some say people pay for the experience, for being served when
| going to a restaurant.
|
| It would be interesting to see if that's true, or if highly
| automated restaurants with the right experience and price will
| become a hit.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Isn't that basically what online restaurant pickup ordering is?
|
| If I order from Chipotle via the app, I don't have to interact
| with a human at all unless there's an issue with the food.
| There's a bag on the rack for me to grab.
| xeromal wrote:
| I'd say there's a slight difference. The food is prepared
| without your interaction in an automat. You would just walk
| into the store and open the door for the food you want.
| Everything is pre-made but replenished only when someone
| takes it.
| agentwiggles wrote:
| You don't even necessarily have to interact with a human if
| there _is_ an issue. The Chipotle app which I use to order
| has a support chat (which I'm pretty sure is automated). If
| I'm missing an item or have pretty much any issue, they issue
| a refund for that item, no questions asked. Pretty crazy.
| (Also very convenient, and shockingly pro-consumer).
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