There is no hiring crisis.
Businesses that pay their employees more than minimum wage are having no problems getting workers. Employers have had four decades able to pay people bottom dollar and paring benefits back to nothing, scheduling them for 30 random hours a week, that they literally have no idea how to handle an actual free market where THEY have to react to supply and demand. No one wants to clean your fucking grease traps for minimum wage, deal with shitty customers, work 7 five hour shifts a week at odd hours, and your obnoxious ass. Pay them more and give them a stable schedule or go out of business.
And if you can’t pay them more, you’re not a business, you’re a hobby.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
Well said!
Shalimar
Amen
debbie
It’s not that they can’t pay better; it’s that they don’t want to. A guy around here who’s opened a number of high-end and overpriced restaurants in the region (a total of 59 according to Wiki) and is known to have many piles of cash has instead spent his time whining about unfilled jobs. Rather than increasing wages, he’s taken to shutting down a couple of his places. Boy, that showed us!
Rocks
Can I have another A-MEN!
Nora Lenderbee
@Rocks: A-MEN!!
Meyerman
Will no one speak up for the Job Creators?
CaseyL
Well said. So well said, in fact, that I’m gonna
stealborrow it.Villago Delenda Est
We’ve got a generation of really bad small business types out there. The are not leaders at all. They’re managers of Playschool toys trying to fit square pegs into round holes because that’s what MBA training is all about. “Managing” people, who cannot be “managed” any more than cats can be herded. They can be led, though, but MBAs are simply not, for the most part, leaders. They’re passive producers of spreadsheets. Worthless bean counters.
Wag
Preach it!
quakerinabasement
Hey! Where’d all those guys go who were yapping about “disrupting the industry?”
matt
But I’ll lose the family diner that I’m nostalgic about if I can’t pay staff 45 cents an hour like I did when the decor was new.
Xavier
You can bet they’re gonna move heaven and earth to get their power back.
mrmoshpotato
@Meyerman: Speak up for how they can get fucked?
Speak up for how it’s fucked up that Jeff Bezos can build and launch a cock rocket just for fun?
Roger Moore
@debbie:
I think a driving force behind a bunch of this is they absolutely believe the current labor conditions are just a temporary thing. They’re convinced that if they can just hold the line for a while, the workers will cave and accept their old wages and working conditions again. They can’t imagine that people have just gotten fed up and don’t want to take it anymore.
It’s easy to understand why, too. In my whole life, we’ve had something like 2-3 years of conditions approaching full employment, toward the end of the Clinton Administration. The whole rest of that time, we’ve either been in recession, recovering from recession, or faced with some other kind of ugly job killer like stagflation. Outside of a few sectors that focus on hiring a few stars, basically nobody in business today has meaningful experience dealing with employees who have real negotiating leverage. They just have no idea how to cope.
NotMax
In matters closer to home, replaced the computer you pronounced dead not long ago? If so, get something nifty?
Ken
And why can’t they live on 45 cents an hour? That’s what I was earning when I started out seventy years ago, and I managed to buy a house and raise a family.
waspuppet
This is striking at the very heart of conservatism. “If we had the ‘courage’ to let people starve in the streets, sure we’d lose a few million people who are pretty worthless anyway, but the poors would learn their lesson and what a great country we’d be then” is something I’ve literally been hearing since the late 1970s.
Omnes Omnibus
@Villago Delenda Est: A lot of people do not understand the divide between management and leadership.
Shalimar
@quakerinabasement: Amazing how often “disruption” means finding ways to pay independent contractors even less money than you can legally pay employees.
Anotherlurker
@Villago Delenda Est: Total agreement!
I view MBAs with the same contempt that I view fundamentalist xtians, muslims, Jews, Hindus, etc. : A Cancer in our Nation.
jl
OK, then, there is a still a serf crisis in America!
One of the most horrible consequences of the Medieval Black Death, one that we haven’t completely overcome to this day, was that it produced a labor shortage, resulted in increased wages, and made the lesser people workers uppity.
And now we’re hit by covid. We’re doomed I say, doomed!
SpaceUnit
Will no one speak out on behalf of the yacht industry?
burnspbesq
@Ken:
Because someone like you now owns the apartment you once paid $50/month for, and they charge $1,500/mo.
Omnes Omnibus
@Roger Moore: Covid has not been as disruptive as the Black Death was, but it has changed the dynamic more than many employers suspect. For many of the same reasons. Where does the power lie?
MagdaInBlack
Thank you, John.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax:
All the bells, all the whistles, and a brass quintet of mongooses.
mrmoshpotato
@Ken: It’s also the gubmint’s fault that all of the local manufacturing jobs were sent overseas.
...now I try to be amused
@Omnes Omnibus:
“Leaders are like eagles. You won’t find either here.” — Demotivation poster
Mary G
Federal extra unemployment benefits expired yesterday – Labor Day, no less. A lot of these assholes think their people will come crawling back once that pinches their serfs’ budgets, but all the good employees will have found jobs with better salaries.
Josie
Beautifully said, John, as usual.
John Revolta
Sing it, Cole.
Kay
Building trades is just bananas. So in demand. If you ever wanted to start a roofing company, now is the time.
trnc
Don’t forget Platitudes 101 – “What can I do to make you a happy customer?” without any intention of doing anything other than throw a few buzzwords out.
leeleeFL
@waspuppet: I was talking to a couple of Kids I worked with at the Club with a few years ago. All from up North and all amazed at how cheap businesses were about wages. So, I, in my inimitable fashion said, “These people used to have slaves.. they miss that!”. You should have seen their faces when the light bulb lit up!
Kay
Full employment is the best thing that has happened for working people in the last 30 years.
I’m kind of mad we “didn’t know about it” before :)
Allegedly. I am a little suspicious.
randy khan
@waspuppet:
Let a few million starve and the labor shortage will be even worse.
Jeffro
…when the gubmint is run by a Democrat, you meant to say.
Jeffro
@…now I try to be amused: god I love those (‘Demotivator’ posters)
My favorite, which I had in my office years ago, was the ‘Sacrifice’ one that had a beautiful picture of a Mayan temple.
Inspirational line underneath? “All we ask is that you give us your heart.”
LOLOLOL
randy khan
The extent to which right-wingers believe that it’s just wrong to pay people a living wage is quite astounding. When they post on my social media about how unemployment is a racket that lets people be lazy and I suggest that a better solution is to raise wages – hey, look at all of these examples of how much easier it makes to hire people – they’re just incredulous that someone would even suggest it.
evap
My daughter works as a baker in a nice restaurant in a tourist town in Oregon. She loves her job and her boss, but is not paid all that well and does not get benefits. Oregon has a good minimum wage law, but everything in this town, especially housing, is expensive. Meanwhile, most of the restaurants in town are hiring and she could probably find a better paid job, but she is reluctant to leave. Two of the line cooks at the restaurant left for better paying jobs in the town, but the owners (it’s a family-owned business that’s been around a while) claim they can’t afford to raise wages. You’d think the owners of this popular restaurant would be smarter, but it looks like they would rather lose staff than give people a raise. It just doesn’t make sense…
John Revolta
@leeleeFL: Thing is, this isn’t an excuse or even much of an explanation. Nobody alive even has grandparents who were around in slave times. They’ve had plenty of time to adjust.
trnc
@Roger Moore:
Sadly, that’s probably true. Unemployment benefits just expired, so anyone relying on that may have to accept a minimum wage at some point soon. I sure wish that could have been part of one of the bills.
DonnaK
Unemployment benefits have traditionally been stingy in order to “encourage” people to take whatever low-paying shit job that comes their way. Generous unemployment benefits, by contrast, put pressure on employers to pay a living wage. Better UI benefits give workers bargaining power they haven’t had since the GOP began its long-term project to destroy unions.
Ken
@Jeffro: I’ve always liked “A journey of a thousand miles sometimes ends badly”. Picture: A salmon jumping upstream into a bear’s mouth.
Jeffro
One minor note: I hope even the non-complaining, non-wingnut small business owners recognize this new reality and either step up or get out. If there are two half-staffed restaurants, each half full (at best) of customers, it’ll be a long slow frustrating ride to the poor house for both unless one of them gets out of the biz, and quickly.
Roger Moore
@Omnes Omnibus:
You don’t need to be the Black Death to have a big effect. After all, workers today start with a lot more leverage than pre-plague serfs had. They just need to get up the gumption to use it.
John Revolta
@evap: In order to raise wages they’d have to raise their prices. (This is assuming they can’t afford to take less of a profit.) They’re probably afraid this will chase away all their business. Countless examples prove that it ain’t so but……………
Ocotillo
Hospitality has historically used immigrant labor and underpaid them. Is it any wonder they are the highest profile segment of the economy that is desperate for workers. Of course COVID brought this to a head but clamping down on the border sounds great to the racists until they have trouble staffing the Arby’s or Olive Garden.
Old School
@John Revolta:
I get your point, but I’m pretty sure one of John Tyler’s grandchildren is still around.
Jeffro
@Ken: love it!
I forgot…I used to have a small framed ‘compromise’ one standing on my bookshelf at work. People would come in and see it and go “awwww, that’s cool!” And then they’d read the fine print underneath:
and give me The Look. =)
gratuitous
The local NBC affiliate had a story about Labor Day over the weekend. Curiously, they couldn’t find but one working-class person to interview, an older woman (50ish?) who couldn’t find a job in her field (I don’t recall exactly what it was, but call it payroll manager; that is, something you have to have some training, education and experience to do). Most of the story was about two restaurant owners who were having trouble staffing their businesses. An oblique reference was made about some restaurateurs who were offering higher pay and signing bonuses, but no specific report was made about the two struggling owners, if they were offering higher pay or bonuses for hiring.
The takeaway was of spoiled workers who didn’t want to work, and sure enough in the online version of the story plenty of people chimed in to scold the lazy workers who didn’t want to leave home for the pittance our job-creator overlords were generously offering. Even in a Labor Day story, the reporting tilt isn’t toward the workers.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Being that I’m now one of these low wage workers in retail, John is on target here. Hours are kept to an average of about 30 hours per week, a couple of weeks ago I worked 37 hours, next couple were about 27 or 28. While we are paid about a dollar over the minimum and we can request certain hours, they do vary by day of the week(yesterday was 1pm-10pm, today is 1:30pm-10pm).
ETA: I should also note, my employer is very anti-union…”why have a 3rd party between you and your management…”.
waspuppet
@randy khan: “Just get rid of the child labor laws and we’ll be all set.”
Benw
Just pay people more money!! THAT’S WHY THEY CALL IT MONEY!!
Redshift
@Shalimar:
And in a broader sense, many of the “disruptor” business models are built on evading regulation by pretending to be something “new”. The entire business model of Uber is built on evading taxi and labor regulations, and getting vulture capitalists to stake them while they undercut the taxi business by running at a loss. Airbnb is built on evading hotel and rental regulations. And so on.
There are businesses built on genuinely disruptive technologies and ideas, but not nearly as many as claim to be.
Soprano2
*bangs head against wall* *sigh* I’m not gonna repeat anything I’ve said before here again, but it’s just not this simple. In my area, the unemployment rate is 2.8%, yet there are still hiring signs everywhere, for all kinds of jobs in all kinds of industries, not just the shitty jobs where they only want to pay $7.50/hr (which doesn’t actually exist in MO anymore, our minimum wage is $10.50/hr). In my industry, in order to raise wages, everyone has to do it, or all my customers just go down the block when my hamburger is $2.00 more than everyone else’s. That’s in the process of happening, but it doesn’t happen all at once, and we can’t just raise prices overnight…….Every worker I have could work 40 hours or more if they wanted to, so if they’re working less it’s because they want to. Every small business owner who isn’t paying everyone $20/hr or more is not a shitty employer.
Roger Moore
@Mary G:
The kind of business owners who want and expect their employees to come crawling back would know the difference between a good employee and a bad one. That’s why they spend their time on trying to squeeze their employees on wages rather than trying to find the best people they can.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Ocotillo: The is one thing curious about the MAGA heads, they clearly wanted the immigration ban for a tighter labor market and now the upset when their wish came true.
Ksmiami
@evap: As someone who’s second career is cooking, let me just say that most restaurant/bakery owner operators are just not that good at business and go into it without a clue as to how complex the industry is.
raven
It may be different because we’re a college town but my friends who own restaurants are paying $17 and hour and are struggling to find help.
lowtechcyclist
@John Revolta:
Jim Crow was pretty much quasi-slavery, and I’m old enough to remember when that finally came to an end. Sharecropping was basically endless indentured servitude. And sure, Blacks could move up north, but they had to sneak away in the dead of night, leaving much of their belongings behind, because the white folks they worked for really still had the attitude that they owned the colored people who worked for them.
I highly recommend Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns. While it’s about the Black diaspora, it gives a lot of detail about the conditions they left and the barriers to leaving.
Ksmiami
@?BillinGlendaleCA: have you thought of applying to the Getty?
Ksmiami
@lowtechcyclist: the doctor’s cross country trip was harrowing…
Soprano2
“Unemployment benefits” didn’t expire – the extra $300/week pandemic unemployment benefits expired. Many people will still be drawing state unemployment. In my area, the pandemic unemployment went away in June, but it didn’t make much difference to hiring, because there are still signs on almost every business that they are hiring people, so any employer expecting that to make much of a difference is going to be disappointed. IMHO, and I know this isn’t a popular opinion on this blog, it needed to end. It has to end someday, and at least in my area vaccines are available for anyone who wants them, and jobs at many different wages are available to anyone who wants them. No one here is making even minimum wage – most jobs are advertising at several dollars an hour above that. Like I said I don’t think it’ll make much difference, but it needed to end. No way we could get Congress to extend it again anyway.
Searcher
@Meyerman: Ironically, speaking for the Job Creators is extremely lucrative.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Ksmiami: Eh, as what?
Soprano2
How exactly are we going to do this? Draw straws? The truth is, restaurants and bars go out of business all the time even in the best of times, so you don’t have much to worry about when it comes to this – one or both of your favorite local restaurants will be out of business soon. More employees for McDonald’s and Amazon, I guess.
raven
@Soprano2: It’s popular with me but I’m for a universal draft too!
Ksmiami
@?BillinGlendaleCA: photo archivist, image librarian, researcher… I think you’d be a great fit.
raven
@Soprano2: I’ll say this. My buddy complains about not having good help all the time so, what did he do? He bought another place AND is buying the building he is in!
E.
@Soprano2: Same. I pay my employees 3$ an hour better than anyone in the restaurant industry in my small valley. I do it because they deserve that and better. With tips adding about 4$ an hour on top of it. It’s been way more expensive for me than I thought it would be and with COVID, the fires (AQI 500+ today) rising food prices, more corporate factory food available in the valley, I am ready to get out. John may be right. This is feeling more like an unpaid hobby than a job.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Ksmiami: Those type of positions usually require a graduate degree in Library Science. I’m actually pretty far from the Getty West LA campus.
Jeffro
OT but looks like Greg Abbott has some serious ‘Minority Report’-type precogs working for him. He’s responding to complaints about the new pregnancy monitoring law (that there is no exception for rape or incest) by saying that there’s no need to worry, because “We’re going to get all rapists off the street in Texas”. Um, ok.
lowtechcyclist
@Old School:
That made my head spin, the first time I heard about Tyler’s living grandkids. We’re down to just one as of last September.
Soprano2
@raven: We cannot have forever “pandemic unemployment”. If people want that, then call it what it actually is – universal basic income. I saw what you posted about your restaurant friend, and I concur – even at higher wages, it’s a struggle in this industry to hire and keep good people. We just had a bartender quit last week because, in my manager’s telling, she’s having a nervous breakdown. She was good at her job, but was surrounded by a lot of drama. Her quitting had NOTHING TO DO with how much money she was making. Sometimes I think what I write here about the situation is like spitting in the wind. Everyone wants simple answers, but the answers aren’t that simple.
Hoodie
@Soprano2:
This. Of course, if your business is not viable under normal labor market conditions (e.g., unemployment at 5% is not particularly abnormal historically), then maybe it shouldn’t exist, and I’m sure a lot of these folks complaining are just skinflints who think labor should be free. It is possible, however, that, for example, certain restaurant concepts (or other small businesses) are only viable below a given price point, i.e., they’ll lose out to chains (fast food) or do it yourself (eat at home). Capital investment costs might not be justified and credit unavailable. Under the right circumstances, there are just better jobs available, including for the restaurant owner.
It shouldn’t be surprising, but Covid has really made visible how much of the workforce was engaged in restaurants and bars, which historically have provided a high level of employment but are not much good for wealth creation, even for the owners. They’re a relatively small part of GDP considering the number of people they hire. Restaurants have historically failed at a high rate, with only the low end (economy of scale) and the upper end (positional good) generating consistent profit.
Soprano2
@raven: We bought our building to get control of the rent, plus that helps us make money. It’s not a bad thing to do if you could swing it. OTOH, you couldn’t pay me to open another location right now.
trnc
Fair point, although I imagine people unlucky enough to have been working in most red states will face the choice sooner rather than later if they haven’t already.
Alce_e_ardillo
@Jeffro: Unfortunately, it will be an Alphonse and Gaston routine, with each waiting for the other to fold./
Kirk Spencer
$2 per burger increase to pay for a wage increase? Are you only selling one burger per worker per hour? If so I think you have a slightly different problem.
Jeffro
@Soprano2: I said, “I hope…the owners recognize this new reality and step up or get out”. No straws need to be drawn, just movement in either direction by either owner works.
Roger Moore
@randy khan:
They’re convinced that once a few start starving, the rest will rush to take whatever job they can get at whatever wage is being offered for fear of starving themselves. The idea that some of the people are starving despite having jobs never occurs to them.
Poe Larity
I thought you were talking about the blog there for a minute
raven
@Soprano2: I’m witcha!
Old Man Shadow
Yeah.
You’d think being overly credulous would nix a career in journalism, but surprisingly, it leads to awesome, highly paid gigs.
Old School
@lowtechcyclist:
That’s why I wrote “pretty sure.” I was pretty shocked like you when I read that one had passed away last fall. I hadn’t read about the remaining grandson passing away, but haven’t read about him doing anything alive either.
Kirk Spencer
@Kirk Spencer: Replying to myself as editing seems to have died – that was meant as a bit of sarcasm. Restaurants have troubles even when they pay well. They’re service jobs and people don’t realize what good service should cost.
More significantly there’s this real problem with (some) people who think the main job of service people is to be treated as “the help”.
Soprano2
@Kirk Spencer: No, just giving an example. If I charge $16 for a burger and fries, and all my competitors charge $14 for the same thing, pretty soon even though I might be paying my employees more, I don’t have as much business, so they don’t have jobs anyway. People will accept some price increases, but if you get too far away from what everyone else is charging, they will rebel. You can’t go up too much all at once. This is one reason having a good uniform minimum wage is so important – if everyone has the same decent floor, it makes a difference. Kind of like, here in MO there is no $7.50/hr minimum – it’s $10.50 here.
raven
@Soprano2: Oh I know, this situation is really good for them. A guy bought the whole block and he’s struggling to do much with it because most of it is historic and can’t be torn down. The eatery is an old grocery store with a service window and 8 picnic tables under trees. It’s been a savior for my group, we’ve eaten outside almost every Friday throughout the pandemic.
Soprano2
@Jeffro: But who goes first? No one wants to go out of business. I understand what you are saying, but it’s never going to work like that. Where I do agree with you is that I think eventually this is going to mean fundamental changes in the restaurant industry, but you might not like them, because the large chains like Applebee’s that everyone complains about will survive much easier than a local place like mine can. They have economies of scale that I can only dream about.
C Stars
My father in law has complained about not being able to fill a position in his small business for the last several months. I think he partially believes that unemployment benefits are to blame. But the job is sales, face to face, in a small office, in an area with low vaccination rates. Apparently three candidates said they weren’t interested or had another opportunity when he made them an offer. I’m not sure of the financial details, but I did hear from my MIL that he interviewed a candidate he really liked a few weeks ago, and when it came time to make an offer he offered more than he did the previous candidates. She took it and is starting this week. He’s still bitter, but hey, lesson learned I guess.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
You do know that MBA stands for Must Be Asshole, don’t you?
I’ve met a number of people with this degree and only one had any idea that the concepts taught were actually how to be bigger assholes and how to make money by screwing your employees.
How many businesses now have flexible hours for the work force. Notice that it is not flexible for the employees but flexible for the employers. It is a level of control that far more often sucks the life out of everything around and makes having two jobs almost to absolutely impossible. Which means that a person has to stay in the job because finding another, getting an interview or making a healthcare appointment is as much as impossible. It’s effectively, slavery.
Soprano2
@C Stars: Ugh, tough job to fill. I hope this person he’s offered more to works out. That is the job market these days for sure.
E.
@Soprano2:
Precisely. You’ll always have factory food. The same forces that killed brick and mortar retail are coming for restaurants and bakeries that actually make food, as opposed to reheat it.
Roger Moore
@John Revolta:
The thing is, though, that slavery didn’t end as cleanly as the history books say. Yes, formal slavery ended with the 13th Amendment. But it was quickly replaced with sharecropping, prison gangs, and other forms of forced labor. The mentality of forcing people to work for you never went away, even if the legal means of making it happen changed.
Soprano2
@E.: Yep, and lots of liberals seem to be cheering for that at the same time they complain about the chain restaurants.
WereBear
Authoritarian brains. There must be people who can be exploited.
catclub
@mrmoshpotato:
NOTHING to do with the owner sending those jobs there.
Jeffro
@Soprano2: I think we’re going in circles here, maybe. I don’t know who goes first, and it’ll be different in every case: is it the person who sees ‘the writing on the wall’? The person with a bit more capital? The person who just can’t close up, no matter what? The person with family in some other town or state who can help them start over/find a job?
I don’t know who goes first: the important thing is that someone makes a move, in either direction, or else both places will keep limping along when one owner and the remaining workers could be prospering and one owner could retire/find something else to do.
I am truly sorry that the business is so tough in the first place, and that the pandemic has made it even harder. Good luck.
Feckless
Unless Fox News has lied to me….
I thought capitalism meant the owner always wins and the worker always loses how is it possible that a worker could get more pay under capitalism?
You think these Nazi fascist s*** heads would be shouting this from the rooftops capitalism works worker gets more pay instead it’s we need slave labor.
Feckless
@catclub: or the Republican tax cuts encouraging them to do that
Citizen Alan
@John Revolta: Maybe not slaves, but quite a few of them are old enough to remember Jim Crow, which was de facto slavery in a lot of ways. I’ve said for years that we will never begin to solve the problem of racism in this country until every single person who fondly remembers going to an all-white school is dead.
Frosty Fred
@Roger Moore: One of my third cousins, writing of our Confederate great-great grandfather who was wounded and taken prisoner at Gettysburg, attributed his difficulties getting used to life as a farmer after the war to having grown up in “a more gracious time.”
Roger Moore
@Redshift:
Yes, but there is a bit more to the story than that. A huge reason Uber and Lyft have been successful is because existing taxi services sucked, and the new companies had useful ideas about how to make them work better. Some of the reason they sucked is because those regulations had been written to protect the industry rather than customers. Similarly, AirBNB found a niche for people who wanted to rent something that didn’t look like a traditional hotel room or in a place where traditional hotel rooms weren’t available. Again, regulation is part of the reason hotels are uniform and located where they are. We shouldn’t let those companies flout regulations, but we ought to look at the regulations they’ve been flouting and figure out if they need to be updated.
Mike in NC
We flew into DC today because we’re attending a funeral service tomorrow Arlington National Cemetery. My wife’s parents are also buried there. Anyway, National Airport is a shambles of construction so it was tough to get around. After about an hour we located the car rental agency and hit the road. I haven’t driven in big city traffic in years, so I was a nervous wreck trying to find the hotel in Crystal City (on what was formerly Jefferson Davis Boulevard). Crystal City is also a construction zone disaster with detours everyplace. We’re going out to eat in Chinatown tonight and I’ve seldom been more in need of a good stiff drink.
andy
@waspuppet: yup. according to conservatives, sometime after we drive the cost of compensated labor to as close to zero as possible we’ll all somehow be rich. never had one able to explain the mechanics of all that. of course, i’ve never seen a conservative balance a budget honestly, either.
raven
@Mike in NC: If you have never been to a funeral at Arlington I think you will be impressed.
John Revolta
@lowtechcyclist: @Roger Moore: @Citizen Alan: Y’all are nitpickin’ me. My point stands.
Sure Lurkalot
@Soprano2:
Well, if the drama was in the workplace, then it did have something to do with how much money she was making. it wasn’t worth it to put up with the drama she had to deal with. If your work environment causes, for example, sickness inducing anxiety, that costs money to solve and at some point, having that job is not cost-effective.
andy
@waspuppet: yup. according to conservatives, sometime after we drive the cost of compensated labor to as close to zero as possible we’ll all somehow be rich. never had one able to explain the mechanics of all that. of course, i’ve never seen a conservative balance a budget honestly, either.
debbie
@Roger Moore:
What they need to understand is that they are NOTHING without their workers. They may come up with clever concepts, but it’s the workers who ensure not only the success of the business, but that the business will remain successful for a long time.These guys need workers more than the workers need them. It’s about goddamn time they realized that and showed some goddamn gratitude.
andy
@Omnes Omnibus: where indeed? seems to me that workers are a “market force”, too. why shouldn’t people rent out the finite amount of lifespan available to them for the highest possible price? employers love the stick and are in their glory during recessions, but they hate spending carrots when workers have the upper hand.
Soprano2
She brought the drama to work; it was from her personal life and her on again, off again boyfriend who she has a baby with. She also told my manager she had customers making what she implied were lewd comments to her, which upsets me because we’ve told all of the employees that they absolutely do not have to put up with that, and our manger knows it, so she should have said something to someone about it rather than complaining in her dramatic “I quit” text. If she was having problems in the workplace, then she should have talked to our manager about them. She never did. How can we fix things if people won’t tell us about them? Trust me, we are approachable and we have a good manager, so this isn’t a case of her being told she has to put up with crap.
Ksmiami
@?BillinGlendaleCA: you’d be surprised… I bet you could get hired on at least part time. Send them a link to your resume and portfolio
waspuppet
@andy: They just use a different definition of “we” than the rest of us.
Edmund Dantes
Have we talked about Abbott is going to eliminate rape in Texas?
lol
https://twitter.com/kxan_news/status/1435294934555189258?s=21
Going to stop it by arresting rapists and removing them from the streets.
if you can see the problem, congratulations you are smarter than a 2nd grader and the governor of Texas.
NotMax
@Frosty Fred
Frederick Law Olmsted, writing about his multi-year tour of the southern states during the 1850s (sponsored by the NYT), had this to say:
“The citizens of the cotton States, as a whole, are poor. They work little, and that little, badly; they earn little, they sell little; they buy little, and they have little – very little – of the common comforts and consolations of civilized life. Their destitution is not material only; it is intellectual and it is moral … They were neither generous nor hospitable and their talk was not that of evenly courageous men.”
satby
@Soprano2: I hear you, but it’s just screaming into the wind. Most of the people commenting on this blog don’t appear to have staff to manage or a competitive business to run (a lot, like John are academics), and so think the entire solution is “one simple trick: moar money”. Tell them it’s more complex and you’re a capitalist bloodsucker. Save your breath.
Roger Moore
@John Revolta:
No. We’re not nitpicking you; we’re pointing out that you’re wrong. People continue to pine for slavery because de facto slavery was still around within living memory. And that’s the thing; these things create lasting memories. In the wake of the Civil War, the people who had fond memories of slavery did everything in their power to recreate it under a new name. That new version of slavery stayed in place for another hundred years. There are still people with fond memories of Jim Crow trying to recreate it and keep those good times going. What they remember may not be formally named slavery, but it’s similar enough, and it has a great effect on labor law to this day.
mrmoshpotato
@Jeffro:
Yes.
Ruckus
We talk about jobs and pay and as an ex employer I can attest that pay is the largest determinate of job hunters. In that business overtime was expected, at time and a half. A good living – other than working all the time, could be had if one had the experience. This was not even close to a minimum wage gig. There is a risk doing the work machining steel into precision products. But things I learned from being the person signing the checks is that it works a lot better if you consider those that work for you, make money for you are partners rather than employees. Big business never, ever would consider workers to be partners, and many small business owners would and do feel the same. Businesses couldn’t make a dime without the employees but many consider that employees are interchangeable and useless. And I agree that it grew with Regan, but it started a long time before that. I bet it goes back to the first employee.
RaflW
There have been two recent stories about school districts in the metro Twin Cities with school bus driver ‘crises’. But the news of course doesn’t report on starting pay or what, say, a 5th or 10th year driver earns.
Nor what it’s like driving in a pandemic. Nor what the drivers were forced to do when they got laid off.
It’s just “parents are mad that their kids don’t have bus service” and even a gratuitous, unquestioned “now that extended unemployment benefits are over, heeeyyy it’ll get better!” without actually asking any HR people or economists or anything.
I realize that reporters are spread thin now too – I’m painfully aware of decades of layoffs since my honey is an ex-newspaper person and several friends still bang away in the biz.
But. C’mon. Report. Look a little further. What’s really going on? My priors are that bus drivers have decided that anything else they can do for similar money is probably attractive! But those are my priors, and I hope I’d actually ask people if they know what’s happening, and ask more deeply. (I know, naive of me).
eta: It is OK for parents to be mad about cancelled buses. Just to be clear. But the story is so much broader about the employment realignment happening.
mrmoshpotato
@John Revolta:
And yet…
zhena gogolia
@satby:
I’m an academic but I’m with you and Soprano. I just stay out of these simplistic discussions.
Omnes Omnibus
@satby: How about providing a good working environment? Money is only one part of that. That was what VDE and I were talking about when we mentioned leadership as opposed to management.
zhena gogolia
@raven:
Yeah, the same seems to be true here. Something’s going on other than salaries.
Soprano2
@satby: I know, but I feel some obligation to share my experience hoping that some people will eventually come to understand that it’s more often more complicated than “pay more money, hire people”. As liberals we usually understand that most situations aren’t simple; why should this be different? I can raise my pay to $20/hr, but if no one is applying for the jobs, it makes no difference what I’m willing to pay. Amazon and Costco between them have hired over 500 people in this area, so that’s made a difference too.
Frosty Fred
@NotMax: Well, I’m talking about a tobacco state, but I’m not saying he’s wrong either.
Suzanne
@Soprano:
If your burger is better, or your restaurant is nicer, some of your customers will remain. Price is not the only factor. I am so sick of this argument. Most consumers do not go for the cheapest option in anything.
zhena gogolia
@Poe Larity:
Haha, thread won.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
I agree and contend that the concept of slave labor is still here, even as the actual slavery has been gone a long time.
Some don’t see it because they don’t experience it, but ask anyone who works a job where the shift you work on changes on a schedule that you never know far in advance. Stores open long hours can be one of the worst offenders. They control their employee schedules to an extent that it’s find another job or be screwed often. People on this blog have complained about this. It’s not slavery in the original context but it is a form of complete control, not of a working relation – employer to employee. The company considers the employees about the same as a cash register, it’s an item to turn on when they desire.
mrmoshpotato
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
STILL waiting for my grocery store to pay me to take produce off their hands because a bunch of Trump trash flooded the migrant farm workers market and drove prices through the floor!
P.S. Trump trash also wanted an immigration ban because they’re racist pieces of shit.
zhena gogolia
Our compassionate president.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: You’re right that if people perceive that your place is better, they will pay more. How much more, though, is the question. If you go too high, they might still like it, but decide they’ll go elsewhere because they can no longer afford what you’re selling. Add in the freakiness of supplies these days – there is still a nationwide shortage of chicken wings, for example – and it makes it hard to figure out exactly where to come down pricewise. You can raise prices some – we just did a couple of months ago, and it was fine, but if you go up too much too fast it’s a problem whether you want to believe it or not.
satby
@Omnes Omnibus: and a good working environment can be different for different people. In my doctor’s office I essentially manage 7-10 people: all paid above prevailing wage for the field. For all of them putting a schedule together that accommodates childcare needs or college schedules or whatever is like playing jenga, but it’s one of the reasons people stay and two former employees came back. Not everyone wants a full time job.
Also, insurance companies have generally not increased payments for exams since the 90s. And it requires almost a full time staffer just to deal with claims. Just try making your life and business work on a pay scale from 25 years ago with today’s costs. Or be a doctor that only takes cash. No simple single solutions, like we’ve stated.I
On the other hand, I have lots of opinions on how university teaching, lawyering, research and other occupations should be compensated. I know nothing about the fields, but I can opine in ignorance as well as anyone here.
JaneE
Amen again. There is a reason you see the same faces at some businesses, even restaurants and fast food joints, for years and years, and others you won’t recognize anyone even if you go in once or twice a month.
At least half the staff at our local pizza franchise have been there for the last decade and a half. When I make a Costco run I see the same faces over and over. During the same time frame, another place I patronize went through 3 or 4 supervisors and I don’t know how many basic employees. Since they changed owners no one has left or griped about the lazy staff, and the facilities have been improved too. Funny how that works.
E.
@Suzanne: Of course some of Soprano’s customers will remain. The question is, will it be enough. Soprano, who knows the joint pretty well, has concluded no. You, who don’t know it at all and don’t appear to work in this industry disagree. OK then.
Ohio Mom
All these discussions about the job market remind me of the old story about the five blind men describing the elephant.
The job market is vast and multi-faceted and one part doesn’t have anything to do with another.
I get that restaurants and hospitality are especially hurting. But that market has nothing to do with the PhDs who can’t find tenure track positions, the disabled who are famously underemployed, the people who are turned away because they are perceived as too old, too funny-looking, too fat… The list goes on.
In computer engineering, companies claim they can’t find qualified programmers, then petition for HB1 visas. That’s a made-up shortage, it’s a way to keep salaries down and engineers cowed. Should all the engineers who are pushed out start waiting on tables? That’s a waste of a resource.
lowtechcyclist
@John Revolta:
Seconding what Roger Moore already said: this is no nitpick, Jim Crow was pretty damn close to slavery. Your spouse and children couldn’t get sold away from you anymore, but that was probably the biggest difference.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Citizen Alan: Shades of Napoleon’s conclusion the only way to end racism in France was to force every man to get a second black wife and force them to raise the from kids both wives together.
StringOnAStick
@Soprano2: It seems like that just another aspect of the money flowing upwards. I recall a young man from Colombia being shocked that here in the US, people who worked in restaurants could actually afford to eat in one, unlike his home country where only the rich eat out and the poor, well…
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Edmund Dantes: I am betting Governor Abattoir’s final solution to rape is going the involve a lot of killing.
Suzanne
@E.: But here’s the thing: some businesses are going to fail. That’s actually okay with me, though I get that it isn’t okay for the business owner. I get that there is not an endless appetite for price increases. But every market — including restaurants — has a wide array of price points. And there is always a tension between the cost of labor and the cost of the product. Believe it or not, this is indeed something I deal with every day, though I deal with it on larger projects (hours on professional services that have to become fixed fees) and not food. So, yeah, the answer is to charge enough for the product to cover your costs, or reduce your costs through increased productivity or lower quality. It is, in essence, a simple calculation. But those are difficult decisions to make, because the business owner wants to stay in business, and to be a specific kind of business. But, businesses failing is okay. I’d rather have businesses fail than exploit people.
Mike in NC
@raven: Been to quite a few over the years. I refused to drive 9-10 hours to get there this time.
Sure Lurkalot
@Soprano2: I tried to edit my comment but it was too late…i realized that I implied your workplace caused the stress that occasioned the quitting. It was wrong to assume that, but my point stands that sometimes a well paying job carries with it such levels of harm that there’s no other solution but to stop the harm.
Kirk Spencer
@Ruckus: Mandatory overtime. Of the many things I know that echo slavery, this is high on my list. “We care not what plans you have made, what life you may have, we have the power to declare you will work anyway.”
Fair Economist
@andy:
It works if you realize “we” means the 1%, and others don’t count as human.
Wish the voters who support the 1% RWNJ would realize what the 1% RWNJ think of them.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Other way around, in this country racism has historically been used as the excuse to exclude groups from competing for jobs. The rise of the modern Klan happened the same time as Great Migration of Blacks to northern factories.
debbie
@Kirk Spencer:
Man, I hated mandatory overtime. At one point, they were demanding 10 hours per week. They paid overtime and some people would have worked theirs and my hours, but there was zero flexibility in the policy for that.
mrmoshpotato
Take a minute. ?
Ohio Mom
I had a vague memory of once seeing a bar graph comparing how much square footage is devoted to retail in the US vs other developed countries. I tried googling, couldn’t find that graph but found a table (link below).
Our country has over 23 square feet of retail per capita, compared to the *low single digits* in most other developed countries. That number is unsustainable and the proof is all the dying malls and half-empty strip malls. Still, we keep building retail.
Maybe the same is true for restaurants, that we have too many for our economy to sustain? Unhappily, that is most likely the result of chains and franchises crowding out the local proprietors.
(https://www.statista.com/statistics/1058852/retail-space-per-capita-selected-countries-worldwide/)
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@satby: I gather the real thing that’s driving the great walk out in restaurants is the really shitty chains like Chiles who automated it so corporate HQ is trying the run the place remotely, lest the manager get soft with the employees. Apparently a Chile’s waiter can be fired if not enough customers fill out their stupid customer survey program.
Geminid
@mrmoshpotato: Have you seen Brent Terhune’s “A Message from Q-Anon”? That one is hilarious.
StringOnAStick
My sister works in a branch of HR for a western state that makes money with it’s state prison system taking prisoners from other states. The corrections staff (guards, though they prefer to be called Corrections Officers) have a high vaccine refusal rate, and now so many are out sick that they are understaffed and requiring mandatory OT so many are working 60 hours/week. The starting salaries are so low that a family of 4 will qualify for food stamps, which is just asking for corruption. They send some inmates to be fire fighting teams, but are too short of staff to keep enough field supervisors, so they’ve had to cut back on what help they can provide (for a price of course, the state always makes money on this stuff) so now less firefighting capacity is available. Knock on effects.
As far as the US as salaries go, my lifelong impression is that everyone thinks what they do for a living should be lavishly paid, but anyone who provides a service they need is getting paid way too much. After spending a few months with locals in Europe 30 years ago, I realized the core American ideal is selfishness, but mostly resentment of anyone who has or does better, without much sense of a common ideal of being a citizen. The latter has been exploited by the Right and is destroying this country; we have to do better but far too many of us spend all our time just trying to keep our individual heads above water. I think the wealthy want it that way.
FlyingToaster
I can attest for Massachusetts that retail and food establishments that are offering a regular schedule aren’t offering that much more money (most places are 12.50 for 3 months, up to 15 if you last). It’s back to the old rules from the late 70s: regular schedule and you signed up if you wanted to be on call. I worked Monday and Tuesday 6-9, Saturday 12-9, and Sunday 12-6 (high school kid, left time for Marching Band on Friday Night, afterschool clubs and pit orchestra rehearsal, yadda yadda yadda). I didn’t sign up for extra hours (on-call) because I was in high school. Summers I volunteered for coverage shifts and on-call, because, again, high school kid.
PenAndKey
Comments like this are precisely why I usually don’t bother chiming in on the topic of wages in communities where I want to remain civil. I’ve worked as everything from a busboy, to warehouse labor, to roofer, to lab tech, to my current senior quality leadership role. As of right now I manage teams across five facilities and have final say (except for board override) of a budget of half a billion dollars a year.
The old “nobody here that’s arguing against my position knows what it’s like to run a business “ argument? It rings hollow for those of us who actually do manage business budgets and teams and don’t accept the belief that it’s “too hard” to actually pay a living wage, especially when we’ve also worked on the other side of that line. I don’t care what a business owners excuses are for having a business plan dependent on below living wage payroll rates. If they can’t pay their workers, Cole’s last sentence in this post applies.
Central Planning
@Soprano2:
Sure, but if you’re (royal you, not you specifically) selling the same thing as your competitor, why would you expect people to buy your burger? You better have something that differentiates you/provides more value – better flavors, cleaner bathrooms, friendlier staff, easier access, free salsa, and so on.
People don’t go to Five Guys, In-And-Out, Sonic, etc. because their burgers taste the same as McDonalds. Their burger/fries/drink meal is probably 2-3x what McDonalds is. Those competitors seem to be doing OK.
Ohio Mom
@StringOnAStick:
Worth noting: all those prisoners shipped to that western state are counted as residents when Congressional districts get apportioned. Giving that state a larger voice in Congress than they deserve.
Just a side benefit to the for-profit prison business for Republicans.
Geminid
@StringOnAStick: Too many people think that the economy is a zero sum game. They do not understand that a thriving working class makes for a more prosperous middle class. And the increased income of the wealthy would more than compensate for the increased wages they might pay to “the help.”
When the two infrastructure bills are passed and implemented (and I believe they will be) we will see a practical demonstration of this.
Barbara
@PenAndKey: It’s unrealistic for employers to think a once in a generation crisis won’t affect the market for employees, and while money and sucky working conditions are big issues, it is larger than those things. It will shake out eventually, but it really might be the case that seasonal employers (for instance) won’t be able to open 7 days a week in the summer and then lay off their temps. Some businesses might end up not being viable for a whole host of reasons. It won’t necessarily be because the employer is stingy or greedy. Workers have been given this message for generations and told to move along now.
PenAndKey
@Ohio Mom: And unlike the days of yor, those prisoners count as a whole person in those calculations, not just 3/4.
Ohio Mom
@Central Planning:
Customers may feel they can afford the preminum of Five Guys over McDonalds because there is still no tipping involved. That’s one of the challenges proprietors like Soprano2 face, when people on budgets think about eating out, the tip can loom large.
Jager
At age 71 I was depressed and bored. I grew up in the car business, my dad was a dealer. I made myself a promise to never go near it. Long story short, I had my car in for service, started talking with the GM, and the next thing I knew I was a car salesman. I had been in management since I was 25 years old, I was excited to only have to manage myself. The 2nd month I was the top salesman. I flat busted my ass week in, week out. I worked on my days off, I stayed late, I came in early. I studied everything we sold, there wasn’t a question I couldn’t answer. I studied the business itself, you know what the biggest complaint people have about their new car? The damn windows aren’t clean, so I cleaned the windows before I delivered a car. After a couple of months, the GM of the store let me start making my own deals, I’d run the credit, put a number on the trade-in. I did the payment schedule and get the contract signed. This really pissed a few of the sales managers off. I was now their enemy, they couldn’t push me or my clients around. The rest of the sales managers loved me, I made their job easier and they still got their override on the deal. One month I sold almost a million dollars worth of new and used cars and trucks, it took me 242 hours of work, When I got my check, I’d averaged about 24 dollars an hour. About 3/4s of the sales staff were lazy shits, biding their time, happy to make 12 bucks an hour, and stand around bullshitting each other. The balance of the staff were good guys, hard workers, and knew their stuff. I quit when a sales manager blew up a done deal on a 78,000 truck, I’d spent 4 hours working on.
Funny, when I was really rolling, my brother sent my dad’s membership plaque from the Chevrolet Truck Sales Hall of Fame, his note said, “Top this asshole”
debbie
@Ohio Mom:
My niece waitressed until recently. She loved it and hustling for tips, but aside from not wanting to bring COVID home to her baby, the owner refused to mandate masks and customers demanded she remove hers. Who would want to work at a place like that?
RobertB
@Central Planning: The food at Sonic is okay, at best. Except for ice cream and slushes. Five Guys kills them in the burger department.
billcinsd
@John Revolta: Not true if John Tyler’s grandkids are still living. Tyler was a one term President when WH Harrison died. He fathered some of his kids late in life as did one of these late in life spawn. Harrison Ruffin Tyler, 93, was still living last year when Lyon Tyler, Jr. died at 95 and as of August 2021.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/632788/john-tyler-grandson-has-died
SpaceUnit
I had a falling out many years ago with someone who had been a very good friend. This person bought a small restaurant and brought his daughter (who had been a restaurant manager) into the enterprise as well. From the beginning it did not go as planned. I was asked to help out. Because this was a good friend I agreed. Started out working maybe twenty hours a week and making only a token wage (less than minimum). It was supposed to be temporary, just until he got on his feet. He never did. As time went on he needed more and more hours from me. His daughter quit because he wouldn’t listen to her advise. He had underage kids working for him for him and making only a few dollars an hour. I was struggling to keep up with my regular job. It was a nightmare. The last straw was overhearing a conversation in which he described himself as a successful business owner. I walked out the spot and haven’t spoken to him since.
The point is, not every mook with some startup money is fit to own a business and not every business model is fit to survive. It’s not the place of a decent society to subsidize bad management and lousy business models with wage-slavery under the guise of a free market. It’s bad policy. You just end up with streets full of homeless people. John Cole is right. If you can’t afford to pay a living wage you’ve got no right to have a business. Sell it and go get a job.
Suzanne
@PenAndKey: Agree. The restaurant industry is not fundamentally different than any other. Restaurants (and clothes, and cars, and architecture firms, and every other damn thing) exist at different places on the cheap-good-fast-pick-two matrix, and that is not only okay, it is preferred. But the essential math equation is the same. Does it suck to either close or have to reposition yourself on that matrix (and thereby take a risk of deviating from core competency)? Yeah, it does. But that’s literally what business ownership is! I get that it’s strenuous and emotional and risky. That’s what makes it different than wage or salary work.
Helen
Something I’ve not seen mentioned, are the many people that took retirement during covid. I know a number of people eligible for retirement who planned to keep working. But when the pandemic kicked in, they decided to quit. This also includes many retired people who had picked up part time jobs. They just didn’t think the risk was worth it.
billcinsd
@Soprano2: OTOH doubling the salary of everyone at McDonald’s from the lowliest server to the CEO adds about a quarter to the cost of a Big Mac, a smaller change related to a possible minimum wage rise in Florida (of about $2 per hour, IIRC) added about a penny to the cost of a $20 meal. Of course rising wages elsewhere would lead to things that actually make up more of the cost of a meal would raise prices, but that would be for everyone using those services
GregMulka
@Soprano2: Minimum wage is $10.30 in MO. We’re quibbling about $0.20 dollars but numbers are numbers. I’m not sure about your restaurant but tipped minimum is $5.15. I’m sure you don’t do that. You seem a generous and caring soul.
So 10.30*40*52 is $21424 a year. Before taxes and benefits. For a full time job. Working directly with the public. In a state with less than 50% of the population is vaccinated. During a pandemic. For work that really sucks even without the looming threat of death.
So rent is 2-3 weeks of your pay. Before utilities. Before the cell phone that’s required to live in this society. Before car payments. Before gas for the car. Before your car insurance. Before that fucking vehicle inspection that you need to get the car licensed in this state.
Maybe they don’t need a car but walkability exists in places where you can’t even think about living on $21424 unless there are 5 of you and public transportation in this state is a fucking joke.
You should still be able to find workers who want to exist on the edge of poverty just fine. But those are the only workers you’re going to be able to find.
It isn’t just a matter of throwing money at the problem. Not directly. It’s about throwing the money at all the underlying problems which we’ve been ignoring for 400 years, give or take.
It sucks for you. It sucks for everybody. But I’m glad people are finally deciding that working just to stay poor may not be worth it.
Ruckus
@Jager:
I bought 2 cars from a guy that sounds like he also had an attitude of do the job, don’t expect the customer to do it. I don’t think anyone else liked him, he was low key, it always felt like he was on your side, rather than he had his hand in your pocket copping a feel. He’d give you the good price up front and if you’d done any shopping you knew that was a good price. He didn’t have to close, he sold by having a clue. He was the top seller at this large dealership every month by a wide margin. He also sold a couple cars to my ex’s boss because it was a sale not an extortion. The rest of the sales staff seemed to have no idea how he did it. I liked walking in and saying, “I’ll wait for Tom, thank you.” Pissed off the vultures every time.
Eric K
Ultimately I’m in the “nobody really knows what the fuck is going on with the labor market” camp, but this being a blog we are all obligated to offer our 2 cents that may not be worth more than that?
My guesses:
1) a lot of people who are eligible for social security at some level but had been putting it off until they hit the full age retired. I have an uncle who is in this bucket, he had like a year and a half or so and had planned to work until then.
At some point a huge number of baby boomers were going to exit the workforce, COVID accelerated it.
2) immigration, illegal and legal went to basically nothing, the restaurant industry uses a ton of immigrant labor, both legal and illegal.
3) delivering for Amazon, Door Dash, etc. pays better, has exploded, and is less stressful than working in a restaurant.
4) In two income households people had a chance to step back and do the math on all dispersed expenses, child care, gas, buying lunch, etc and figured out they were working 30 or more hours a week and not actually netting more than a couple hundred bucks a month, it just ain’t worth it.
Jager
@Ruckus:
The business practices of most dealerships create the vultures. I said to one of the bad sales managers one day, why don’t we go to an “up system” instead of having the staff stand out in front of the store, it scares the shit out of the customers? His attitude was “fuck em”. A friend of mine from high school worked for my dad and was trained by him, RT was a GSM when he was 25 years old, owned a car store when he was 30, etc. We maintained our friendship over the years, he told me when I told about my retirement job, he said, the only problem the car business has is the management. BTW, the top salesman at the country’s largest Benz dealer has his own office, two assistants and never goes to a sales meeting. Makes monster $$$.
Jerzy Russian
@Jeffro: My favorite: Failure: when your best is not good enough.
WaterGirl
@Eric K: I agree with what you wrote, but I’m not sure I saw the “fuck this bullshit, life’s too short” factor in what you wrote. So I would add that.
There’s some bullshit in every job, but some bosses /owners /managers bring an extra helping. If you had the kind of work situation + Covid, it’s a no-brainer.
Roger Moore
@Ruckus:
I think the nice, low-key sales people are thinking long-term. If you treat the customer right, they’ll want to keep coming back. That can be a tough attitude to maintain when that next sale is years from now and you have a monthly quota to meet, but if you can pull it off it will reward you when those customers come back and only want to talk to you.
Jager
@Roger Moore:
A guy who sold a lot of cars for my dad retired and sold his client list to another salesman for 5 grand with his personal endorsement to each client. This was in 1967.
Eric K
@WaterGirl:
That was kind of the implied reason underlying most of the points:-)
Quiltingfool
@Soprano2: @Soprano2:
I’m so glad you are here! I need to hear from people who know firsthand about running a food/beverage business, especially from trusted people like you. I’m sure it’s aggravating hearing suggestions from folks who may not ever have been a restaurant business owner. As a teacher I just LOVED (not) getting teaching advice from people who had never taught – they thought being a student made them experts! I’ll have to admit I kinda thought that way too until I actually started teaching and realized my personal experiences weren’t exactly the same for all students!
Keep educating us! And, please, don’t smack your head against the wall, this fan appreciates your input!
JustRuss
@debbie: Funny how those “no one wants to work” articles never mention people like your niece.
Ohio Mom
@Jager:
According to the Inflation Calculator, $5,000 in 1969 dollars is worth $37,000 and change today.
Jager
@Ohio Mom:
There were over 100 clients, individual and multiple-unit buyers, construction companies, farmers…the guy who bought the list could look forward to years and years of steady business.
satby
@PenAndKey: And I pointed out that where I work pays above the prevailing full time rate for part time workers, basically double the minimum wage and the magical $15 that we were fighting for. I never said it was too hard to pay a living wage, I said money is only one factor in the current hiring shortage.
BTW, my previous IT management experience included managing 5 help desk teams on three continents, and I saved clients on two accounts more than a million dollars (each) over the life of two different projects. So I have some relevant experience too. Always happy for a mansplain though, so thanks for that.
Soprano2
@GregMulka: Well, we don’t pay anyone minimum wage, and yeah I got it wrong, sorry. You’d be surprised to know that some of our employees don’t want to work 40 hours a week. We try to give people stable schedules as much as possible. Our bartenders and servers make a lot more than minimum most nights. The bartender who quit worked 30 hours a week; she has 4 kids, that’s the schedule she wanted. There’s a tension in hiring servers and bartenders; hire too few and they get burned out, hire too many and they don’t make enough money so they quit. I understand when people want to do other things, but I get tired of the whole industry being stereotyped as greedy owners abusing their employees.
PenAndKey
It’s always good to see someone tell you they want to go in the pie filter. If you’re going to try and pull that line you’re, quite simply, not worth engaging with further.
Pittsburgh Mike
I’ve always thought it was atrocious that an employer could pay you for 20 hours/week, but move the hours around at random from week to week. If you have to be on call, you should be paid as a full time employee.
Pittsburgh Mike
@Redshift:
In fairness to Uber, taxi service in much of the country was hopelessly bad. Even getting scheduling a pickup to get to the airport for a flight was pretty dicey, and of course, you had no way to tell if they’d completely forgotten about your reservation.
The reason people use Uber and Lyft is that it is a much better user experience.
J R in WV
@PenAndKey:
I would say that you volunteered for the pie safe far more than satby did, who is a long time commenter with common sense. Not to mention your humble brag about budgets and senior leadership role.
PenAndKey
@J R in WV: They’ve been around a decent while, but what’s your point? So have I, even if I tend to go long stretches of lurking because life is busy. If you really want to get into the measuring contest of which of the three of us has been here longer I’m sure we can do that but you’re not going to like the result. They, not I, tried to tell other’s to not bother with these conversations because we don’t know what we’re talking about. Me pointing out that such a blanket statement is, to put it bluntly, crap, isn’t “humble bragging”. Nor was it “mansplaining”.
They don’t get to say people in the community don’t have the experience and knowledge to challenge their position and then accuse people of bragging or mansplaining when they get called on it. That’s not how it works. So you want to pie filter me over that? Have at it.