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Restaurant workers quit at record rate

npr.org

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Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#91

Post by cle »

rocgf wrote: post #62
wyager wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 o…

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.)

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#92

Post by daenz »

colinmhayes wrote: post #21
yepthatsreality wrote: post #4

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.

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.

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.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#93

Post by WhompingWindows »

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.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#95

Post by JoeAltmaier »

ericbarrett wrote: post #73

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…

Folks are nervous and tense. It was a tense year.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#96

Post by Raidion »

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #64
tarr11 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

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.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#97

Post by maerF0x0 »

wyager wrote: post #58
maerF0x0 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 stereot…

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 reci…

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) .

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#98

Post by tenebrisalietum »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #74
tenebrisalietum wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Tell me: why do we use backhoes to dig ditches instead of armies of workers with spoons?

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.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#99

Post by luffapi »

k33n wrote: post #57
nostromo wrote: post #6

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.

It's hilarious that this perfectly rational and fact based remark is downvoted. This place has gone full blue anon.

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.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#100

Post by atty »

sethammons wrote: post #11

> 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 appreciat…

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.
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