Restaurant workers quit at record rate • Hacker News Board

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#181

Post by gruez » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 7:06 PM UTC

luffapi wrote: post #139

wutbrodo wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%.

> 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...

>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.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#182

Post by lrdswrk00 » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 7:06 PM UTC

lashloch wrote: post #164

darth_avocado wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, bu…

There's something amusing to me about the idea of an industry that "used to be" sustainable. Guess it wasn't sustainable after all.

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?

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#183

Post by jlarocco » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 7:06 PM UTC

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #165

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.

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.

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.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#184

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 7:07 PM UTC

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #165

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.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#185

Post by YinglingLight » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 7:07 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #177

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…

> 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,…

Why not? When the media we consume promotes Victimhood over taking Ownership of one's problems, isn't this behavior inevitable?

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#186

Post by sokoloff » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 7:07 PM UTC

nunez wrote: post #170

WhompingWindows wrote: post #93

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 p…

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…

Those others would be exhibiting price-elastic behavior, not price-inelastic. (A high change in demand for a change in price is elastic.)

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#187

Post by wonderwonder » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 7:07 PM UTC

maerF0x0 wrote: post #49

boulos wrote: post #5

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/

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 requires friends or local family and America has another massive issue with friendless people on the rise.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#188

Post by Andrex » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 7:09 PM UTC

jlarocco wrote: post #183

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

> 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.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#189

Post by Invictus0 » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 7:09 PM UTC

dud7d7ueu wrote: post #159

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.

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.

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"?

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#190

Post by lrdswrk00 » Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 7:09 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #132

daenz wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

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.