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Restaurant workers quit at record rate

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Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#211

Post by darkwizard42 »

ruined wrote: post #171
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…

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.

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).

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#212

Post by sokoloff »

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.

What they said was technically/precisely true, despite not being particularly meaningful.

https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2021/07/net-worth-gains-in-2...

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#213

Post by Invictus0 »

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…

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.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#214

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

gruez wrote: post #174
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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?

> 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.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#215

Post by usaar333 »

ruined wrote: post #171
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…

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.

The covid rule changes to UI were more flexible. You could leave/not take a new job due to covid concerns: https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/Califo...

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#216

Post by ardit33 »

danaris wrote: post #146
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.

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.

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.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#217

Post by gruez »

andechs wrote: post #155
conductr wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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…

> 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!"

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#218

Post by namdnay »

danaris wrote: post #121
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…

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.

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

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#219

Post by mindslight »

mrob wrote: post #47
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…

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.

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.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#220

Post by jlarocco »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #27
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.

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…

> 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.

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