Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Restaurant workers quit at record rate

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 961 posts

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#451

Post by hed »

cratermoon wrote: post #289
throwawayboise wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

McDonald's and similar jobs used to be an entry level job for teens and college students. When I was 16 I was happy to work there for minimum wage ($3.35/hr at the time). Nobody other than the mangers did it to support a family. It was never understood to be that kind of job. I don't know how we got to the point where a no-skills-required job that anyone with a pulse can learn to do in a few hours suddenly became req…

> Nobody other than the mangers did it to support a family. It was never understood to be that kind of job Wrong. "From the beginning, the minimum wage was meant to be a living wage—meaning families could live off of the pay comfortably, rather than struggling paycheck-to-paycheck" https://www.lendio.com/blog/minimum-wage-livable/

There are claims that it was meant to keep black people out of the workforce.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carriesheffield/2014/04/29/on-t...

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#452

Post by wernercd »

mdavis6890 wrote: post #372
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.

What we are observing is the Demand Curve shifting left (people less interested in eating out) and the Supply Curve shifting down (the people willing to work in restaurants for any given wage is going down). Remember that supply and demand curves cover all wages/prices and quantities, they are not specific to a certain price/wage or quantity. This is observed as a shortage - more customers willing to buy a restaurant…

> The supply curve might shift back up if, for example, government wage supports are reduced.

This is the key... the problem isn't really the market... it's the market interference.

First COVID and the "lockdowns" (effective or not)... and then the resulting "free" money that makes it more lucrative to be on unemployment than working a job.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#453

Post by mdavis6890 »

pixl97 wrote: post #393
tshaddox wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really a shortage? If the preferences of potential restaurant customers simply changes such that they're no longer willing to pay enough for a restaurant meal for the restaurant to stay financially solvent, that's not a shortage. It's only a shortage if something is preventing the market price from changing (in this case, the price of a restaurant meal increasing) or preventing restaurants and customers who are…

does it matter if it's a technical shortage or just and observed one? The only thing preventing restaurants from changing their prices is the 'penguin on an iceberg' issue. You may be correct in raising your prices, but if other restaurants are willing to lose money longer before they raise their prices your business may suffer/fail because of it before the rest of the market changes their prices/wages.

Kinda, but not really. Remember that a shortage is an excess of demand at a given price. Meaning implicitly that, at the margin, prices could go up some small amount and there will still be a queue/line/excess of people willing to pay that marginally higher price.

So as a restaurant, very roughly speaking, you basically can raise prices until the line starts to go away. Unfortunately customers can be very stubborn and would rather wait in a 1hr line somewhere else, or not go out at all, for quite a while before eventually coming around to the new normal and accepting your new, higher price.

And you will still probably end up with fewer restaurants along the way, as those least-profitable and with the shortest lines outside, go away.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#454

Post by eric_b »

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,…

I agree with you, 100%.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#455

Post by mdavis6890 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #436
pixl97 wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

does it matter if it's a technical shortage or just and observed one? The only thing preventing restaurants from changing their prices is the 'penguin on an iceberg' issue. You may be correct in raising your prices, but if other restaurants are willing to lose money longer before they raise their prices your business may suffer/fail because of it before the rest of the market changes their prices/wages.

> does it matter if it's a technical shortage or just and observed one? Yes. A so-called “observed shortage” is not a shortage, its just buyers wanting a good without wanting to pay the price it costs to buy in the present market conditions. A real shortage involves either a constraint which prevents price adjustment to an equilibrium of supply/demand or demand and supply curves shaped in such a way that no equilibri…

"The solution to an observed shortage of labor is “employers pay more and quit whining”." - Keep in mind that going along with higher prices (wages), there will be a lower quantity (jobs). At least according to your Econ 101 book.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#456

Post by cratermoon »

mortehu wrote: post #335
cratermoon wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody other than the mangers did it to support a family. It was never understood to be that kind of job Wrong. "From the beginning, the minimum wage was meant to be a living wage—meaning families could live off of the pay comfortably, rather than struggling paycheck-to-paycheck" https://www.lendio.com/blog/minimum-wage-livable/

The linked article doesn't really substantiate that claim, and even so it doesn't actually contradict GP's claim about the McDonald's job.

You're correct, McDonald's (and plenty of other large employers) probably never thought or cared whether or not their minimum wage jobs were for teenagers or parents with families. To them, it was just the least they were legally allowed to pay, and therefore just a cost to be minimized as much as possible.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#457

Post by dragonwriter »

tshaddox wrote: post #419
dsm4ck wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A shortage, in economic terms, is a condition where the quantity demanded is greater than the quantity supplied at the market price." https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/shortage.asp sounds like it fits the situation to me.

Indeed, investopedia's definition seems to include any time supply is insufficient with no regard for the reason that the market price is not increasing.

Investopedia’s definition treats the condition where price has not yet aligned to a new equilibrium as equivalent to one where there is a constraint preventing price adjusting to equilibrium. Leaving aside the fairly arbitrary question of whether it is correct to call both conditions “shortages”, it is important to note that they are fundamentally different situations, especially from the perspective of “is a policy change needed to address it and what policy change would that be.”

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#458

Post by ambrose2 »

WalterBright wrote: post #395
chickenpotpie wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree customer entitlement is growing but I disagree with your example. We created a society where we tell people they should chase their dreams and anything is possible in America. Then, when they chase their dreams and fail we tell them how stupid they are that they did that and they should have done something more practical. I don’t think teenagers should be blamed for doing exactly what they were told to do and…

Not checking starting salaries for one's major is stupid. I'm being blunt, but there's no other word for it. > teenagers Masters degree students are not teenagers.

Students often need to decide during undergrad to apply to grad school and at that point many are 19 or 20 years old. Not teenagers is a little pedantic.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#459

Post by bigbob2 »

Invictus0 wrote: post #213
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.

Great point. If more people did what the Cart Narc does the world might be a better place.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#460

Post by Spooky23 »

mdavis6890 wrote: post #372
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.

What we are observing is the Demand Curve shifting left (people less interested in eating out) and the Supply Curve shifting down (the people willing to work in restaurants for any given wage is going down). Remember that supply and demand curves cover all wages/prices and quantities, they are not specific to a certain price/wage or quantity. This is observed as a shortage - more customers willing to buy a restaurant…

I don’t think so. Hilton Head Island, SC is a great example of the trend that COVID accelerated.

Hilton Head is a popular vacation destination, but as development started radiating inland towards I95, all of the workers are priced out. The housekeeper at the hotel I stayed at in 2019 commuted 2.5 hours daily, and restaurants started reducing hours due to labor shortages. COVID made it worse, but the problem existed because you can’t work in most places without covering the cost of operating a car.

My understanding this year is that popular restaurants require reservations 60+ days in advance.

There may be some demand shifts at the low end from sit down to fast casual, but those are the places where tipped workers are paid the least. A waiter at a good steakhouse is making a good living, an IHOP waiter makes $10/hr or less.

At the low end, I think those workers have shifted to curbside retail. I’d guess the average Target has 12-30 more staff to handle curbside orders alone.

Post reply on HN