Restaurant workers quit at record rate • Hacker News Board

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#551

Post by axaxs » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 12:05 AM UTC

acomjean wrote: post #337

vishnugupta wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This . "Customer is king" mentality should die. Far too often it leads to disgruntled frontline workers and customers walking around as if they are doing a business favour just by being their customer. Even something seemingly as simple as "smiling" is tiring if done all day. In a business transaction all parties are equal. No one is doing anyone else a favour. I quite liked it when I saw signboards in Singapore that…

I saw someone try to return 5 subs and get them replaced with 5 wraps. The store worker "If we made the mistake, we'd fix them, but your wife watched us make these and didn't say anything" words were exchanged and the customer left, leaving sandwiches behind without a refund. Not knowing they're were dealing with one of the brothers that owned that sandwich shops led that customer to think they could bully the employ…

I'm pretty torn. I've found a lot of small shops to be...well, dicks. Often acting like they were doing me a favor and I was a nuisance. I still remember one guy saying 'I have plenty of money and business, call me back or don't I don't care.' I wasn't complaining, just asking about pricing on an initial call. Obviously, I never called him back.

On the flip side, I've done enough work and seen enough to know what customer facing people put up with.

I'd really like a hybrid model that does treat the customer as valuable, then tells them to get bent as soon as they start acting unreasonable.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#552

Post by lazerpants » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 12:08 AM UTC

tshaddox wrote: post #391

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…

> 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 required to support a family of four. That's an odd way of looking at it. Surely what happened first isn't that the expectations of fast food jobs changed out of the blue. Could it instead be that other jobs which adults worked to support their families went away?

The population also exploded from ~280MM in 2000 to an estimated 331MM in 2020... so maybe all of those extra people created a glut of workers.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#553

Post by MomoXenosaga » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 12:11 AM UTC

browningstreet wrote: post #498

I think some businesses are going out of businesses because they stubbornly refuse to raise their wages. In the vacation community where I live, there are two grocery/delis about a mile apart from each other. One is at a marina, the other is at a beach. They have almost the same business offering. Traditionally, both are fully mobbed during the sunny seasons. Two weeks ago, I visited the one I usually go to -- at the…

Not sure how it is in the US but where I live restaurant owners are wealthy entrepreneurs driving around expensive SUVs. Every sunny day the restaurants and bars are packed from morning until midnight. If they need more staff they have the money to pay better wages. That's how every other industry deals with labour shortages.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#554

Post by lazyasciiart » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 12:12 AM UTC

awillen wrote: post #540

browningstreet wrote: post #498

I think some businesses are going out of businesses because they stubbornly refuse to raise their wages. In the vacation community where I live, there are two grocery/delis about a mile apart from each other. One is at a marina, the other is at a beach. They have almost the same business offering. Traditionally, both are fully mobbed during the sunny seasons. Two weeks ago, I visited the one I usually go to -- at the…

I think that for a lot of businesses, it's a question of what will happen when extended unemployment ends in September. If employees are going to flood the market and you can keep paying the wages you were paying pre-pandemic, then it makes sense to hold out, since if you raise wages now, you can't really reduce them later. You lose out on sales now because you're short staffed, but you keep your costs low in perpetu…

pandemic unemployment has already ended in a bunch of states. If it's the problem, we would be seeing those states rebound.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#555

Post by gscott » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 12:13 AM UTC

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…

Even driving now is more difficult. I live in San Diego and it seems now people have more cars and are driving more then pre-pandemic. Half the time I can't change lanes because no one lets me in. I can't get off on some freeway off-ramps because some are backed up many hundreds of feet (so I go to the next off-ramp as I have been nearly hit by people trying to slow down to get into the off-ramp line). Strange things... I really expected to just to return more to normal but there are some changes for the worse.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#556

Post by forz877 » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 12:15 AM UTC

lrdswrk00 wrote: post #190

falcolas wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Anyone can work in a kitchen. It's physically demanding, but the tasks are not that hard and easily picked up without any real education. Sorry that's just the truth. And why we don't have as many programmers as service workers.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#557

Post by acover » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 12:15 AM UTC

headcanon wrote: post #547

acover wrote: post #474

Would a Costco style membership work for food? Attract better behaved customers, match fixed vs variable expenses better, attract more regular customers. Though you run into restaurants being a terrible industry with too much competition.

you know thats really not a bad idea, although you'd have to get around people not wanting to visit the same place every day. I think it could work for a market-style place (think nice food court) for variety, but you'd still have to solve for having a place that people will want to go to at least twice a week to justify the membership cost.

I was thinking a coffee shop. Find a spot with 5 coffee shops all in one spot. Open a sixth and target the regulars by offering cheaper better coffee by subsidizing it with a monthly fee. Imagine during off peak hours $1 lattes.

Or do salads and compete in a similar manner - like a gym membership, prepay to incentivize healthy behavior.

The core problem is retail is a bad industry with high competition and there is a huge desire for variety.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#558

Post by ska » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 12:15 AM UTC

okaram wrote: post #546

ska wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once you learn to cook you won't eat at anything less than the most expensive. This isn't really true. Restaurants exist to fill a bunch of different needs; experience, novelty, convenience etc. And expense isn't a particularly good predictor of quality. I do agree that once you can cook well you're much less likely to be happy at an overpriced generic version of something... which is right where fast casual and bi…

There's a bunch of foods that are a pain to make, or will make your kitchen smell ... Plus having different plates for everyone is also super convenient

> There's a bunch of foods that are a pain to make

This cuts both ways, some types of pain are easier to take on at home. During service, time and focus are at a premium - which is way almost every place cuts corners on e.g., risotto.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#559

Post by lazyasciiart » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 12:17 AM UTC

cratermoon wrote: post #283

vkou wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Kroger decided to close a store because it didn't want to pay a covid front line temporary increase of $4/hr. If you're talking about Seattle, Kroger closed that store because it was underperforming for years, not because of a temporary wage increase that affected every grocery store in the city. Weeks later, they started advertising open positions with wage increases for nearby stores they didn't close... When it…

> When it comes to political decisions, firms lie all the time about their motivations Of course they're not going to say "we're closing because we don't want to pay our employees a decent wage", that would be bad optics. You can be pretty sure that if you ask employees at the store, they'll say that whatever the stated reason, the intended message from the parent company is "we ain't gonna pay you more".

No, every employee was offered transfers to nearby stores, which were all paying the higher rate.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#560

Post by selectodude » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 12:18 AM UTC

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.

If my arm hurts, it doesn’t matter if I strained something or it’s bone cancer. To me, they present the same.

In economics, outcomes are all that matter.