Restaurant workers quit at record rate • Hacker News Board

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#761

Post by Izkata » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 5:02 AM UTC

vanviegen wrote: post #752

14 wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I get 15 paid sick days a year, 15 vacation days with an extra day added each year, and 12 lieu days that I get off but no pay. This was the first year having it. What a difference it makes to my mental well being. I spread my days off out so I get lots of 3 day weekends and I feel a lot less burnt out. The sick days are a big one. If my kid is sick or I hurt myself or I have a bad tooth or just feeling down…

From a European perspective, it boggles my mind that sick days can be limited. What happens when you run out? You get fired for not coming into work, I imagine?

There's a few possibilities I can think of:

* Unpaid sick days

* The limitation is the other way around, they don't want to give a single pool of 30 paid days off, you're limited to 15 vacation days

* If you have a good relationship with your manager, it's a soft limit and they'll allow you to go over as long as it's not abused

* If you're part-time/hourly, trading days/hours with a co-worker

Our HR department combined vacation days and sick days into one pool several years ago when they realized most of us were faking sick days to get more vacation time.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#762

Post by lumost » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 5:11 AM UTC

xyzzyz wrote: post #758

lumost wrote: post #736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't a teenager make 20 an hour? At 16 your looking down the road at 2 very expensive options. 1) Go to college and earn a degree for 120-240k dollars 2) Start paying rent, owning your own car, healthcare, food, and leisure activities. Both of these are expensive directions to take. It used to be that someone could pay for school with a summer job, why shouldn't it be now? It doesn't appear the education cha…

> Why shouldn't a teenager make 20 an hour? It's not that he "shouldn't". Rather, many businesses cannot afford to both pay teenage employees $20/h, and also to not raise the prices. Some businesses can raise prices just fine, but others are not able to, as the customers will stop buying at higher price point. For example, if all groceries doubled their food prices, I'd still buy food (though maybe less than before),…

However if all groceries doubled their prices then all workers would demand higher wages to compensate. Other businesses would need to become more efficient with their labor or reduce margins. In the short-term this means CEOs get paid less, and investors see higher ROI in labor efficient business models.

It's obvious that teenagers can't make 1k/hr without breaking the economy - but I don't see any reason why $20/hr would be outside of historic norms. In 1981 the minimum wage was ~$3.25/hr, translating to ~9.71/hr today. Given the advances in technology that have driven a more than 2x increase in real economic productivity over that period why shouldn't the starting wage be $20/hr for teenagers?

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#763

Post by jjoonathan » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 5:12 AM UTC

acituan wrote: post #697

Aloha wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just wages - like alot of what we can do is making shitty jobs less miserable, ensuring everyone gets some amount of vacation and sick time, insuring everyone has cheap or free healthcare access, ensuring everyone has relatively fixed schedule - eliminate punitive workplace policies, on stuff like attendance and other shit that makes being there miserable. Like, you can do a hell of alot to reduce peoples da…

All of those reasons are valid, but not unique to hospitality industry. I think we might be backgrounding one particular reason too much: customers are a headache. One of the subheadings of the article is "They're just yelling the entire time". I find it interesting that this hasn't been discussed as much, maybe because we are culpable? Maybe at one point of time we were that high maintenance customer? Maybe there is…

A purely introspective approach is fundamentally limited to addressing the cases where the problem is within ourselves. It cannot address cases where the problem is within other customers or within business practices.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#764

Post by mythrwy » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 5:14 AM UTC

mjevans wrote: post #506

Aloha wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just wages - like alot of what we can do is making shitty jobs less miserable, ensuring everyone gets some amount of vacation and sick time, insuring everyone has cheap or free healthcare access, ensuring everyone has relatively fixed schedule - eliminate punitive workplace policies, on stuff like attendance and other shit that makes being there miserable. Like, you can do a hell of alot to reduce peoples da…

Healthcare, retirement, everything required for living should be socialized. Old people today have Medicare and Social Security, but we need to finish the progression to Star Trek and just make sure there's enough to go around and that it does go around. The other part is that misery, fire bad customers and bad managers. It really isn't that difficult to be polite.

That's the dream, hopefully it comes to pass, but for now implementation remains problematic.

How do you pay for it?

Will it be run by the same entities that are having so much trouble balancing Social Security and preventing Medicare fraud?

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#765

Post by Gustomaximus » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 5:16 AM UTC

Aloha wrote: post #500

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…

It's not just wages - like alot of what we can do is making shitty jobs less miserable, ensuring everyone gets some amount of vacation and sick time, insuring everyone has cheap or free healthcare access, ensuring everyone has relatively fixed schedule - eliminate punitive workplace policies, on stuff like attendance and other shit that makes being there miserable. Like, you can do a hell of alot to reduce peoples da…

> There used to be some sort of a trade-off, there used to be a ton of jobs that didn't pay well, but they were not miserable places to work at,

I think protecting this enviroment is also important for middle class if only for selfish reasons. As if you have the fall-back of 'stuff it I'll go flip burgers for a while' then middle class jobs are more protected as employees know some people will walk out for the lower paid but stress free job as its an option, which in turn flows up the chain at each level.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#766

Post by 29083011397778 » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 5:18 AM UTC

mullingitover wrote: post #548

It's interesting that when labor costs shoot up (and let's be honest, that's what this is, you can get people to take those jobs if you pay enough) it's a 'shortage,' but we don't really call skyrocketing medical costs a 'medicine shortage' or skyrocketing rents and home prices a 'housing shortage.'

Per TFA:

> Low wages are the most common reason people cite for leaving food service work. But in one recent survey, more than half of hospitality workers who've quit said no amount of pay would get them to return.

Note that over half of survey respondents directly refute your claim of "Just pay more". Paying more will get some people in, but having your restaurant half or three-quarters staffed is still an unenviable position.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#767

Post by jackson1442 » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 5:22 AM UTC

_wp3r wrote: post #673

mullingitover wrote: post #548

It's interesting that when labor costs shoot up (and let's be honest, that's what this is, you can get people to take those jobs if you pay enough) it's a 'shortage,' but we don't really call skyrocketing medical costs a 'medicine shortage' or skyrocketing rents and home prices a 'housing shortage.'

They literally call high rents and prices "affordable housing shortages".

Maybe we should take a hint from the modifier here and call it a "cheap labor shortage."

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#768

Post by fergie » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 5:25 AM UTC

grapehut wrote: post #751

amyjess wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't stay open while paying people a living wage, you deserve to go out of business. I would rather have nothing but chain restaurants owned by megacorps than have people working for less than a living wage.

That's fair, but would you also rather people unemployed than working for less than a living wage as well?

The answer is yes. In a functioning modern capitalist economy, workers must be able to choose if and where they work.

A good way to think about this is to frame the question on yourself: should I be forced to work for less than a living wage? Should the state subsidise my employer in order for her to underpay me?

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#769

Post by flippertheD » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 5:28 AM UTC

Nekhrimah wrote: post #679

flippertheD wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, all businesses run operations dif and have dif margins, so let's not forget that. I run a recruiting company. From our data a few things have popped up. First, people want higher wages in the lower wage industries. They are asking for $15-20 per hour. Second, lot of these people don't want to go back to the same labor jobs they had - they want to do something different. the problem with this is that they want t…

> this fiasco Your comment is informative, but, come on. This "fiasco" is supply in demand in action. When it (occasionally) favours the workers, it doesn't deserve to be described so negatively.

Well, sure. Just keep in mind how supply chains are working right now. Fiasco / failure - well, most workers didn't even get raises yearly to keep up with annual inflation. I'd say that's negative, although the market "working". Where is the equilibrium then? The balance will be found but at what detriment to society on numerous levels? How many people don't have healthcare? How many people work three jobs? All this is catching up and to me, it's a fiasco...will we see social unrest because of it, or better yet, have we in some ways? What about people finding purpose in life and taking pride in their careers at these lower levels of labor. Compared to 100 years ago maybe we are better off, but I think there could be at least an 80% improvement in the system.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#770

Post by devwastaken » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 5:28 AM UTC

itsoktocry wrote: post #530

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 some businesses are going out of businesses because they stubbornly refuse to raise their wages I'm skeptical that a business would choose to go out of business rather that give raises. Have you considered that margins are tighter than you think? I know small businesses like that.

Restraunts are high turnover businesses, as in most new owners don't make it more than 2 years. Many small businesses are owned by people without much knowledge or experience outside of that business. Very little classical education/degrees. The only businesses that thrive become survivor bias, they believe what worked before is what will work now, not realizing that markets do change.

I can perfectly see a dysfunctional small company draining their business away by just not changing. Happens all the time on Kitchen Nightmares.