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Restaurant workers quit at record rate

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Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#791

Post by ffggvv »

anonytrary wrote: post #705

Free market at work: 1. Restaurant workers quit 2. Restaurants raise wages 3. Restaurants get workers back Minimum wage seems to be out of this equation. Natural market dynamics will self-correct and the wages will naturally rise as literally any other price rises when inflation occurs. To be honest, I'm not sure what minimum wage is other than an artificial constraint. Workers obviously are willing to quit jobs with…

you forgot the part where the socialist government is printing unlimited welfare and handing it by the truck load. it’s hard to compete with free money

but luckily part of it ends in september

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#792

Post by akiselev »

71a54xd wrote: post #700
avidiax wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting take, but it seems like a post-hoc rationale/strategy to me. Conservatives will block any rise in the minimum wage, but couldn't completely block additional unemployment benefits. Progressives would back a rise in the minimum wage, but had to deliver on relief for the unemployed working class, so they did just that. The secondary effect of rising wages was probably only something that conservati…

Yep, but at the end of the day anyone who's trying to build wealth or have anything left for retirement gets fucked by inflation. People who are spendthrift and receiving UBI or unemployment payments (long term) were never trying to do that anyways and their payments in theory would increase with inflation. I'm a supporter of the idea of UBI but I just can't see the incentives panning out realistically.

How are the incentives panning out now? Every system has trade offs and the ones we've made seem to get worse and worse.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#794

Post by ffggvv »

luffapi wrote: post #66
zxspectrum1982 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. This is not about tips, it's about waiter salary being too close to free money to stay at home. We are seeing this problem with waiters at other countries too, where employees are paid "full salary" and tipping is not even a thing.

The answer to any labor shortage is to pay more. Either take the profits currently captured by the owner and use them for salaries or raise prices and do the same. No consumer should ever be responsible for an entrepreneur’s failing business model.

it’s not failing. it’s the communist government crowding out private business and creating welfare dependent voters

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#795

Post by wutbrodo »

gruez wrote: post #207
pphysch wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on! Real estate appreciation only matters for people that own multiple properties and can therefore afford to sell without compromising the roof over their heads, i.e. landlords. My sole property doubling in value, along with every other house in comparable neighborhoods, is 100% ephemeral, because there is no way to realize that value without liquidating my family's quality of life--a counterproductive maneuver…

>because there is no way to realize that value without liquidating my family's quality of life not really. you can reverse mortgage it when you retire.

Plus, the idea that your level of living expenses is completely immutable is idiotic. Obviously people don't turn over housing at the drop of a hat, but sitting on extra tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars isn't worthless: homeowners do move, and large increases in a leveraged asset mean even minor downsizing in one's home can allow large increases in other expenses.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#796

Post by Dylan16807 »

bluGill wrote: post #367
Invictus0 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

I care about service. It is a pleasure being able to reward good service.

Very few people do that. Tip amount barely changes based on how good the service is. Most people that tip well are basically always going to tip well, which does not reward good service.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#797

Post by Aloha »

chaostheory wrote: post #647
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 that costs money. Are we as customers willing to pay for it? While a lot of us on HN can afford the price increases, not everyone else can. I have a feeling that wage increases will come, but there will be less employees and the remaining better paid employees will be augmented with technology in order to serve more customers ie more automation

The most import parts don't cost money. Fixed schedules, non-punitive work rules, flexibility, treating your employees like they have value. The shift in culture began when we went from having a "personnel department" to "Human Resources" - resources are something you often extract and use up, to the point we have a special way to call out resources that are renewable.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#798

Post by dundarious »

WalterBright wrote: post #728
dundarious wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit late to find out in year n-1 of an n year program.

Ya don't think they'd tell the n-2 year students? Do they have a conspiracy of silence? Do they have no friends from other years?

So everybody should drop out after they first start to hear second hand info about it? And it’s their fault if they don’t or if they do but they’re on the tail end of the grapevine so it takes a few years? And that’s the system working justly?

If you imagine the uncertainty and justifiable inertia involved in a realistic scenario, I don’t see how you can dismiss arguments that it’s not necessarily just the fault of kids for not doing due diligence.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#799

Post by mns »

jackson1442 wrote: post #601
josephcsible wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that businesses stubbornly refuse to raise wages - it's that they can't afford to. A lot of local small businesses were barely staying afloat even before March 2020.

If a business can’t afford to pay its employees enough make rent and buy groceries, perhaps it shouldn’t be a business?

Well, in that industry, companies don't have obscene amounts of money from investors that they can keep the company running for years after years with 0 profits and pay people higher than average salaries and provide free drinks and gym memberships.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#800

Post by Aloha »

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…

Management culture shifted sometime ago, I've often said unions are a problem you earn. We are contributing here to the problem as a society, but management is often just outright hostile now in service sector jobs. Employees are treated as disposable fungible objects, with no inherent value.

Like, There was a cultural shift some decades ago, and as corny as it sounds, the shift in culture began when we went from having a "Personnel Department" to "Human Resources" - resources are something you often extract and use up, to the point we have a special way to call out resources that are renewable.

As much as I hate the "words matter" phrase, I think here they clearly do, as they've clearly subtly altered peoples thinking about people who work for them, and their disposability.

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