Restaurant workers quit at record rate • Hacker News Board

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#811

Post by discreteevent » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 7:10 AM UTC

square_usual wrote: post #773

acituan wrote: post #697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is that a cultural thing? I'm always surprised when I see American service workers complain about abusive customers, because in my region in South India I've very very rarely seen anyone abuse their servers. A few complaints, maybe, but no yelling or pressure. IME the class divide in India is wider, so it makes me even more confused.

I was shocked in the US to see an American colleague get really angry with a waitress over the quality of a steak. It's ok to complain but to think you can dump anger on someone who is on minimum wage and who had nothing to do with the problem is beyond me. I lost any respect I had for him.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#812

Post by bawolff » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 7:13 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #638

itsoktocry wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Have you considered that margins are tighter than you think? If they can't give a decent wage [1] then they were not a viable business to begin with, regardless whether they can find some poor souls to work for them. If it takes a mandatory minimum wage to reveal that and bring their demise, so be it - let them stop putting a band-aid on part of the economy and have better businesses take their place. [1] Which is…

Given they essentially shut down their business, not being a viable business (anymore) seems the obvious conclusion.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#813

Post by chii » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 7:14 AM UTC

cwkoss wrote: post #473

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…

> 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. Classist wage disparity is a real problem in America today. Often knowledge workers who don't work hard earn more than physical workers who do work hard.

> knowledge workers who don't work hard earn more than physical workers who do work hard.

earnings are measured with productivity, and knowledge work has more scaling to their productivity output. You can dig holes really hard, but a hole dug is a hole dug. A line of code written is not just a line of code, as power of compounding output stacks on top of each other.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#814

Post by bawolff » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 7:14 AM UTC

gwbas1c wrote: post #699

itsoktocry wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Have you considered that margins are tighter than you think I suspect that some business owners will need to take a paycut in order to stay in business. (I'm sure there are plenty of founders reading this article who sometimes pay their employees more than they pay themselves.)

This is a small business not a start up or megacorporation. Owners are usually the first person to get a paycut when times are tough.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#815

Post by chii » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 7:19 AM UTC

jlarocco wrote: post #220

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…

> 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…

> guess which will be the next industry with plummeting wages and few job opportunities?

'cept with 20 million CS degrees, the software industry would boom - more code, more customized, bespoke software for every firm, presumably increasing productivity and output and thus, increases wealth.

Not to mention these people may also "stumble" upon something great by being entrepreneurial.

So it'd be strictly better to have 20 million CS degrees holders, vs 20 million hospitality workers.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#816

Post by throwaway210222 » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 7:19 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…

> Its not just about wages … insuring everyone has cheap or free healthcare.

That is exactly the same as raising wages.

Outside the USA (or at least HN), its common for companies to negotiate remuneration on the total cost to company [1].

This includes wages, taxes (e.g. training taxes), pension, health-care, phone, etc, etc.

Its weird that commentators here somehow think that companies don't incur these freebies you want as real costs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_to_company

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#817

Post by SixDouble5321 » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 7:26 AM UTC

HNfriend234 wrote: post #802

The truth though is that when the generous pandemic stimulus ends, the labor shortage will also end.

How then, do you explain the shortages in places it has been forcibly expired?

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#818

Post by consp » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 7:34 AM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #807

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. That would mean the people running those businesses were in need of psychological help, it is pretty much crazy to close your business because you refuse to raise wages. I propose a counter explanation - your business has a very tight margin - if you raise wages you cannot afford to continue in business unless yo…

By not raising wages, keeping your employees and staying open you will definitely go under. Maybe you cannot outcompete the other business but by not even trying to go open you have already lost.

There is always convenience customers, loyal customers and opportunity customers who do not care about the 2-3% difference in price.

I'm not saying you are wrong, it could definitely be this case, just that there might be more factors to consider.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#819

Post by runnerup » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 7:37 AM UTC

akiselev wrote: post #790

71a54xd wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and in states with lots of illegal immigration the actual price of "labor" is heavily depressed since they're willing to work for basically anything.

If it's depressed it's because business owners who hire undocumented immigrants (often knowingly, even assisting with GC/visa fraud to pass I9 verification) are never, ever fined or punished. Enforcement is a farce.

I bartended at a Mexican restaurant in USA around the Great Recession. The owners absolutely knowingly employed illegal immigrants.

Interestingly, the illegal immigrants generally got paid way more per hour (~30% higher) and also generally paid taxes via ITIN number. Eventually our restaurant got “raided” and the owners called around to find them new jobs at other places around town.

One guy lived with me for awhile. He eventually went back to Mexico because he saved a bunch of money and wanted to spend it on a real degree/career. The universities in our area told him they’d take his money and let him audit classes but wouldn’t be able to give him any proper documentation like a transcript or degree.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#820

Post by aaronblohowiak » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 7:39 AM UTC

mythrwy wrote: post #764

mjevans wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

How does Germany do it?