Restaurant workers quit at record rate • Hacker News Board

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#861

Post by rswail » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 10:31 AM UTC

Aloha wrote: post #800

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…

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 hav…

Changing Personnel to Human Resources was definitely the start of that process.

It was an attempt to "professionalize" the work that Personnel departments did and make it sound more important.

It meant that you could have "Vice President of Human Resources" which sounds as "impressive" as "Vice President for Manufacturing".

It also leads towards today's stupidities where these same people are called things like "Leader for People and Culture" or some other BS touchy-feely title.

Employers do what they can to commoditize and standardize their use of workers. Anything to make them more fungible makes them more replaceable and therefore easier to a) lower costs (ie wages) and b) automate.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#862

Post by rurban » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 10:31 AM UTC

aaronblohowiak wrote: post #820

mythrwy wrote: post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

In Germany it's reverse. In the typical case the waiter verbally abuses the paying customer. Like when are not friendly enough to the waiter. Or you only can pay with credit card

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#863

Post by circlefavshape » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 10:35 AM UTC

snovv_crash wrote: post #810

Izkata wrote: post #761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 combin…

In Europe typically there are unlimited sick days, but the company has insurance to cover your salary after a certain number of days per year. You typically need a doctor's note after 3 consecutive days, and if you are abusing the system the insurance company (who is a pro at this) will quickly investigate and terminate / claw back their coverage.

In my last job (Ireland) one of my team mates had a serious health issue, and was off sick on full pay for an entire year

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#864

Post by rswail » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 10:45 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),…

If all restaurants doubled their prices, but, at the same time, paid their employees a proper wage (and made that public) and removed tipping, they could effectively raise their prices 20% (the expected tip) without any impact on the customers.

McDonalds manages to make profits in EU/AU/NZ/CA etc while (mnostly) complying with local minimum wages and conditions. The Big Mac index shows that their actual prices are within a narrow band compared to the US.

They (and other megacorps like Walmart) exploit both their workers and their customers, who end up paying the workers via the inefficient means of tax credits and poverty relief instead of the corporations/businesses being required to pay proper wages and contribute to their local communities via taxation.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#865

Post by rswail » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 10:47 AM UTC

xyzzyz wrote: post #786

lumost wrote: post #762

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

All workers demand higher wages at all times. Workers demanding higher wages stronger and harder won't raise aggregate wages by much, as there is only so much that is actually being produced, and aggregate wages can pretty much only be increased through increase in aggregate supply: the margins are already pretty thin, especially in retail and food service business, and the CEO pay is pretty small component in grand…

> What are the advances in technology between now and 1981 that made restaurants 2x more productive?

Microwaves, dishwashers, steam-injection ovens, just-in-time logistics for raw ingredient deliveries, credit cards, online ordering...

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#866

Post by rswail » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 10:49 AM UTC

flippertheD wrote: post #771

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…

Have you ever employed a teenager? They lack life exp. They lack confidence. They really don't know much at all about anything on a professional level. Sometimes you get good ones, but the majority are not sticking around for long or are doing a poor job. Your customers wont return with bad experiences and low quality. College is a scam for most. Put these young kids in debt for most of their life to earn a degree fo…

> talk to any large employer and ask them about employing the younger generation. All of them will say they have no work ethic and sit on their phones the whole time.

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.” - Socrates

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#867

Post by rswail » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 10:50 AM UTC

pcmoney wrote: post #713

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…

So the owner who has operated a cut throat, extremely demanding, razor thin margin for years folds because they don’t understand basic labor supply and demand? Keep in mind this person has mostly likely done in depth analysis on how to make their most popular item at the same quality but for 2% less of some expensive ingredient. I know one phenomenal restaurant owner who spent an entire year to get the cost of their…

Any other advanced economy (eg EU, AU, NZ etc) proves that

"Do you know whats going to happen here? Panera, Qdoba, and 5 Guys. Just a monoculture of terrible bland food. Only the big players with economies of scale can charge less and pay the same as smaller restaurants."

is just not true.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#868

Post by grasshopperpurp » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 11:06 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…

I've worked in various retail jobs. Most customers range from kind to inoffensive. The negative experiences from the exceptions stand out and occupy more headspace.

If you (general - not you) think you could improve how you treat people, please work on improving, but most people here are probably fine and have nothing to feel guilty about.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#869

Post by beauzero » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 11:40 AM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #803

lumost wrote: post #734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a deli closes up shop because they can't afford to hire people - it isn't for lack of customers interested in food. Food is a basic necessity that people will consume in as many varied forms as budget and tastes allow. The notion that a deli would simply close up shop because they couldn't hire people at a wage they deemed reasonable means they either couldn't be bothered to try higher prices/quality - or for so…

Around here, 16” cheese pizzas have gone from “around $10” just 8 months ago to “around $15”. Pizza places that would be jammed from 6 to 8 PM with a line for pickup are now ghost towns. The one I was in last night at 8:15, workers outnumbered customers (dine-in plus pickup). The roast beef place that I’d frequent on a particular errand went from $6.50 for a large roast beef to $9.50. What used to be a 15-deep line a…

Anecdotally this is me. I work from home 3 days a week, 2 days in office. Pre-pandemic I ate breakfast, lunch, and sometimes dinner in the road...2.5 hour commute. Food prices have increased 10-40% at each one of those stops. Now I eat one lunch per week out to socialize. The other 5 meals that I used to eat out are groceries I buy at the store and carry in.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#870

Post by snovv_crash » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 11:51 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #512

olyjohn wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You expect a 15-17 year old to have the life experience to deal with this? They've been told exactly what to do their whole lives. Then they have been told how amazing and great and awesome they are, surely they won't be the ones coming out at that bottom wage.

Masters' degree students are 22-25. They don't go to college until 18, either, and even then they have FOUR years to figure out how to google starting salaries for their major. And if it doesn't look good, they have time to change majors, or at least stop digging deeper.

Why not just allow people to declare bankruptcy on student loans, like all other loans?

Then the onus would be on the banks to only lend to people who they thought could repay.