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Applebee’s exec urges using high gas prices to push lower wages, sparks walkout

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Re: Applebee’s exec urges using high gas prices to push lower wages, sparks walkout

#341

Post by crate_barre »

gruez wrote: post #196
rpmisms wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Henry Ford, capitalist extraordinaire, famously paid his workers $5 a day, double the average automaker's wage at the time. This extracted maximum value from said labor.

I know the popular story is that: 1. pay workers extra (ie. above the market rate) 2. workers are richer now 3. they use that money to buy the stuff you make 4. ??? 5. profit! Has this actually been studied empirically? If you had to choose between paying your workers $1000 more and pocketing it, surely the latter option is the better one? Sure, they might use some of that money to buy your product, but they're not g…

Does it even need to be studied that heavily? What is India and China trying to do? They have massive billion people populations that are poor. Lift them into a lower middle class, voila, you have unmatched consuming class.

We’re going to lose this fight to these countries because our country cannot for a second think outside of squeezing the living hell out of a stagnantly growing 350 million person population. That’s why they squeeze you on home mortgages, rent, cars, salary, everything. They are squeezing because they see no fucking growth and that’s all these people understand. If the population isn’t scaling horizontally, they have no other creative ideas. It is unimaginable to them that an enriched 350 million Americans is as potent as a billion person population. We will actually go to your stupid diner and drop 50+ every week. Why are these people so fucking scared?

Re: Applebee’s exec urges using high gas prices to push lower wages, sparks walkout

#342

Post by hinkley »

a4isms wrote: post #277
rileyphone wrote: post #212

Title is wrong, wasn’t a corporate executive but instead “Wayne Pankratz, executive director of operations for Applebee’s franchisee Apple Central LLC”, from franchisee that has 47 locations, out of 1787 total. In conclusion, this was corporate sabotage by Chili’s.

When you run a business, you choose a location. If the landlord does something that causes a noxious smell, it's on you to fix it. We don't say, "Well, that's the landlord's fault." Your business, your leasing arrangements. When you run a business, you choose employees. If an employee does something noxious, it's on you to fix it. We don't say, "Well, that's the employee's fault." Your business, your employee hiring,…

I've worked with so many businesses, especially rental businesses, that don't understand that their business model - that every business model - is that they provide consistency and indemnification in exchange for more money than their other services are objectively worth.

It's not that I'm paying you for a bacon cheeseburger, it's that when I got chewed out by my boss about some work issue, and I'm telling myself I just need to keep my shit together to the end of the day, and then I'm going to go home and get that cheeseburger from my favorite place, and somehow that's the glue that is going to help me keep my shit together, that your store is open, and you haven't run out of bacon because the manager you sexually harassed was the only one good at keeping on top of ordering.

I, the average preoccupied customer, don't need to hear the sad story of the bacon supply, and frankly the idea of offering it shouldn't even cross your mind, let alone find my ears. It's one thing if I pull the whole story of a broken freezer or a burst pipe out of you, I've done that any number of times, but don't open with it. You're paid not to open with an excuse. Open with an apology, a discount, and possibly a recommendation another customer favorite that's good even without the bacon.

If you can't keep your doors open without a stream of excuses, then you fail at logistics and you should throw money at someone to solve that problem for you, or go back to working for someone else, or someone might send Gordon Ramsay to explain it to you with a lot more swearing and a lot less empathy.

Re: Applebee’s exec urges using high gas prices to push lower wages, sparks walkout

#343

Post by Mezzie »

warent wrote: post #10

This is the reason why communities like r/antiwork are so massive. The sad fact is that working class people who don't possess rarer skills are frequently mistreated this severely. In other words it's much easier for a sociopath to exploit unskilled labor than skilled labor. This in my opinion is part of the responsibility of the government which they've been largely failing at lately, it's supposed to balance busine…

More people need to learn some labor history.

The oligarchs and people at the top aren't your friend. Granted, neither are most middle managers or small business owners, they just have a smaller pool of people to throw into the furnace so it's in their own best interest to show some restraint.

Re: Applebee’s exec urges using high gas prices to push lower wages, sparks walkout

#344

Post by greiskul »

gruez wrote: post #285
bee_rider wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, you'd think the people with 'traditional values' or whatever would be really excited if a single worker could support a couple.

The reason why single earner households can't afford a house on a single earner wage isn't because houses got 2x harder to build, or a single earner got half as productive. It's because there's only so many houses (land) available, and therefore the people with money (mostly 2 earner households) bid up the price until the people who can afford it equal the number of houses available. So yes, those people "with 'tradi…

> only so many houses (land) available

Here is a radical idea. Build more houses. Maybe put them on top of each other so they don't have to be so far away from jobs. American love complaining about the inefficiencies of centrally planned economies, but then make one of the most important aspects of the economy, where people can live and work, into a entirely centralized way of doing.

Re: Applebee’s exec urges using high gas prices to push lower wages, sparks walkout

#345

Post by greedo »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #206
giraffe_lady wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the restaurant industry so it's more on the level of like, the one that lets you take an unpaid day off every once in a while.

These are businesses that operate on single digit profit margins. And are easily replaced by eating meals at home. They either find a way to procure cheap labor, or shut down, because Applebees clientele do not really have the will or ability to spend more at Applebees.

Wahhhh. I heard this crap from my owner/operator every time the minimum wage went up. We'd be told to cut staff hours because it would hurt the bottom line. He made roughly 10% profit after controllable. 10%. Sounds horrible. However his gross sales at our best store were over $3M/year in the 80's. So PAC was $300K. Waaaahhhh.

He also owned four other McD's (though none as profitable as this one), so he was able to amortize all his corporate costs across five stores. He pulled in over $600K/year back in the 80's, yet was a Scrooge when it came to treating his employees. Cry me a river about "single digit profit margins." Tons of businesses have small margins, but make it up in volume.

Re: Applebee’s exec urges using high gas prices to push lower wages, sparks walkout

#346

Post by bduerst »

bogwog wrote: post #182
bo1024 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A universal basic income would have some advantages over a minimum wage. Minimum wage interferes with supply and demand in the labor market, which is why some economists dislike it. UBI moves the supply curve to a different place, but it allows those principles to function.

UBI could allow the elimination of minimum wage entirely, along with a ton of other scattered welfare programs that have lots of administrative overhead and the typical middleman industries that leech off of government programs. It’s a no-brainer!

Eliminating complexity for the sake of eliminating complexity is not an effective solution, especially when it introduces new problems like inflation on income-elastic priced goods like housing.

UBI is the epitome of a cocktail party idea: https://danluu.com/cocktail-ideas/

Re: Applebee’s exec urges using high gas prices to push lower wages, sparks walkout

#347

Post by gruez »

bee_rider wrote: post #326
gruez wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason why single earner households can't afford a house on a single earner wage isn't because houses got 2x harder to build, or a single earner got half as productive. It's because there's only so many houses (land) available, and therefore the people with money (mostly 2 earner households) bid up the price until the people who can afford it equal the number of houses available. So yes, those people "with 'tradi…

The original suggestion was to tie the minimum wage to housing costs, so I guess this should cancel out the up-bidding.

At the end of the day there are less houses than people, so somebody's going to be priced out of a house. However, the law stipulates that wages must be raised so that everyone can afford a house. Immovable object, meet unstoppable force.

Re: Applebee’s exec urges using high gas prices to push lower wages, sparks walkout

#348

Post by pvarangot »

woah wrote: post #228
endisneigh wrote: post #3

I wonder what the USA would look like if minimum wage was defined as; two people being able to afford a 1 bedroom apartment within a 1 hour drive without traffic. The static (both in the nominal and inflation adjusted sense) for minimum wage doesn't make sense imo. Minimum wage should be tied to some level of living (not necessarily a great living, but something ) This guy smh

I wonder what the USA would look like if zoning laws were defined as: Issue building permits until people can afford a 1 bedroom apartment within a 1 hour drive of work without traffic

You need to issue building permits and also build public transport infrastructure to guarantee the 1 hour commute. Driving from all around the Valley to Big Tech campuses is already pretty bad with traffic and the highways are not bad, and the urban density is ridiculously low.

Re: Applebee’s exec urges using high gas prices to push lower wages, sparks walkout

#349

Post by gruez »

Lammy wrote: post #334
gruez wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know the popular story is that: 1. pay workers extra (ie. above the market rate) 2. workers are richer now 3. they use that money to buy the stuff you make 4. ??? 5. profit! Has this actually been studied empirically? If you had to choose between paying your workers $1000 more and pocketing it, surely the latter option is the better one? Sure, they might use some of that money to buy your product, but they're not g…

What if we lived in a world where we were nice to people because we wanted to be, and not just when we get more numbers out of it?

Yeah, but that's not what we were talking about. This comment chain was specifically about "extracting maximal value from labor".

Re: Applebee’s exec urges using high gas prices to push lower wages, sparks walkout

#350

Post by Mezzie »

rpmisms wrote: post #162
freeone3000 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When, exactly, was American capitalism about anything other than extracting maximal value from labor?

Henry Ford, capitalist extraordinaire, famously paid his workers $5 a day, double the average automaker's wage at the time. This extracted maximum value from said labor.

Ah yes, around the time of things like the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, the Radium Girls, the battle for no child labor, legally segregated (by sex, religion, and race) jobs and education, and the Battle of Blair Mountain.

Very civilized era.

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