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Restaurant workers quit at record rate

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Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#721

Post by pcmoney »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #627
ahallock wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In high school, I worked at a fast food joint to make a little extra money. There were no expectations to pay rent or other essentials. But you'll say that it's not kids working these jobs, so we need to provide a livable wage. What about getting these people skills for better jobs? I'd rather attack that problem than make Wendy's sandwich maker a viable career.

>I'd rather attack that problem than make Wendy's sandwich maker a viable career. Why shouldn't Sandwich Maker be a viable career? They definitely contribute more to society than HR professionals or agile coaches.

You realize wages based on supply and demand are very accurate at measuring exactly how much value to “society” a job brings? You may disagree but economic equilibrium in the price of a common good such as an agile coach is telling you exactly how much value society believes that job brings.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#722

Post by devoutsalsa »

armchairhacker wrote: post #642

Not trying to sound unsympathetic to those with struggling businesses, but: I don't get why there were so many restaurants in the first place. Everywhere I've been, it seems like there's literally 10+ restaurants per square mile. In cities it's 100+, not exaggerating. And it's not even unique restaurants either: in my local town there are multiple Mexican restaurants, Italian restaurants, Chinese restaurants, America…

Does your area have a lot of immigrants? A lot of immigrants start a restaurant because they struggle to find meaningful employment elsewhere (e.g. was a doctor in home country being forced to do minimum wage home healthcare in the country they immigrated to because of licensing issues).

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#723

Post by AussieWog93 »

systemvoltage wrote: post #703
AussieWog93 wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It doesn't take a MBA-like focus to think "Gee..only if we had more margin, we'd pay more". It does take razor-sharp focus and constant innovation to work out how you can increase margin, though. You can't just arbitrarily raise prices without offering any additional value and expect your business to stay alive.

Small businesses already have a razor sharp focus otherwise they'd disappear. Literally their margins are their bread. I find your take slighly condescending but I want to give you a benefit of the doubt - what makes you think small businesses aren't focused on optmizing their margins? Just like you, I am a small business partner and know many small business owners. If you put an MBA-educated person in charge, the op…

>Reading HBR doesn't make you a qualified for optimizing a restaurant business. Neither does having an MBA degree.

I think I understand the miscommunication now. Sorry for that!

I didn't mean to suggest that you need an MBA to run a small business, just that you need to be constantly optimising, innovating and focusing on raw numbers. I don't have an MBA, but from what I understand this is how MBAs are taught to think.

>I find your take slighly condescending but I want to give you a benefit of the doubt - what makes you think small businesses aren't focused on optmizing their margins?

Maybe it's the people we talk to? I definitely do know guys that are creative and sharp, but for every one of them there are 3 or 4 people who stubbornly refuse to adapt to changes in the market, fail to capture even low hanging fruit in terms of margin (big one is eCommerce businesses that make no effort to minimise postage costs), spend huge amounts of time on activities that bring in minimal value to the business and make no effort to expand into new product categories/markets or make use of new technology. It's just not how many people think.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#724

Post by AussieWog93 »

pcmoney wrote: post #721
AussieWog93 wrote: post #627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'd rather attack that problem than make Wendy's sandwich maker a viable career. Why shouldn't Sandwich Maker be a viable career? They definitely contribute more to society than HR professionals or agile coaches.

You realize wages based on supply and demand are very accurate at measuring exactly how much value to “society” a job brings? You may disagree but economic equilibrium in the price of a common good such as an agile coach is telling you exactly how much value society believes that job brings.

>You realize wages based on supply and demand are very accurate at measuring exactly how much value to “society” a job brings?

If that were true, then DMV employees would have to pay for the privilege of working there.

In all seriousness, though, there are huge swathes of people working in bullshit jobs, and many of them are well-compensated. There are power dynamics, misinformation and far too much complexity at play to simply say "society places more value on the work performed by people in higher paying jobs".

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#725

Post by wheels »

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.

In fact, restaurants are pretty much the pathological case of small businesses: they're a lot of work and a high percentage of them lose money. If your deli was already losing money, I can imagine a lot of owners deciding not to throw good money after bad.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#726

Post by gwright »

greedo wrote: post #510
mdavis6890 wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kinda, but not really. Remember that a shortage is an excess of demand at a given price. Meaning implicitly that, at the margin, prices could go up some small amount and there will still be a queue/line/excess of people willing to pay that marginally higher price. So as a restaurant, very roughly speaking, you basically can raise prices until the line starts to go away. Unfortunately customers can be very stubborn an…

Are customers that aware of price increases? Unless you're eating out at the same joint every day, a 10% increase isn't very noticeable. Say you have an item priced at $9.99, bumping it up 10% makes it $10.99. Restaurant sales are rarely made up of price conscious buyers. Sure there's a limit, but short of the blue light special crowd, most customers are eating out for either variety, social reasons, or being tired o…

> Are customers that aware of price increases?

Yes. This is exactly the question answered by the concept of supply and demand curves. Of course you can argue about the shape of those curves but their existence is not in doubt.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#727

Post by WalterBright »

dimal wrote: post #633
WalterBright wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> scam There is a legal concept called "due diligence" where a party to a contract is expected to take reasonable steps to know what they're doing. Googling "starting salaries for [my major]" is a very, very low bar for due diligence. The posts in this thread absolving the student from making any effort whatsoever at due diligence is illustrative of the point I was making.

Allowing any random 18 year old to sign for a $300,000 unsecured loan is insane. At that age, most people simply can’t calculate the risk they’re taking. At that age, you are programmed to think you’re invincible and take unreasonable risks. It’s why we send 18 year olds to war. No one else would take those odds.

They don't get loaned $300,000 in the first year. It gets doled out over 6 years (a Master's program). That's $50,000 per year. At any point they can quit (and only be liable for the debt up to that point), transfer to another school, or change majors.

At what point do you consider the person a functional adult and assign some responsibility?

> It’s why we send 18 year olds to war.

18 year olds are most likely to survive the rigors of combat. Survival rates drop steadily from 18 on.

> No one else would take those odds.

Plenty do. The US, for example, has had an all-volunteer army since the 1970's. The Navy and Air Force have always been all-volunteer. My dad volunteered at 23. A lot of volunteers were rejected for being too old.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#728

Post by WalterBright »

dundarious wrote: post #602
WalterBright wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can show me that simple google searches won't show reasonably correct information, that would be a good point. Besides, it seems weird that the senior class would never notice that the class that graduated just ahead of them is working at the car wash?

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?

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#729

Post by WalterBright »

ambrose2 wrote: post #687
WalterBright wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Applying to grad school is not making a commitment. One still has two more years. At any time while in grad school, one can google starting salaries, and stop digging in deeper if the math doesn't work.

I wouldn’t underestimate the feeling of the sunken cost (especially after studying and taking the GRE, writing essays, getting recommendations from professors). For someone relatively young who isn’t aware of alternatives nor has prepared for alternatives, it’s not surprising they would keep going down the path feeling they have no better choice at that point, only a choice to imagine their future selves will work ev…

> especially after studying and taking the GRE, writing essays, getting recommendations from professors

Sorry, I have to laugh at the idea that taking the GRE, writing an essay, and getting recommendations is so onerous one feels compelled to take on $300,000 in debt due to the sunk cost fallacy.

It's still their choice, and therefore their responsibility. It's not society's responsibility to make up for their sunk cost fallacy.

Besides, one can always change majors or transfer to another school with better prospects. Lots of students do that.

P.S. Studying for the GREs is what one did the previous 4 years getting a Bachelor's. Nobody I knew studied for the GRE. You should know that stuff by then. The GREs I took didn't go past sophomore material.

Re: Restaurant workers quit at record rate

#730

Post by fridif »

rendall wrote: post #717
fridif wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A seller's market created by a law in which if the buyer pays too low of a price, very bad things happen to them.

One would expect in that case lots of laborers with wages at the minimum, and many more looking for work. What we're seeing in the description is not that.

I reckon the jobs are not on offer because the restaurants only want to pay a small amount (they have razor thin margins and an employee costs more than just salary [workers comp, insurance, equipment, liability etc]).

Previously people accepted the small amount, but now they aren't because they're (currently still) being paid to stay home in most cases.

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