Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
“Employees who remain in the industry are left scrambling to serve customers and fulfill to-go orders, and restaurants have been forced to close dining rooms and cut operating hours to help curb the impacts of the worker shortage. For some restaurants, the labor crunch has even led to them shutting down for good” (from the Business Insider article).
What criteria are they using to measure quality, and what group of employees was it measured in? Your graph is meaningless and worthless without the link or an explanation.
Although I don't usually like to resort to a Latin phrase, it seems particularly apropos here: Res Ipsa Loquitur. (I'm not using it its legal doctrine sense, but more literally.) It roughly translates as "The Thing Speaks For Itself."
Like so many things in nature, quality is distributed along the Normal Distribution.
Not universally true - but neither is it universally false as you state.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ocnjgirl
I'm a therapist working in nursing homes, and it is absolutely not true in my field. We are already required to have 90-95% productivity (90% for lead therapists, 95% for assistants). It was 75% when I graduated in the late 90's. We never get raises, and in fact pay cuts were instituted across the field after Oct 2019 (due to changes in Medicare re-imbursment that went into effect then).
Medical reimbursement is a special case. It doesn't follow the laws of supply and demand. I'll grant you that in your chosen field, your personal productivity is orthogonal to compensation upside. But surely you'd grant that failure to perform to standard has a negative consequence - up to and including losing your job? Other special cases include working for a governmental entity where failure to perform has no negative consequence, and outstanding performance is not consistently rewarded.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ocnjgirl
I make the same now that I did 15 years ago, and work 8-10 hours at least off the clock per week. I really don't have a life at all. I leave home at 7am and get home at 7pm.
You made life choices that led you to where you are today. Had you chosen differently, you could have gone into any number of occupations or fields where your compensation is related to your own personal output and ability to generate a profit.
Anywhere along the path of the past 15 years, you could have said to yourself, "The handwriting's on the wall; this isn't what I envisioned when I started out, and I'm going to change to something else."
Except if everyone left the mechanic field because they weren’t making enough to make their rent, you’d be complaining there’s no one to fix your car. If he raised his prices you’d either pay them or not get your car fixed. That is what’s going on in the restaurant industry. And others. They are the ones complaining they can’t find workers.
Of course. Free market at work. No need for mandates and laws. Except there's a third option - fix the car myself. Just like I can choose to eat at home if the prices of restaurant food become unacceptable to me.
The wage floor for unskilled labor in this country is ridiculously low.
Untrue, of course. The thing that is ridiculous is the low quality of the bottom-of-the-barrel labor force. There are many reasons for their poor performance, but at the end of the day the thing that matters is their poor performance.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Leisesturm
Someone mentioned the Scandinavian countries and their lack of a (federally legislated) minimum wage. That's because they don't need one. We need one.
LOL! Instead of a federally mandated minimum wage, how about a federally mandated minimum productivity?
Countless quantitative academic studies published in peer-reviewed academic journals show that the primary effect of minimum wage legislation is to shift demand from low-skill to higher-skill labor. It hurts the most unskilled, and helps the skilled.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Leisesturm
They pay a defacto minimum of $20/hr. And workers there aren't nickle'd and dime'd to death, so that $20/hr goes much further than here. Australia, the UK, Canada, Western Europe ... they all pay a $20/hr. minimum wage ON TOP of extensive social safety nets that subsidize rents and medical expenses. If they can do it, so can we.
Why in the world would we want to? Since you're so gung-ho, why don't you start a restaurant and pay $50/hour to each employee? Let us know how that turns out for you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Leisesturm
And in the meantime, until that glorious day when the penny drops, let's stop blaming the victims of the present broken system.
Our present system works quite well. It certainly could be improved, but it works quite well. Anyone with a pulse and who can fog a mirror can get a job. Anyone who doesn't like their job can get another. Anyone who wants to add more value to society can find numerous ways to do so.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Leisesturm
A line cook should not have to become a franchise manager to get a living wage. That is just a paper thin excuse to continue a disgusting paradigm of exploitation of a vulnerable population. We are better than that?
So many adjectives and adverbs! You should try sticking to nouns and verbs. There is no such thing as a "living wage." Just as dividing by zero, It Does Not Exist. Your wage reflects your value to society. There is no such thing as "economic exploitation." Just as dividing by zero, It Does Not Exist. Ditto for "disgusting paradigm", "vulnerable population" and other such non-economic-concepts.
Nonsense. The scattered closings make for sensational news but are extremely rare. What percentage of restaurants are closed due to lack of workers?
Around here? A fair number, though to be more specific a lot of them have simply shortened their hours of operation by about four or six hours per day.
“Employees who remain in the industry are left scrambling to serve customers and fulfill to-go orders, and restaurants have been forced to close dining rooms and cut operating hours to help curb the impacts of the worker shortage. For some restaurants, the labor crunch has even led to them shutting down for good” (from the Business Insider article).
So what? Maybe restaurants didn't need to be open such long hours in the first place. More anecdotes, the first link even says "These anecdotes". Another also says “We’re facing challenges of food cost, labor cost, packaging... everything has gone up 30, 50, to 100%,” so who's to say any closings are due to lack of labor and not increasing expenses?
Although I don't usually like to resort to a Latin phrase, it seems particularly apropos here: Res Ipsa Loquitur. (I'm not using it its legal doctrine sense, but more literally.) It roughly translates as "The Thing Speaks For Itself."
Like so many things in nature, quality is distributed along the Normal Distribution.
I'll leave the rest of it to you to figure out.
I have no idea what you’re talking about. You posted a graph that purported to show the decline in quality of workers. I assume that graph came from a site that explained how they quantified the data used in the graph. You didn’t say anything really in the above post. How did they measure “poor performance”. What group did they measure it in, and what was the sample size? How on earth would I “figure it out for myself” especially when you haven’t included the link to where you got the graph from??
So what? Maybe restaurants didn't need to be open such long hours in the first place. More anecdotes, the first link even says "These anecdotes". Another also says “We’re facing challenges of food cost, labor cost, packaging... everything has gone up 30, 50, to 100%,” so who's to say any closings are due to lack of labor and not increasing expenses?
Why are many restaurants not haing this problem?
I’ve been debating you on enough topics for enough years that I can see you’re just digging in your heels again and not actually open to anything that doesn’t support your views. So let’s just stop at this point.
I’ve been debating you on enough topics for enough years that I can see you’re just digging in your heels again and not actually open to anything that doesn’t support your views. So let’s just stop at this point.
Translation: I'm stumped and can't win this debate so I quit. Btw, if you're going to be in my fan club you need to pay the membership fee. I don't remember you at all.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
