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I think this is a two way street. If you've never been involved at a management or ownership level of a business that has "low pay" labor (e.g., food service, w

I think this is a two way street. If you've never been involved at a management or ownership level of a business that has "low pay" labor (e.g., food service, warehouse, retail sales). For every 2-3 decent workers there is one that just takes pure advantage of the environment (e.g., stealing product, stealing time, etc). Sometimes this occurs at great cost for a period of time before it is discovered. EDIT: This was meant to be illustrative, not an exact ratio. This makes companies take extreme policy measures for the few instances of this that impact everyone, because the financial impact is so disproportionate. Now, the argument can (and is) made that pay is a factor. "If you pay me more I won't act like this". But depending on the business (e.g., a local pizza place) there is no affording that.

this2shallPass 6y ago
Thankfully no "high pay" labor ever just takes pure advantage of the environment (e.g., stealing product, stealing time, etc) ;) And never at great cost for a period of time before it is discovered. Pay might be a factor. I think people are people, and their behavior and beliefs vary.
- supergeek133 6y ago
  I completely agree, but we, as a society tend to look down more on the low paid people who do this versus the high paid ones.
  - yters 6y ago
    Exactly, and the high paid thieves are those who can wreck the lives of millions vs the low paid thieves take an infinitesimal bit away from the bottom line of a multi billion dollar company.
    - banads 6y ago
      "We hang the petty thieves, and appoint the great ones to public office" -Aesop
      - yters 6y ago
        Hanging the petty thieves satisfies the crowds that are unhappy because the great thieves are robbing them blind.
    - supergeek133 6y ago
      Death by a thousand cuts. It is just front of mind. People "see" the low paid thieves and their impact on themselves and others on a semi regular basis. The once in awhile "white collar crime" you might see if you turn on the news isn't top of mind. "That guy stole $5 from ME" versus "Wal Mart uses welfare as a way to get corporate welfare and pay their employees less" One is in the moment, and a purely emotional and potentially traumatizing experience based on circumstance. One I may not even experience (e.g., I don't work at Wal-Mart).
      - johnmaguire2013 6y ago
        The higher paid thief and the lower paid thief both steal from their companies (both of which are owned by people). Yet the higher paid thief is afforded more privilege and trust and respect. Do you see the problem yet?
        supergeek133 6y ago
        I'm agreeing with you, but I'm putting a reality spin on it. It's OK to have macro views, but you can't change anything without understanding psychology of the two scenarios for the average person.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - madeofpalk 6y ago
    yes, that's the whole point about privilege.
- Aunche 6y ago
  Anecdotally, my friends in finance say that their chats are monitored with extreme scrutiny. You'll be written up for anything that can be perceived as screwing over your clients, even if it's an obvious joke. If this happened in any other sector, society would be quick to call this draconian. However, few people are aware of this form of micromanaging, and if they do, they recognize that it must be done. As for people stealing time, Amazon puts people on PIP all the time.
  - three_seagrass 6y ago
    >If this happened in any other sector, society would be quick to call this draconian. Believe it or not, finance is under extra scrutiny. That company has to log all chat messages in order to keep their FINRA certification, but that also means a court can subpoena and display the messages in a public trial. If they're a serious shop they will monitor and keep comms clean to the point of being Orwellian.
gilrain 6y ago
You're claiming that 1/2 to 1/3 of employees are criminally stealing time or product from their workplace. I need some robust citations for that, because it's ridiculous on its face.
- ApolloFortyNine 6y ago
  When I worked at Kmart, on more than one occasion they were forced to first to fire a large number of cashiers (10+) due to stealing. And the Kmart I worked in was definitely in the 'good' part of town. Now Kmart also paid literally the minimum wage, but it still shocked me the number of people who would steal when they clearly had video, and regularly fired people for doing so. And some of the people who stole got caught for stealing bottles of soda to drink while at work... As for stealing time, that was much more common, but I actually never saw anyone fired for that, no matter how often they took half hour long bathroom breaks, or spent an hour putting away 5 items. I guess Kmart understood they had to put up with something when paying literally as little as possible.
  - elliekelly 6y ago
    Maybe if Kmart paid their employees a little more they could afford to buy themselves something to drink at work.
    - supergeek133 6y ago
      I think the total amount of people who steal would go down if paid more, but I think there is just a "base amount" of the population who will always do this regardless what job/how much they get paid.
      - jshevek 6y ago
        If thieves figure out that stealing incentivizes the employer to pay more (in an effort to reduce stealing), they now have a new motive to steal. That is, to increase the pressure on the employer to raise wages further. This new motive can even 'feel righteous', as it benefits the other low paid workers as well.
generalpass 6y ago
Even worse is when you evaluate hiring. It isn't unusual for a high-turnover entry-level type employer to have 15% or less of candidates who agree to fill a position still employed with the company 6 months later. The pure drag of having to deal with this, especially when it comes to all of the paperwork required, by law, to be completed with every single new hire makes this alone a huge expense. The vast majority of those employees left of their own will, not because they were fired. Usually when the leave, there is no notice. They just don't show up leaving management short handed and wondering whether the employee will show up the next day. Consequently, the policy can be to over-staff so that whenever some percentage isn't showing up the employer can still meet production needs. The employer cannot simply increase prices and pay people better. For the most part, employers already have prices at the highest their customers are willing to pay. Setting prices higher will result in loss of customers, less profit, then layoffs or business closure. Employees at this level are astoundingly uninterested in performing well, or, in other words, there is a reason they are working entry-level positions. This makes management yet more difficult because managers may have to become near micro-managers of cat herds trying to get the company to produce whatever it is supposed to produce.
- generalpass 6y ago
  What a shocker that the upper middle-class users of HN immediately vote down a perspective on the world that they have never been exposed to. It must all be a lie, right? And even more shocking is the cowards can't even leave a comment. This is pervasive now and makes for terrible communities.
  - solarwind 6y ago
    Sorry, your experience-based comment from the actual real world of running a business runs counter to the dominant Marxist post-modernist ideology here. Next time perhaps sprinkle in some barbs about class struggle or CEO compensation.
    - voldacar 6y ago
      Not sure that the dominant ideology around here is "Marxist post-modernist". More like coastal urban shitlib. Also, isn't Marxist post-modernism an oxymoron?
zelon88 6y ago
> This makes companies take extreme policy measures... Governing to the lowest denominator is just poor management. > ...because the financial impact is so disproportionate... For who? Bob "steals" an hour of overtime worth $25 but he's still in your facility at your disposal. God forbid... > "If you pay me more I won't act like this" This I agree with. You get what you pay for. Period. > But depending on the business (e.g., a local pizza place) there is no affording that. So why is it alright to allow a failing business who can't create value in the workforce is allowed (and enabled) to stay open so it can ruin more lives and create more misery? Surely there's a decent pizza place around the corner that's well managed, creates value for employees, and deserves the business. Instead we crutch along shitty businesses for no reason. Case in point, at a debate in 2016 a woman asked Bernie Sanders how she would continue to grow her business if she had to offer her employees health insurance. She would have to scrap plans to open a second location. I'm sorry, but if your first location can't sustain itself and create a meaningful work environment maybe nobody needs that second location of yours. Get health coverage for your existing workforce before you go hiring more.
- supergeek133 6y ago
  Have you owned a margin strained small business before? Or had any experience working in a margin strained retail environment where your only competitive lever is price? > Governing to the lowest denominator is just poor management. Nevertheless, this is what happens. If you're running a low margin store of 50 employees, as a store general manager you notice one bad employee more and complain upwards about it. Hiring/retraining costs money. Granted this is a long time ago but I recall our training/hiring cost per employee at a Best Buy store to be in the thousands of dollars. If you're Best Buy you can afford to pay people more (they just are also being responsible to their Wall Street numbers), but an independent restaurant can't just turn the price lever without other impacts, and no, in the cases I'm familiar with, the owner is not making high wage. Some of them are lucky to make over $50-60k/yr and correctly re-invest in their business. > For who? Bob "steals" an hour of overtime worth $25 but he's still in your facility at your disposal. God forbid... Depending on the company, yes, one employee stealing anything can have more of an impact on your company than you realize. Especially if it goes on awhile without anyone noticing. > I'm sorry, but if your first location can't sustain itself and create a meaningful work environment maybe nobody needs that second location of yours. Get health coverage for your existing workforce before you go hiring more. First, health care is expensive. I work for a $4B company and my benefits are not great. My healthcare is expensive per-paycheck in my opinion. Let's discuss your Bernie example/quote further. Let's say you enforced what you're talking about. Say an independent Pizza shop charges $20 for a large pizza, Pizza Hut/Dominos charges $18. But I can charge $2 more because of my quality, but I still have high food costs because I don't have franchise buying power. But I already have less sales because I don't have brand recognition and/or the marketing power that a national franchise does. Also, at least in my friend's cases, they also pay their employees more than minimum wage out of the gate. IIRC they get paid fairly well for a pizza place, he also has employees that have been there for years and he pays them accordingly. OK cool, I'll increase my wage, and I'll buy everyone health insurance. Now I have to charge $22 or $25 for the same pizza. Maybe my customers are loyal and just deal with it, maybe not. What happens if not? Then I close my business, now not only are my employees unemployed but so am I. Say you make the same change to the big franchise, their costs only go up to $19-$20 for the pizza that cost $18 before. At the extreme still $5 less than I was charging. Obviously the example gets more complex if everyone gets the same wage increase, right? Then you're just sort of raising the water line. I think it's super complex, honestly. Especially having managed this on the "Big Business" and small business sides. That being said: > This I agree with. You get what you pay for. Period. Not in all cases is my point, some people are just awful humans. He's had some of his employees (whom he pays well in comparison) steal food and money straight out of the register.
treve 6y ago
If you can't afford to pay employees a decent wage, you shouldn't be in business. Minimum wages should be raised and nonviable businesses should adapt or go under. Amazon is not in this category
- twblalock 6y ago
  > Minimum wages should be raised and nonviable businesses should adapt or go under. That's a recipe for significantly increased unemployment which would affect the most vulnerable workers the most. For most people in a low-paying job, the alternative is no job. If they were able to get higher-paying jobs they would have already done so.
  - treve 6y ago
    Then why have a minimum wage at all?
    - Vrondi 6y ago
      Because, before minimum wage, we had people being paid the price of a loaf of bread for an entire day's labor. We had people being paid in "company scrip" only spendable in the company's own store at inflated prices, instead of real national currency.
    - twblalock 6y ago
      Because, unlike what you suggested, policymakers are able to calibrate the minimum wage so it doesn't cause companies to go out of business.
      - arrosenberg 6y ago
        Large corporations are making bigger profits than ever and the minimum wage isn't being calibrated to actually ensure a decent standard of living.
      - nearbuy 6y ago
        Only about 2% of hourly paid workers earned federal minimum wage or less in 2018 in the US [1]. This percentage has been dropping over the past few decades. I think this implies that minimum wage has been calibrated to be low enough that it makes little difference overall. [1] https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2018/home.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2018/home.htm
nixarian 6y ago
What do you expect, you delusional borderline psychopath. You have zero empathy, apparently. Why wouldn't they do things like that? They barely make enough to live. The whole system has told them they are barely worth anything. Why would they behave? Why are 2/3 of workers even decent, is the real question.
Consultant32452 6y ago
I worked at a major pizza chain in high school. One of the assistant managers would use his access to update his time sheet so that his login time was 12 hours off from his real login time. So if he logged in at 4pm, he would update it to really be 4am. At first glance his clock in times would look correct, but he was stealing 12 hours of wages. This went on for months before he was caught and fired. That was the biggest thing I saw. There was a TON of smaller theft in the form of drivers faking customer complaints so that the order was freed out, even though the driver had been paid cash for the order.
- Czarcasm 6y ago
  I've seen a lot of the same stuff. A of my acquaintances from my hometown worked at a large retailer through highschool. They would hide merchandise under skids in the outdoor garden center during their shift, then come back at night to recover it. They would stuff small expensive items (ie: iPods), into the advertisement trays at the front of shopping carts, then recover them once the carts were pushed out into the parking lot. They built a "fort" between two aisles in the back warehouse to take naps during their shifts. I could give stories like this for a long time. They never got caught (to my knowledge). Not all low-level employees are thieves. But more of them are then most people realize.
oppositelock 6y ago
I can confirm this, having first hand experience with it. We hired many low-skill workers at a big tech company that you've heard of about ten years ago. These workers received a couple of weeks of training, and then were set to do a rather simple, menial, repetitive job. These workers didn't sell products, but did very low level tech work, but the entire operation was mired in drama. For example, we had a strict no drugs policy, and no weapons policy on campus, zero tolerance. So, say that one of your employees comes up crying that she is getting fired because she did heroin during work hours, and she needs to money for her unborn child (this happened!), or a guy gets angry at being fired because he was pulling out his new .45 from his waistband to show his cubicle neighbors. We had a LOT of this stuff, and as a result, many zero tolerance policies. It's difficult to understand how many hard living, disadvantaged people there are in this country, even in wealthy areas like the Bay Area of CA, who bring their rough living to work with them. What do you do as an employer? Do you tolerate this to be friendlier to the employees, and someone gets killed, making you liable? Do you come down like a hardass and dehumanize them even more, but cover your butt? Neither choice is good, but it's the latter that usually happens.
- jshevek 6y ago
  I can see how dehumanization could be a common occurrence when "coming down hard" or "covering your butt", but I don't think it's intrinsic. Having and enforcing standards isn't intrinsically dehumanizing. Going too far in the other direction could also involve dehumanization, in the form of denying people's agency and capacity for personal responsibility.
- johnmaguire2013 6y ago
  Maybe you can work on your hiring practices? Even for low-skill jobs, you can hire for soft skills. edit: I am being downvoted and don't know why. Can you please explain what's wrong with this idea? I think the parent paints a false dichotomy. For example - another option is to deal with problematic individuals on an individual basis. You don't have to ruin the entire company culture.
  - jshevek 6y ago
griffinkelly 6y ago
Purely anecdotal, but my dad has a story around this--his company wasn't doing great, and they needed to increase factory output, so one of the best ideas was to create a factory profit share amongst all the factory employees. They called a random group of employees together to run the idea by them, and after they presented, they asked them what they thought. One guy then asked, "So does this mean I have to work harder?" My dad replied something like, "Well yes, but you'll get a share of the factory's profits if you work harder." Random guy, "Well I don't want to work harder..." I think it just puts a voice to what a lot of people think, but never say. [edit] Sorry, to add details, they were trying to increase throughput with the same number of workers. The factory already went 24/7 under EU guidelines, so more hours were out of the question.
- ambrice 6y ago
  I'm not sure what you're trying to say with this story. But the whole "work harder" is a business euphemism for "put in more hours". It probably wasn't the words that were used. Your dad was asking someone to put in more hours, maybe miss dinners with the family, maybe work some weekends, for an unknown "share of profits". But it seems like you're presenting a worker choosing better work/life balance over higher pay as proof of laziness.
- fzingle 6y ago
  Sure one way to read this story is "I don't want to work harder" and criticizing that attitude. Here's another way. As the worker, already working full-time, maybe you have better things to do with your life than working harder. Furthermore, the worker is probably thinking: "If they want me to work more hours, why not pay me for more hours, including time-and-a-half overtime, per the law? Why offer a profit-share? Answer, mostly likely because the profit-share costs them less, and therefore, pays me less". In that light, unless the factory management can explain how the extra hours they want people to work is likely to work out better for them then just getting paid for more hours, why should they accept?
  - Vrondi 6y ago
    In the example you are replying to, the employees are literally being promised they will be paid more for increased work.
BurningFrog 6y ago
Right. Everyone who lives in that world knows and understands this. People who only read about the non college degree people can have some very clueless ideas.
ignoramous 6y ago
> If you've never been involved at a management or ownership level of a business that has "low pay" labor (e.g., food service, warehouse, retail sales)... You'd think Amazon treats its "high pay" engineers on-par with other FAANGs? It is not just the warehouse workers that they are paranoid about. They're paranoid about the human nature to slack, to rest, to err, to relax, to let their guard down for a moment, to not care enough at times, to deal with life's other problems, to fail... to live. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19751016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19751016
NullInvictus 6y ago
I have been involved in both working in services and in the management level of a restaurant business. It is still my opinion that the pay, disposability, lack of dignity, lack of future, lack of community, and disrespect are the primary drivers for bad workplace behavior. Treat people like animals, and they will act like animals. It's just exploitation, and I work my current job with fear of having to go back to that. > But depending on the business (e.g., a local pizza place) there is no affording that. This is maybe a radical argument, but I make it in good faith; if your business can only exist by paying workers at or below poverty wages, and/or enacting dehumanizing controls, it probably shouldn't exist. If the demand for the product or service is sufficient, price should follow accordingly to make that business viable and profitable. Saying a business can't afford to pay workers a living wage and treat them right is equivalent to unintentionally saying 'the business can't exist without worker exploitation'. I do not believe that is a defensible position if you don't axiomatically accept worker exploitation. Maybe any given business model doesn't have a god-given moral right to exist. It does suck if we lose that local pizzeria, but clearly we didn't want the pizza enough to pay what it cost to ethically support such a business. If you're worried about the job loss or availability of services caused by such a position, there a whole sea of political and socioeconomic thought on how to solve that. It's probably beyond the current conversation.
- supergeek133 6y ago
  > This is maybe a radical argument, but I make it in good faith; if your business can only exist by paying workers at or below poverty wages, and/or enacting dehumanizing controls, it probably shouldn't exist. Yeah, I agree, but I think another false general assumption people might make is "every retail or food service job is minimum wage" and that every owner is just shortchanging their workers to pay themselves more. That isn't the case across the board. Best Buy doesn't pay minimum wage, heck even when I started there as a part time computer tech in 2002 I was paid $9.50/hr. That being said with the 1 year $80/share price they can damn well afford to pay more. My friend who owns the pizza business pays more than his franchise based competitors, he has employees who have worked for him for years because of this. So he's not paying close to minimum wage but the "meta market" for a pizza keeps his prices in a certain range. As I mentioned in a below comment there are other market forces at work here (e.g., a national franchise has buying power for food price reductions, etc). So knowing his very loyal customer base, if he had to increase prices to support extra cost, they'd probably stay to a certain extent, but maybe that results in less employees or hours. Who knows. > If you're worried about the job loss or availability of services caused by such a position, there a whole sea of political and socioeconomic thought on how to solve that. It's probably beyond the current conversation. Yeah, that's my whole point. Any legislation that increases wages has a disproportionate impact based on your business, and SBA says small business makes up 48% of jobs[0]. But like you said, the conversation is a level up from this. [0]: https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/advocacy/2018-Small-Business-Profiles-US.pdf https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/advocacy/2018-Small-...
j2kun 6y ago
This is why cooperatives are so much better for food service. Set up the incentives to align the success of the business and the honesty of the employees.

this2shallPass 6y ago

Thankfully no "high pay" labor ever just takes pure advantage of the environment (e.g., stealing product, stealing time, etc) ;) And never at great cost for a period of time before it is discovered. Pay might be a factor. I think people are people, and their behavior and beliefs vary.

supergeek133 6y ago
I completely agree, but we, as a society tend to look down more on the low paid people who do this versus the high paid ones.
- yters 6y ago
  Exactly, and the high paid thieves are those who can wreck the lives of millions vs the low paid thieves take an infinitesimal bit away from the bottom line of a multi billion dollar company.
  - banads 6y ago
    "We hang the petty thieves, and appoint the great ones to public office" -Aesop
    - yters 6y ago
      Hanging the petty thieves satisfies the crowds that are unhappy because the great thieves are robbing them blind.
  - supergeek133 6y ago
    Death by a thousand cuts. It is just front of mind. People "see" the low paid thieves and their impact on themselves and others on a semi regular basis. The once in awhile "white collar crime" you might see if you turn on the news isn't top of mind. "That guy stole $5 from ME" versus "Wal Mart uses welfare as a way to get corporate welfare and pay their employees less" One is in the moment, and a purely emotional and potentially traumatizing experience based on circumstance. One I may not even experience (e.g., I don't work at Wal-Mart).
    - johnmaguire2013 6y ago
      The higher paid thief and the lower paid thief both steal from their companies (both of which are owned by people). Yet the higher paid thief is afforded more privilege and trust and respect. Do you see the problem yet?
      - supergeek133 6y ago
        I'm agreeing with you, but I'm putting a reality spin on it. It's OK to have macro views, but you can't change anything without understanding psychology of the two scenarios for the average person.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- madeofpalk 6y ago
  yes, that's the whole point about privilege.
Aunche 6y ago
Anecdotally, my friends in finance say that their chats are monitored with extreme scrutiny. You'll be written up for anything that can be perceived as screwing over your clients, even if it's an obvious joke. If this happened in any other sector, society would be quick to call this draconian. However, few people are aware of this form of micromanaging, and if they do, they recognize that it must be done. As for people stealing time, Amazon puts people on PIP all the time.
- three_seagrass 6y ago
  >If this happened in any other sector, society would be quick to call this draconian. Believe it or not, finance is under extra scrutiny. That company has to log all chat messages in order to keep their FINRA certification, but that also means a court can subpoena and display the messages in a public trial. If they're a serious shop they will monitor and keep comms clean to the point of being Orwellian.

gilrain 6y ago

You're claiming that 1/2 to 1/3 of employees are criminally stealing time or product from their workplace. I need some robust citations for that, because it's ridiculous on its face.

ApolloFortyNine 6y ago
When I worked at Kmart, on more than one occasion they were forced to first to fire a large number of cashiers (10+) due to stealing. And the Kmart I worked in was definitely in the 'good' part of town. Now Kmart also paid literally the minimum wage, but it still shocked me the number of people who would steal when they clearly had video, and regularly fired people for doing so. And some of the people who stole got caught for stealing bottles of soda to drink while at work... As for stealing time, that was much more common, but I actually never saw anyone fired for that, no matter how often they took half hour long bathroom breaks, or spent an hour putting away 5 items. I guess Kmart understood they had to put up with something when paying literally as little as possible.
- elliekelly 6y ago
  Maybe if Kmart paid their employees a little more they could afford to buy themselves something to drink at work.
  - supergeek133 6y ago
    I think the total amount of people who steal would go down if paid more, but I think there is just a "base amount" of the population who will always do this regardless what job/how much they get paid.
    - jshevek 6y ago
      If thieves figure out that stealing incentivizes the employer to pay more (in an effort to reduce stealing), they now have a new motive to steal. That is, to increase the pressure on the employer to raise wages further. This new motive can even 'feel righteous', as it benefits the other low paid workers as well.

generalpass 6y ago

Even worse is when you evaluate hiring. It isn't unusual for a high-turnover entry-level type employer to have 15% or less of candidates who agree to fill a position still employed with the company 6 months later. The pure drag of having to deal with this, especially when it comes to all of the paperwork required, by law, to be completed with every single new hire makes this alone a huge expense. The vast majority of those employees left of their own will, not because they were fired. Usually when the leave, there is no notice. They just don't show up leaving management short handed and wondering whether the employee will show up the next day. Consequently, the policy can be to over-staff so that whenever some percentage isn't showing up the employer can still meet production needs. The employer cannot simply increase prices and pay people better. For the most part, employers already have prices at the highest their customers are willing to pay. Setting prices higher will result in loss of customers, less profit, then layoffs or business closure. Employees at this level are astoundingly uninterested in performing well, or, in other words, there is a reason they are working entry-level positions. This makes management yet more difficult because managers may have to become near micro-managers of cat herds trying to get the company to produce whatever it is supposed to produce.

generalpass 6y ago
What a shocker that the upper middle-class users of HN immediately vote down a perspective on the world that they have never been exposed to. It must all be a lie, right? And even more shocking is the cowards can't even leave a comment. This is pervasive now and makes for terrible communities.
- solarwind 6y ago
  Sorry, your experience-based comment from the actual real world of running a business runs counter to the dominant Marxist post-modernist ideology here. Next time perhaps sprinkle in some barbs about class struggle or CEO compensation.
  - voldacar 6y ago
    Not sure that the dominant ideology around here is "Marxist post-modernist". More like coastal urban shitlib. Also, isn't Marxist post-modernism an oxymoron?

zelon88 6y ago

> This makes companies take extreme policy measures... Governing to the lowest denominator is just poor management. > ...because the financial impact is so disproportionate... For who? Bob "steals" an hour of overtime worth $25 but he's still in your facility at your disposal. God forbid... > "If you pay me more I won't act like this" This I agree with. You get what you pay for. Period. > But depending on the business (e.g., a local pizza place) there is no affording that. So why is it alright to allow a failing business who can't create value in the workforce is allowed (and enabled) to stay open so it can ruin more lives and create more misery? Surely there's a decent pizza place around the corner that's well managed, creates value for employees, and deserves the business. Instead we crutch along shitty businesses for no reason. Case in point, at a debate in 2016 a woman asked Bernie Sanders how she would continue to grow her business if she had to offer her employees health insurance. She would have to scrap plans to open a second location. I'm sorry, but if your first location can't sustain itself and create a meaningful work environment maybe nobody needs that second location of yours. Get health coverage for your existing workforce before you go hiring more.

supergeek133 6y ago
Have you owned a margin strained small business before? Or had any experience working in a margin strained retail environment where your only competitive lever is price? > Governing to the lowest denominator is just poor management. Nevertheless, this is what happens. If you're running a low margin store of 50 employees, as a store general manager you notice one bad employee more and complain upwards about it. Hiring/retraining costs money. Granted this is a long time ago but I recall our training/hiring cost per employee at a Best Buy store to be in the thousands of dollars. If you're Best Buy you can afford to pay people more (they just are also being responsible to their Wall Street numbers), but an independent restaurant can't just turn the price lever without other impacts, and no, in the cases I'm familiar with, the owner is not making high wage. Some of them are lucky to make over $50-60k/yr and correctly re-invest in their business. > For who? Bob "steals" an hour of overtime worth $25 but he's still in your facility at your disposal. God forbid... Depending on the company, yes, one employee stealing anything can have more of an impact on your company than you realize. Especially if it goes on awhile without anyone noticing. > I'm sorry, but if your first location can't sustain itself and create a meaningful work environment maybe nobody needs that second location of yours. Get health coverage for your existing workforce before you go hiring more. First, health care is expensive. I work for a $4B company and my benefits are not great. My healthcare is expensive per-paycheck in my opinion. Let's discuss your Bernie example/quote further. Let's say you enforced what you're talking about. Say an independent Pizza shop charges $20 for a large pizza, Pizza Hut/Dominos charges $18. But I can charge $2 more because of my quality, but I still have high food costs because I don't have franchise buying power. But I already have less sales because I don't have brand recognition and/or the marketing power that a national franchise does. Also, at least in my friend's cases, they also pay their employees more than minimum wage out of the gate. IIRC they get paid fairly well for a pizza place, he also has employees that have been there for years and he pays them accordingly. OK cool, I'll increase my wage, and I'll buy everyone health insurance. Now I have to charge $22 or $25 for the same pizza. Maybe my customers are loyal and just deal with it, maybe not. What happens if not? Then I close my business, now not only are my employees unemployed but so am I. Say you make the same change to the big franchise, their costs only go up to $19-$20 for the pizza that cost $18 before. At the extreme still $5 less than I was charging. Obviously the example gets more complex if everyone gets the same wage increase, right? Then you're just sort of raising the water line. I think it's super complex, honestly. Especially having managed this on the "Big Business" and small business sides. That being said: > This I agree with. You get what you pay for. Period. Not in all cases is my point, some people are just awful humans. He's had some of his employees (whom he pays well in comparison) steal food and money straight out of the register.

treve 6y ago

If you can't afford to pay employees a decent wage, you shouldn't be in business. Minimum wages should be raised and nonviable businesses should adapt or go under. Amazon is not in this category

twblalock 6y ago
> Minimum wages should be raised and nonviable businesses should adapt or go under. That's a recipe for significantly increased unemployment which would affect the most vulnerable workers the most. For most people in a low-paying job, the alternative is no job. If they were able to get higher-paying jobs they would have already done so.
- treve 6y ago
  Then why have a minimum wage at all?
  - Vrondi 6y ago
    Because, before minimum wage, we had people being paid the price of a loaf of bread for an entire day's labor. We had people being paid in "company scrip" only spendable in the company's own store at inflated prices, instead of real national currency.
  - twblalock 6y ago
    Because, unlike what you suggested, policymakers are able to calibrate the minimum wage so it doesn't cause companies to go out of business.
    - arrosenberg 6y ago
      Large corporations are making bigger profits than ever and the minimum wage isn't being calibrated to actually ensure a decent standard of living.
    - nearbuy 6y ago
      Only about 2% of hourly paid workers earned federal minimum wage or less in 2018 in the US [1]. This percentage has been dropping over the past few decades. I think this implies that minimum wage has been calibrated to be low enough that it makes little difference overall. [1] https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2018/home.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2018/home.htm

nixarian 6y ago

What do you expect, you delusional borderline psychopath. You have zero empathy, apparently. Why wouldn't they do things like that? They barely make enough to live. The whole system has told them they are barely worth anything. Why would they behave? Why are 2/3 of workers even decent, is the real question.

Consultant32452 6y ago

I worked at a major pizza chain in high school. One of the assistant managers would use his access to update his time sheet so that his login time was 12 hours off from his real login time. So if he logged in at 4pm, he would update it to really be 4am. At first glance his clock in times would look correct, but he was stealing 12 hours of wages. This went on for months before he was caught and fired. That was the biggest thing I saw. There was a TON of smaller theft in the form of drivers faking customer complaints so that the order was freed out, even though the driver had been paid cash for the order.

Czarcasm 6y ago
I've seen a lot of the same stuff. A of my acquaintances from my hometown worked at a large retailer through highschool. They would hide merchandise under skids in the outdoor garden center during their shift, then come back at night to recover it. They would stuff small expensive items (ie: iPods), into the advertisement trays at the front of shopping carts, then recover them once the carts were pushed out into the parking lot. They built a "fort" between two aisles in the back warehouse to take naps during their shifts. I could give stories like this for a long time. They never got caught (to my knowledge). Not all low-level employees are thieves. But more of them are then most people realize.

oppositelock 6y ago

I can confirm this, having first hand experience with it. We hired many low-skill workers at a big tech company that you've heard of about ten years ago. These workers received a couple of weeks of training, and then were set to do a rather simple, menial, repetitive job. These workers didn't sell products, but did very low level tech work, but the entire operation was mired in drama. For example, we had a strict no drugs policy, and no weapons policy on campus, zero tolerance. So, say that one of your employees comes up crying that she is getting fired because she did heroin during work hours, and she needs to money for her unborn child (this happened!), or a guy gets angry at being fired because he was pulling out his new .45 from his waistband to show his cubicle neighbors. We had a LOT of this stuff, and as a result, many zero tolerance policies. It's difficult to understand how many hard living, disadvantaged people there are in this country, even in wealthy areas like the Bay Area of CA, who bring their rough living to work with them. What do you do as an employer? Do you tolerate this to be friendlier to the employees, and someone gets killed, making you liable? Do you come down like a hardass and dehumanize them even more, but cover your butt? Neither choice is good, but it's the latter that usually happens.

jshevek 6y ago
I can see how dehumanization could be a common occurrence when "coming down hard" or "covering your butt", but I don't think it's intrinsic. Having and enforcing standards isn't intrinsically dehumanizing. Going too far in the other direction could also involve dehumanization, in the form of denying people's agency and capacity for personal responsibility.
johnmaguire2013 6y ago
Maybe you can work on your hiring practices? Even for low-skill jobs, you can hire for soft skills. edit: I am being downvoted and don't know why. Can you please explain what's wrong with this idea? I think the parent paints a false dichotomy. For example - another option is to deal with problematic individuals on an individual basis. You don't have to ruin the entire company culture.
- jshevek 6y ago

griffinkelly 6y ago

Purely anecdotal, but my dad has a story around this--his company wasn't doing great, and they needed to increase factory output, so one of the best ideas was to create a factory profit share amongst all the factory employees. They called a random group of employees together to run the idea by them, and after they presented, they asked them what they thought. One guy then asked, "So does this mean I have to work harder?" My dad replied something like, "Well yes, but you'll get a share of the factory's profits if you work harder." Random guy, "Well I don't want to work harder..." I think it just puts a voice to what a lot of people think, but never say. [edit] Sorry, to add details, they were trying to increase throughput with the same number of workers. The factory already went 24/7 under EU guidelines, so more hours were out of the question.

ambrice 6y ago
I'm not sure what you're trying to say with this story. But the whole "work harder" is a business euphemism for "put in more hours". It probably wasn't the words that were used. Your dad was asking someone to put in more hours, maybe miss dinners with the family, maybe work some weekends, for an unknown "share of profits". But it seems like you're presenting a worker choosing better work/life balance over higher pay as proof of laziness.
fzingle 6y ago
Sure one way to read this story is "I don't want to work harder" and criticizing that attitude. Here's another way. As the worker, already working full-time, maybe you have better things to do with your life than working harder. Furthermore, the worker is probably thinking: "If they want me to work more hours, why not pay me for more hours, including time-and-a-half overtime, per the law? Why offer a profit-share? Answer, mostly likely because the profit-share costs them less, and therefore, pays me less". In that light, unless the factory management can explain how the extra hours they want people to work is likely to work out better for them then just getting paid for more hours, why should they accept?
- Vrondi 6y ago
  In the example you are replying to, the employees are literally being promised they will be paid more for increased work.

BurningFrog 6y ago

Right. Everyone who lives in that world knows and understands this. People who only read about the non college degree people can have some very clueless ideas.

ignoramous 6y ago

> If you've never been involved at a management or ownership level of a business that has "low pay" labor (e.g., food service, warehouse, retail sales)... You'd think Amazon treats its "high pay" engineers on-par with other FAANGs? It is not just the warehouse workers that they are paranoid about. They're paranoid about the human nature to slack, to rest, to err, to relax, to let their guard down for a moment, to not care enough at times, to deal with life's other problems, to fail... to live. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19751016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19751016

NullInvictus 6y ago

I have been involved in both working in services and in the management level of a restaurant business. It is still my opinion that the pay, disposability, lack of dignity, lack of future, lack of community, and disrespect are the primary drivers for bad workplace behavior. Treat people like animals, and they will act like animals. It's just exploitation, and I work my current job with fear of having to go back to that. > But depending on the business (e.g., a local pizza place) there is no affording that. This is maybe a radical argument, but I make it in good faith; if your business can only exist by paying workers at or below poverty wages, and/or enacting dehumanizing controls, it probably shouldn't exist. If the demand for the product or service is sufficient, price should follow accordingly to make that business viable and profitable. Saying a business can't afford to pay workers a living wage and treat them right is equivalent to unintentionally saying 'the business can't exist without worker exploitation'. I do not believe that is a defensible position if you don't axiomatically accept worker exploitation. Maybe any given business model doesn't have a god-given moral right to exist. It does suck if we lose that local pizzeria, but clearly we didn't want the pizza enough to pay what it cost to ethically support such a business. If you're worried about the job loss or availability of services caused by such a position, there a whole sea of political and socioeconomic thought on how to solve that. It's probably beyond the current conversation.

supergeek133 6y ago
> This is maybe a radical argument, but I make it in good faith; if your business can only exist by paying workers at or below poverty wages, and/or enacting dehumanizing controls, it probably shouldn't exist. Yeah, I agree, but I think another false general assumption people might make is "every retail or food service job is minimum wage" and that every owner is just shortchanging their workers to pay themselves more. That isn't the case across the board. Best Buy doesn't pay minimum wage, heck even when I started there as a part time computer tech in 2002 I was paid $9.50/hr. That being said with the 1 year $80/share price they can damn well afford to pay more. My friend who owns the pizza business pays more than his franchise based competitors, he has employees who have worked for him for years because of this. So he's not paying close to minimum wage but the "meta market" for a pizza keeps his prices in a certain range. As I mentioned in a below comment there are other market forces at work here (e.g., a national franchise has buying power for food price reductions, etc). So knowing his very loyal customer base, if he had to increase prices to support extra cost, they'd probably stay to a certain extent, but maybe that results in less employees or hours. Who knows. > If you're worried about the job loss or availability of services caused by such a position, there a whole sea of political and socioeconomic thought on how to solve that. It's probably beyond the current conversation. Yeah, that's my whole point. Any legislation that increases wages has a disproportionate impact based on your business, and SBA says small business makes up 48% of jobs[0]. But like you said, the conversation is a level up from this. [0]: https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/advocacy/2018-Small-Business-Profiles-US.pdf https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/advocacy/2018-Small-...

j2kun 6y ago

This is why cooperatives are so much better for food service. Set up the incentives to align the success of the business and the honesty of the employees.