4 ms·

That’s because every business is “scaled” to the point that the edge employees —- ie the people who interact with paying customers —- don’t own anything, and ar

That’s because every business is “scaled” to the point that the edge employees —- ie the people who interact with paying customers —- don’t own anything, and are 12 levels of management away from anyone who does. My grandparents owned a grocery store. Their name was on the sign. If you brought home spoiled meat, that was their name and you as a member of their community that were put out. When my mom brings home spoiled meat from Stop & Shop, she goes back there not just to exchange it, but to complain to someone about how it messed up her barbecue plans, etc. And I’m like seriously, why would anyone working at Stop & Shop give a rat’s ass about your family gathering? Stop & Shop is owned by a Dutch multinational “food retail” company. But that’s not the capitalism she grew up with. She actually thinks capitalism is great because it allowed her parents to come over on a boat as teenagers and make lives for themselves, and have extra to send back home. But she hates it when she calls her cable company and ends up chatting with a girl in Singapore. Go figure.

BeFlatXIII 1y ago
> why would anyone working at Stop & Shop give a rat’s ass about your family gathering? That's pretty much the split between the generations. Boomers want the appearance of giving a rat’s ass, but Millennials and younger have been the apathetic employee and don't expect otherwise.
- gyomu 1y ago
  Well, millenials and younger saw their parents kill themselves at the job when giving a rat's ass, and still saw them get laid off/their bodies destroyed by the toll of a lifetime of manual work/a whole life of hustle leading to a meager retirement, and they realized none of it was worth it.
- Spivak 1y ago
  Genuinely this. Every time an older employee gives me a "And thank you for shopping at <business>" I just feel sad for them. The company neither pays them enough nor gives even a single fuck to warrant that kind of behavior. I approach customer service as the total opposite from the OP. I treat anyone I interact with like they're doing me a favor by providing me service—and honestly, they are. I mean they're working this absolutely thankless job that I think I would choose the mines before considering, and they owe their employer nothing other than the bare fucking minimum. We're all just trying to get by and they're in the trenches.
gyomu 1y ago
> the edge employees —- ie the people who interact with paying customers —- don’t own anything, and are 12 levels of management away from anyone who does. Bingo. I found the breakdown in terms of the owner/renter/maintainer classes [0] very useful. When the owner/renter/maintainer of a business/service/etc are the same person/community, incentives are aligned and quality tends to ensue. When those 3 roles are clearly delineated and separated, no one gives a shit and owners care about maximizing their profit, maintainers care about getting the job done asap regardless of whether the maintenance will hold in the long term or not, and renters are left out to dry. [0]: I first encountered it here, not sure if he got it from somewhere else. https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/getting-to-gnome-mode https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/getting-to-gnome-mod...
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  That varies widely. The worst hardware store in town is a little locally owned one where the owner is often not only in the store but working the checkout. They really push the locally owned angle, the place is neatly kept and folksey, but just try to return anything and they'll give you the third degree. And if you've lost the receipt absolutely forget it. Who doesn't hassle customers about returning stuff? Lowes.
- OneDeuxTriSeiGo 1y ago
  This is amusingly the main argument at the cornerstone of most leftist theory. Capitalism works great as an improvement from feudalism and mercantilism however it starts to majorly break down as a system once the capital owning class cements itself as only needing to invest their capital and manage assets to maintain perpetual dominance. From there they slowly accrue capital and the rift between the working classes and the capital owning classes spreads further and further until the two are effectively completely divorced with the working classes providing 100% of the labor and the capital owning classes consuming 100% of the profits. And the sign that this decay has reached the point of no return without major social upheaval is the death of the petit bourgeois/petite bourgeoisie, i.e. the end of the self employed shop owners and family businesses. This is one thing people famously get wrong about Marx. His view was that under capitalism the petite bourgeoisie will always eventually be cannibalised by the haute and grande bourgeoisie despite generally siding with them politically (ergo acting against their long term interests). This of course contrasts with the view popular with the state socialists (who misguidedly view the petite bourgeoisie as a threat to and toxic element of capitalism). And so now we stand at the precipice with the widespread death of the canary in the coal mine that is the small business owner and the question that remains is where do we go from here?
wmf 1y ago
Costco and Chick-fil-A are scaled but they pay and train their employees to give good service and the scale also provides lower prices. We don't need to retvrn to 1950s local small business.
throwaway2037 1y ago
> But she hates it when she calls her cable company and ends up chatting with a girl in Singapore. Singapore? What cable company? I am curious. Singapore is one of the richest countries in the world. I cannot believe they have a foreign call center in Singapore, except for wealth management. Did you mean the Philippines?
somenameforme 1y ago
Most developing countries are capitalistic and still have a system where when you go into a shop and talk to somebody, it's often the person who owns that shop. It's part of the many reasons I'm a huge fan of decentralization in basically everything. It's absolutely wonderful. I don't think capitalism inherently trends towards corporatism. Very few companies can grow massively on their own merit. It's often a mixture of anti-competitive behavior and mergers/acquisitions. So one obvious thing is to actually prevent mergers/acquisitions unless there is a provable and immediate benefit to customers, and split up companies if that benefit can be shown, to a civil law standard, to have not played out at any point over the next let's say 20 years. And obviously crack down hard on anti-competitive behavior with criminal consequences for executives and board members. Boom, corporatism solved. But you need to solve it before it happens because otherwise you end up in a scenario where corporations will eventually also come to own politicians.
- 3RTB297 1y ago
  This also varies significantly, but I think supports the idea that the farther you are from ownership, the more service is equated to demeaning one's self for a salary that remains unchanged if you help someone or not. If the shop isn't ran and staffed by the owner and family, it quickly devolves to the point that it's a challenge to throw money at anyone, because the money doesn't go to the person you're talking to. Any store with more than 5 employees is a jobs program for friends and family and you're inconveniencing someone's chit-chat or doomscrolling to bother them to ask a question.
- queenkjuul 1y ago
  Capital buys political power thus it leads to corporatism. The state doesn't exist to regulate capital, it exists to facilitate it. So a state that acts how you describe will just be bought and killed by capital.

BeFlatXIII 1y ago

> why would anyone working at Stop & Shop give a rat’s ass about your family gathering? That's pretty much the split between the generations. Boomers want the appearance of giving a rat’s ass, but Millennials and younger have been the apathetic employee and don't expect otherwise.

gyomu 1y ago
Well, millenials and younger saw their parents kill themselves at the job when giving a rat's ass, and still saw them get laid off/their bodies destroyed by the toll of a lifetime of manual work/a whole life of hustle leading to a meager retirement, and they realized none of it was worth it.
Spivak 1y ago
Genuinely this. Every time an older employee gives me a "And thank you for shopping at <business>" I just feel sad for them. The company neither pays them enough nor gives even a single fuck to warrant that kind of behavior. I approach customer service as the total opposite from the OP. I treat anyone I interact with like they're doing me a favor by providing me service—and honestly, they are. I mean they're working this absolutely thankless job that I think I would choose the mines before considering, and they owe their employer nothing other than the bare fucking minimum. We're all just trying to get by and they're in the trenches.

gyomu 1y ago

> the edge employees —- ie the people who interact with paying customers —- don’t own anything, and are 12 levels of management away from anyone who does. Bingo. I found the breakdown in terms of the owner/renter/maintainer classes [0] very useful. When the owner/renter/maintainer of a business/service/etc are the same person/community, incentives are aligned and quality tends to ensue. When those 3 roles are clearly delineated and separated, no one gives a shit and owners care about maximizing their profit, maintainers care about getting the job done asap regardless of whether the maintenance will hold in the long term or not, and renters are left out to dry. [0]: I first encountered it here, not sure if he got it from somewhere else. https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/getting-to-gnome-mode https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/getting-to-gnome-mod...

SoftTalker 1y ago
That varies widely. The worst hardware store in town is a little locally owned one where the owner is often not only in the store but working the checkout. They really push the locally owned angle, the place is neatly kept and folksey, but just try to return anything and they'll give you the third degree. And if you've lost the receipt absolutely forget it. Who doesn't hassle customers about returning stuff? Lowes.
OneDeuxTriSeiGo 1y ago
This is amusingly the main argument at the cornerstone of most leftist theory. Capitalism works great as an improvement from feudalism and mercantilism however it starts to majorly break down as a system once the capital owning class cements itself as only needing to invest their capital and manage assets to maintain perpetual dominance. From there they slowly accrue capital and the rift between the working classes and the capital owning classes spreads further and further until the two are effectively completely divorced with the working classes providing 100% of the labor and the capital owning classes consuming 100% of the profits. And the sign that this decay has reached the point of no return without major social upheaval is the death of the petit bourgeois/petite bourgeoisie, i.e. the end of the self employed shop owners and family businesses. This is one thing people famously get wrong about Marx. His view was that under capitalism the petite bourgeoisie will always eventually be cannibalised by the haute and grande bourgeoisie despite generally siding with them politically (ergo acting against their long term interests). This of course contrasts with the view popular with the state socialists (who misguidedly view the petite bourgeoisie as a threat to and toxic element of capitalism). And so now we stand at the precipice with the widespread death of the canary in the coal mine that is the small business owner and the question that remains is where do we go from here?

wmf 1y ago

Costco and Chick-fil-A are scaled but they pay and train their employees to give good service and the scale also provides lower prices. We don't need to retvrn to 1950s local small business.

throwaway2037 1y ago

> But she hates it when she calls her cable company and ends up chatting with a girl in Singapore. Singapore? What cable company? I am curious. Singapore is one of the richest countries in the world. I cannot believe they have a foreign call center in Singapore, except for wealth management. Did you mean the Philippines?

somenameforme 1y ago

Most developing countries are capitalistic and still have a system where when you go into a shop and talk to somebody, it's often the person who owns that shop. It's part of the many reasons I'm a huge fan of decentralization in basically everything. It's absolutely wonderful. I don't think capitalism inherently trends towards corporatism. Very few companies can grow massively on their own merit. It's often a mixture of anti-competitive behavior and mergers/acquisitions. So one obvious thing is to actually prevent mergers/acquisitions unless there is a provable and immediate benefit to customers, and split up companies if that benefit can be shown, to a civil law standard, to have not played out at any point over the next let's say 20 years. And obviously crack down hard on anti-competitive behavior with criminal consequences for executives and board members. Boom, corporatism solved. But you need to solve it before it happens because otherwise you end up in a scenario where corporations will eventually also come to own politicians.

3RTB297 1y ago
This also varies significantly, but I think supports the idea that the farther you are from ownership, the more service is equated to demeaning one's self for a salary that remains unchanged if you help someone or not. If the shop isn't ran and staffed by the owner and family, it quickly devolves to the point that it's a challenge to throw money at anyone, because the money doesn't go to the person you're talking to. Any store with more than 5 employees is a jobs program for friends and family and you're inconveniencing someone's chit-chat or doomscrolling to bother them to ask a question.
queenkjuul 1y ago
Capital buys political power thus it leads to corporatism. The state doesn't exist to regulate capital, it exists to facilitate it. So a state that acts how you describe will just be bought and killed by capital.