<story><title>Restaurant workers quit at record rate</title><url>https://www.npr.org/2021/07/20/1016081936/low-pay-no-benefits-rude-customers-restaurant-workers-quit-at-record-rate</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Aloha</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s not just wages - like alot of what we can do is making shitty jobs less miserable, ensuring everyone gets some amount of vacation and sick time, insuring everyone has cheap or free healthcare access, ensuring everyone has relatively fixed schedule - eliminate punitive workplace policies, on stuff like attendance and other shit that makes being there miserable. Like, you can do a hell of alot to reduce peoples day to day misery.&lt;p&gt;There used to be some sort of a tradeoff, there used to be a ton of jobs that didnt pay well, but they were not miserable places to work at, that was kinda the tradeoff, you know - you like, didnt get a ton of money, but the workplace wasnt awful. Those jobs still exist but they&amp;#x27;re rarer.</text></item><item><author>browningstreet</author><text>I think some businesses are going out of businesses because they stubbornly refuse to raise their wages.&lt;p&gt;In the vacation community where I live, there are two grocery&amp;#x2F;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.&lt;p&gt;Two weeks ago, I visited the one I usually go to -- at the marina. They had a sign at the front door, &amp;quot;Due to the labor shortage...&amp;quot; and they weren&amp;#x27;t operating their deli counter. No sandwiches. When I sent inside, it was empty. No customers. The one employee at the register was on their phone. Nothing going on. A couple of people pulled up in their cars, read the sign, pulled out and left immediately.&lt;p&gt;Drove up the road a mile to the other one. No sign -- it was busy like it usually was. Full house, busy counters and registers.&lt;p&gt;My son asked me why the other place wouldn&amp;#x27;t just raise their wages.. I couldn&amp;#x27;t answer, but I guessed it was more on a matter of principle than calculated reality. There&amp;#x27;s no way they were surviving or thriving. I joked that maybe the owner was an old cahoot who remembered when a soda was $0.05 and there was no way they were going to raise their hourly wages to $15 or more.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>acituan</author><text>All of those reasons are valid, but not unique to hospitality industry.&lt;p&gt;I think we might be backgrounding one particular reason too much: customers are a headache. One of the subheadings of the article is &amp;quot;They&amp;#x27;re just yelling the entire time&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I find it interesting that this hasn&amp;#x27;t been discussed as much, maybe because we are culpable? Maybe at one point of time we were &lt;i&gt;that&lt;/i&gt; high maintenance customer? Maybe there is a general culture problem &lt;i&gt;we all have&lt;/i&gt; regarding how we treat strangers, especially those who are bound to serve us to an extent. And looking at that need for transformation might be hard on our ego than the transformation of structural non-industry-specific inequities.</text></comment>
<story><title>Restaurant workers quit at record rate</title><url>https://www.npr.org/2021/07/20/1016081936/low-pay-no-benefits-rude-customers-restaurant-workers-quit-at-record-rate</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Aloha</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s not just wages - like alot of what we can do is making shitty jobs less miserable, ensuring everyone gets some amount of vacation and sick time, insuring everyone has cheap or free healthcare access, ensuring everyone has relatively fixed schedule - eliminate punitive workplace policies, on stuff like attendance and other shit that makes being there miserable. Like, you can do a hell of alot to reduce peoples day to day misery.&lt;p&gt;There used to be some sort of a tradeoff, there used to be a ton of jobs that didnt pay well, but they were not miserable places to work at, that was kinda the tradeoff, you know - you like, didnt get a ton of money, but the workplace wasnt awful. Those jobs still exist but they&amp;#x27;re rarer.</text></item><item><author>browningstreet</author><text>I think some businesses are going out of businesses because they stubbornly refuse to raise their wages.&lt;p&gt;In the vacation community where I live, there are two grocery&amp;#x2F;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.&lt;p&gt;Two weeks ago, I visited the one I usually go to -- at the marina. They had a sign at the front door, &amp;quot;Due to the labor shortage...&amp;quot; and they weren&amp;#x27;t operating their deli counter. No sandwiches. When I sent inside, it was empty. No customers. The one employee at the register was on their phone. Nothing going on. A couple of people pulled up in their cars, read the sign, pulled out and left immediately.&lt;p&gt;Drove up the road a mile to the other one. No sign -- it was busy like it usually was. Full house, busy counters and registers.&lt;p&gt;My son asked me why the other place wouldn&amp;#x27;t just raise their wages.. I couldn&amp;#x27;t answer, but I guessed it was more on a matter of principle than calculated reality. There&amp;#x27;s no way they were surviving or thriving. I joked that maybe the owner was an old cahoot who remembered when a soda was $0.05 and there was no way they were going to raise their hourly wages to $15 or more.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>14</author><text>I think I get 15 paid sick days a year, 15 vacation days with an extra day added each year, and 12 lieu days that I get off but no pay. This was the first year having it. What a difference it makes to my mental well being. I spread my days off out so I get lots of 3 day weekends and I feel a lot less burnt out. The sick days are a big one. If my kid is sick or I hurt myself or I have a bad tooth or just feeling down or something just call in at least half hour before my shift and it’s all good.</text></comment>