Pics of US companies passive aggressively whining about "labor shortage"

https://i.ibb.co/g4V0XH7/IMG-20210620-105948.jpg

crazy how all these business models that revolve around paying their workers minimum wage, begrudgingly, and then offering them $1.00 raises every 3 years or so, are having trouble finding employees!

My buddy I mentioned the other day/thread just lost a dishwasher to a place paying $21 an hour.

that's awesome

For the dishwasher, for sure! Though I do think there *is* a labor shortage, or functionally is one, because I think a lot of folks are either switching careers or sitting out the labor market entirely, for lots of reasons. I just saw a WaPo article more or less about this:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/06/17/record-workers-quit-pandemic/

In a year when millions lost their jobs, many also switched career paths, launched their own companies, quit without set plans or left the workforce altogether. There’s no one reason for all the change. There have been fears about health and safety during a public health crisis. Routines have turned upside down as people juggled jobs and family and adjusted to remote work. All of it contributed to workers reevaluating, reprioritizing and reflecting on what they do, according to experts who study workplace well-being and organizational behavior.

The result appears to be a massive wave of job changes. About 4 million people quit their jobs in April alone, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s the highest quit level since the agency began publishing these rates in December 2000.

Retail workers quit more than people in any other industry, according to the bureau, followed by those in professional and business services. Those categories saw a combined 200,000 more employees leave their jobs in April than in the previous month.

The record figures in April reflect what has been happening to some degree for months, as both anecdotal evidence and data suggest people are looking to do something different now than they did before the pandemic.

IMO the OP in this thread is not passive-aggressive whining so much as a buffer against passive-aggressive whiny customers

Per the thread, though:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Ffunny%2Fcomments%2Fmstpfl%2Fthis_variation_of_the_now_hiring_sign_at_my_local%2F&psig=AOvVaw0SW0rrHhd2HOxjEgbJCAca&ust=1624289477249000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAoQjRxqFwoTCLCi8oPEpvECFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD

Dammit:

https://preview.redd.it/abu331v9ert61.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=9e475486b04587ff76a3111c38abc4629269a920

"labour shortage" is one of capitalism's funniest lies

why shouldn't a dish washer make $21?
it's hard work

I have not seen any of these in the wild yet but I am looking forward to it

eisimpleir (crüt) at 10:31 20 Jun 21

IMO the OP in this thread is not passive-aggressive whining so much as a buffer against passive-aggressive whiny customers


restaurant owners as a class are the whiniest assholes, it's all them guarantee it

in general not the op but I think 99% is owners

I saw a "daily stimulus check" billboard on the highway for one of those evil day labor places that take half the check.

It's funny how poverty and unemployment are natural features of the free market that need to be dealt with personally by the poor and unemployed, but having to pay competitive wages is a systemic disaster

I consider the original letter whiny because it perpetuates the labor shortage myth (there's actually growth overall in the hospitality industry right now), but owners like these are the ones behind the actual removal of the enhanced unemployment. If all they wanted to do was protect the employees from abuse, you could just put up a sign saying 'we're short staffed" without two paragraphs on the reasons why.

the rude people in restaurants aren't deterred by a piece of paper clumsily affixed to a menu (hell, they probably won't read it).

rather the ones motivated by such a statement are the people who go home and then talk to their family about how lazy the work-force is and the myth perpetuates and it legitimizes the complaints of the greedy business owners who are then successfully lobbying state governments to end the $300 enhanced unemployment.

Being a Dunkin Donuts chain, I doubt it was the shift manager who had the idea to put that sign up, even if it might have been one of them that was delegated to do so.

https://www.epi.org/blog/u-s-labor-shortage-unlikely-heres-why/

I think you or someone posted a chart, but *is* there growth in the hospitality industry? That is, are the numbers higher than they were pre-covid?

I worked as Kitchen Porter in a hotel once. It's a rough job because you are a dishwasher/storesperson/dogsbody/cleaner all rolled into one job title and it payed the grand sum of £4.10 ph and you got to nick any of the tips the waiters didn't notice on the tray. I'm not surprised they struggle to find people wanting to slog for poverty wages.

fair enough - I was just thinking it seemed mild compared to other insane rants I’ve seen posted up at other franchises / businesses

I mean yeah, there's MUCH worse for sure.

it's not a bad thing to remind people to be patient with the employees because invariably they bear the brunt of the abuse, always. I've never really been the type to whine about waiting a long time because I came from that industry and I remember how I felt smacked in the face every day.

it's funny how shoddy and half-assed these signs always are

lol just been told by my friend who saw the pic that she's seen the identical sign at 4 other DD's location near her. I'm guessing one owner owns many of them and demanded it be put up.

The restaurant I work at is an interesting case. Most of the kitchen staff is related to the owners; most of the servers are teachers, former colleagues of one of the co-owners, working a 2nd job; the dishwasher is an older woman who had retired from her job at a veterinary clinic and couldn't deal with idleness; I (bar manager, bartender) am grossly underpaid but took the job as a challenge of building a bar program from the ground up with zero experience. If the owners had had to staff the place without those connections, I don't think he'd still be in business. (Sort of confirmed by the fact that we've been the only liquor-serving place that's managed to open in the past year since the town voted to go wet.)

it's funny how shoddy and half-assed these signs always are

― symsymsym, Sunday, June 20, 2021 11:50 AM (nineteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

well yeah cause pete's sitting at home collecting unemployment. no one made the signs like pete! it took the rest of us 4 hours just to figure out the dang printer

I'm still waiting on an answer why a dishwasher shouldn't make $21 an hour

a living wage for a single parent, 1 child in Chicago is $32 /hour

https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/17031

I'm getting a Facebook meme vibe from these.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E3S9_mIWUAooWNL.jpg:large

https://populist.press/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/RestaurantSign.png

lol they're in FL, there was a blowback over those signs on social media

-Bob Marley

I'm still waiting on an answer why a dishwasher shouldn't make $21 an hour

There's no reason a dishwasher *shouldn't* make $21 an hour. It's hard work, and if anyone can get and want that work for $21 an hour, they should go for it. I just mentioned it because it's much higher than minimum wage for a position that requires the least amount of skills and experience. If wages for even starting positions can stay that competitive once the dust has settled from the past couple of years then everyone will benefit. Well, maybe not the restaurant itself, but I've never owned or managed a restaurant, and I'm not an economist.

If the dishwasher can afford to eat elsewhere now it’s an actual rising tide lifts all boats situation. Our economy requires people spending money on frivolous shit and 25% interest credit cards have bridged the gap as wages haven’t risen. If anyone is worried about inflation, just raise taxes on the top 20%.

(This will not happen and there will be a bipartisan solution to discipline low-wage labor the first time Biden gets spooked by a poll number.)

Same bitchin' should be applied to CEO compensation. Those bastards should be forced to do the worst job in their industry 40 hours a week a year.

The boss at this firm is just asking to be shivved in the men's room.

No one wants to work anymore. pic.twitter.com/xEIRLZ5oq1

— Yellow Vests Form Like Voltron (@TweetyMctwat) June 21, 2021

Did a bit of digging on this and it appears to be fake

Making the rounds on Twin Cities twitter today:

Had a great breakfast at @JosephsGrill in St. Paul. Server on his 3rd day was exceptional. These words on our table are something I’ve experienced a lot in recent weeks. Fascinated to see if the restaurant industry ever returns to pre-pandemic form. pic.twitter.com/OsMKtt9miq

— Darren Wolfson (@DWolfsonKSTP) June 20, 2021

Capitalism sucks imo

i enjoyed the one(s?) where the employees covered up the manager's whiny sign with 'we are closed because we hate this job and have quit'

And WHY??? :( :(

https://freepressonline.com/Images/Images/185386.jpg

cuz the pay sucks?

(obviously)

crazy how effective these people are at spreading the "no one wants to work/unemployment is too good" talking point, afaik unemployment is pretty much where it was 5-6 years ago. it seems obvious to me that restaurant/factory jobs just really suck and Covid made them all much worse, all those people are just doing other things now

I hear guillotine manufacture's never been more popular

BRING OUT THE KITCHEN MANAGER

income from restaurants was always a bummer for me cos you'd make your tips, then you'd be so stressed after work you'd go across the street to spend the tips you just earned on booze to come down from it, and lol there goes half your tips if you don't watch yourself.

These signs remind me a bit of Putin saying that there is no happiness in life, as if he bears none of the blame for the extent that that's true for a good number of people. My people are just miserable, I don't know why!

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Yep. There’s a lobbying group, National Restaurant Association, that actively pushes against increasing the minimum wage, this messaging is their work.</p>— same same (@devlk2) <a href="

Yep. There’s a lobbying group, National Restaurant Association, that actively pushes against increasing the minimum wage, this messaging is their work.

— same same (@devlk2) June 20, 2021

Like the US became accustomed to cheap gas or health insurance premiums or fast food prices, it's become accustomed to having an exploited, underpaid and overworked labor force. That is the "normal". Give that labor force teensy bit of leverage and choice and the truly shitty jobs get exposed like a lake bed after the water's drained. But instead of "jeez we didn't realize how fucked up what we considered normal truly was", a big fraction of ppl will go "see? You can't give these lazy ppl handouts!" or whatever.

Ah, should have tested that in HTML Playground like I usually do, sorry.

Lobbying, it's s like unionizing but for freedom

The ppl making these signs/notes are the ones who like to bemoan how liberals make everything political nowadays

I'm not even allowed to say Christmas anymore! Christmas! Christmas is the word I'm literally tackled and gagged every time I say it! CHRIIIIISTMAAAAAAAS!!!! (flagellates self)

Christine - you can just paste a tweet link on ILX to embed it.

From the McDonald’s drive-thru: pic.twitter.com/txXeZlEk07

— Zoé (@ztsamudzi) June 21, 2021

Thanks to Brexit and the pandemic, but mostly the former, we're knee deep in grim-faced employers popping up on TV to whinge about staff shortages. It is fucking hilarious.

Including one who, not content with regularly appearing on the media in favour of withdrawal from the EU, went as far as to publish and distribute pro-Brexit propaganda in his own estabishments.