Bernd Lauert
Banned
Salt Bae can't afford higher wages, it's a tough time out there... also the chef should've gotten a real job, or something
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Restaurant closing due to lack of staff in my area, anyone else?
- Thread starter Pagusas
- Start date
ClanOfNone
Member
I'm assuming that Salt Bae crap is an entry level kitchen position in the dish pit or prep.
Hopefully.
Hopefully.
ipukespiders
Member
Why? The labourer with the shovel at a job site building a $100 million high rise can't afford to stay a night in the penthouse suite either.
Tams
Member
Geez, the excuses clearly Americans are making here for not paying a wage that's at least a little comfortable. Yes, people could 'skill up', but at the end of the day someone has to do the dirty work that doesn't have much value and it can't just be young people new to the world of work. Further, the people who do these menial jobs are also part of the society you have to live in, so them not struggling to even put food on the table is in your interests as well. And surely you'd rather they be working for that money than getting it mainly from government handouts?
The rest of the world already know that you have an arse-backwards tipping culture. But do you really need to compound the problem?!
The rest of the world already know that you have an arse-backwards tipping culture. But do you really need to compound the problem?!
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Taxexemption
Member
America is an incredibly classist country pretending it's not. It's political parties get away with not doing anything for labor because they are constantly engaged in a radical dialectic on social issues that distracts from anything real.
RPS37
Member
Salt Bae’s London restaurant with $1,975 steak hiring chef — for $16 an hour
The job ad at Salt Bae’s London steakhouse notes the restaurant “offers a highly competitive salary.”
nypost.com
DeafTourette
Perpetually Offended
Salt Bae’s London restaurant with $1,975 steak hiring chef — for $16 an hour
The job ad at Salt Bae’s London steakhouse notes the restaurant “offers a highly competitive salary.”
WOW! Dude is a piece of crap!
ClanOfNone
Member
I ain't tryin to defend "Salt Bae" but the article does state plus tips as well. Tipshare in a restaurant with $1600 steaks is gonna be.....substantial.
EverydayBeast
ChatGPT 0.1
Unfortunately understaffing happens, some of its on the pandemic, others are unique situations.
Tams
Member
Perhaps, but no so much in the UK. While restaurants are one of the few places you can tip in the UK, you really don't have to. And ever since cashless payments started to take almost completely over, the incentive to tip has gone down (there's no 'spare change' to rustle together to make the 10%ish tip that is 'traditional').
So for London, it is rather shitty.
Methos#1975
Member
At the end of the day local businesses are competing with Walmart and McDonalds for workers so ultimately they must match them in wages or die. Sorry but that is how it works and these places are seeing that first hand now. You simply cannot expect workers to settle for $7.25 a hour when the fast food joint down the block from you is offering $15 and expect workers to line up for you.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Who says you have to match giant corporations?
Doesnt Google pay their good coders $200,000+? WHo says every other tech company has to pay $200k?
TransTrender
Gold Member
The Walgreens out here started closing at 7pm then 6pm on weekdays, and now they're closed over the weekends.
You figure the after work rush and the first half of the day on the weekends were their money makers.
If I weren't still working from home and could go whenever then I would simply have to stop using that place.
You figure the after work rush and the first half of the day on the weekends were their money makers.
If I weren't still working from home and could go whenever then I would simply have to stop using that place.
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Methos#1975
Member
The workers refusing to go work at these places and forcing them into closing or limiting hours is saying it lol. Pretty much every local place in my area that isn't staffed by family is closing or already has due to every fast food joint offering $13 or more. The market is dictating what these places must offer to compete and they aren't able to do so and closing due to it. What more needs to be said.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Depends where you live. All the stores are still open by me.
Big corporations only hire so many people. Lots have gravitated to self serve kiosks. If anything, many of them are going down in employees. However some places hiring like crazy are Amazon warehouses. So if they want to change jobs to work in a warehouse, or change it up to be an Uber driver that's fine. Or they want to stay home and do nothing, that's their choice.
With higher wages go higher prices.
Our company has raised prices of stuff twice in a year. And most other companies have too lately. That's why lots of groceries have gone up 50 cents here, $1 there etc.... It adds up. And gas has gone up too.
Someone demanding an extra $1 per hour (assuming they even get a job) isnt going to move the needle one bit.
When landlords and businesses know there's money floating around, we just jack up prices. When my investment condo is up next year, I'm starting the rent high. There's actually bidding wars for renting here.
BadBurger
Many “Whelps”! Handle It!
Some business owners get used to the greed and treating their fellow hospitality employees like shit.
Wolfgang Puck's two flagship restaurants, Spago in Beverly Hills and Las Vegas, have been earning between $12m and $14m in revenue annually for years. At least $1m a month on average each. Last reported his corporation owns the properties, so no rent.
He only pays his chefs $35/hour (about $72k), prep cooks $17/hour ($35k), and bakers $15/hr ($31k). Neither of these cities his restaurants are in are cheap to live in. Let's be extremely kind and pretend that despite his vast success he somehow can't hire the right people to run and manage his properties and acquire his inventory, and ends up only keeping half of those monthly earnings as profit (and at the prices he charges, margins aren't a problem for him like they are in chain places like Chili's that sells a big plate of meat and vegetables for $10 - homeboy is charging $30 for personal-sized pizzas with like five ingredients on them, and $80 for proper entrees). That's still around $500k a month for his finance people to turn into more money for him. Meanwhile the chefs making the food and working 10-12 hour days, six days a week, are only paid enough to afford a modest dwelling outside of the city they're working in, without much left over to save or take care of children or anything else.
Juxtapose this with businesses that pay their employees based on company profits. Like the bakery in Seattle who's name escapes me. The woman who owns it pays her lead baker over $70k a year, and the lower-level workers $50k/year. She is not pulling in revenue anywhere near $1m/month. Not even half that.
Yes I know, business and life can be unfair. But at least hospitality workers are no longer laying down and taking it. The whole "unskilled labor" thing is bullshit that billionaires and corporations fooled people into believing so they could be paid slave wages.
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JayK47
Member
I'm not seeing it much around here. Fast food shitholes that went drivethru only have stayed that way. I barely eat fast food, so I barely noticed and am happy to keep avoiding them. I guess downtown is having issues, but with crime way up, I think a lot of people moved out. Every decent business in my area has employees. The priced have gone up due to inflation and scarcity, but that is it. These are places that do not have high turnaround and you recognize the employees and they recognize you. Nice family owned places that treat everyone right. Nobody wants a McJob anymore. Nobody ever really did.
Omega Supreme Holopsicon
Banned
Some CEOs drive companies to the ground only to be paid handsomely and if let go get a nice multimillion golden parachute. Given even random nobodies can found companies and successfully become their ceos for decades with no particular training, I have serious doubt what they do is that skilled or out of the ordinary.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
It really comes down to supply and demand and how much a company is desperate enough to pay people to fill roles. Thats why garbagemen can get $25-30/hr. It's a shitty job and they need reliable people to stick with it. Fry cooks at $10/hr are easily replaceable.
Why are Google awesome coders getting paid $150-200k, when they could hire 3 out of school computer science guys at $50k each for the same money? I'm sure there's eager beavers willing to work for $50k. Google can get 3 times the brain power.
But companies pay for skill.
That's why the average wage in US and Canada is pretty similar at around $52k/yr. That's $26/hr. For every guy making $10/hr, there's other people making a lot more to balance it out. So the money is out there.
If companies were that cheap, everyone would get paid $20/hr tops knowing everyone would be desperate enough to take anything. But companies pay good wages if you got some half decent skill set.
You dont even have to be a brainer. The analysts and clerical people at my work who processes invoices all get paid $60,000. Pretty good wages for a job you come in and do work and never have to work after dinner or weekends.
This whole “people aren’t laying down and taking it anymore” comment is pretty off base. For one a shit load of people died and retired out of the work force. Second there is still real fear by a lot of people about the pandemic and Third people just don’t like restaurants anymore because customers are rude and that coupled with Covid tends to be the deal breaker.
ive been in the industry for 22 years and this isn’t a money problem. We are offering green assistant managers 50k a year in rural areas and can’t get apps. Not even 1. It’s not just money. I’m paying teenagers $15-17/hr and can barely keep people. I think there is alot of factors but it isn’t all about the money there are alot of people that just have decided to get out of that sector or not work.
BadBurger
Many “Whelps”! Handle It!
I realize people are checking out of the industry for numerous reasons, but if that cook or server was being paid enough to live somewhat comfortably with benefits, something us white collar workers tend to take for granted, I assure you people would be rushing to snap up those jobs rather than ignoring them. $50k/year sounds awesome for many localities right? But then you take away job security, a lack of benefits, no profit sharing into a retirement account (a big deal in the US since our social safety nets are basically nil), and suddenly that $50k a year starts to seem more like $25k a year, and it's just not worth it. Shit, the transmission in their car going out could wipe out their entire year's worth of savings. And then there's the fact that if they get sick enough they may as well die to leave the insurance money to their kids than live, since we don't have what every single other first world nation has: free healthcare.
I mean shit, I save over $33k/year between pre-taxed contributions to my 403b, by employer contributions added to that, and the $1,000+ in liquid cash I am able to put aside each month. I am probably on the mid range of earnings in the tech field too. Meanwhile there's so called "unskilled labor" out there busting their asses in tough jobs just asking for $50k/year + benefits and a retirement account with some level of matching. The entire labor market is on its head because ever since the 1980's minimum wages no longer increase to match cost of living and inflation, and that has a horrific effect on every other facet of the economy.
So, if people aren't biting at that $50k, maybe try adding some attractive benefits as well. Because $50k without benefits to a single mother or pair of young parents ain't shit. May as well be $25k after they have to pay for childcare and healthcare and try to squirrel away some semblance of a savings.
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DeafTourette
Perpetually Offended
Add on to that... Hours that render an actual life null and void.
D
Deleted member 1159
Unconfirmed Member
I don’t understand how anyone can think of raising a family on 50k. Two young kids in daycare full time is 2k a month for us, or 24k a year just skimmed right off what we take home.
If you don’t have a degree making good money, there’s no point in working when childcare costs that much. The alternative is just waiting for the state to babysit them when they’re old enough (K-12), or start offering onsite daycare or state run daycare to keep people in the workforce, or paying enough base salary so they can afford childcare. But paying people barely enough such that half or more of their take home goes to a babysitter is ludicrous and unsustainable.
BennyBlanco
aka IMurRIVAL69
I saw a sign at White Castle the other day that they are hiring starting at $15/hour. Seems pretty reasonable to me.
DeafTourette
Perpetually Offended
In my hometown, 50k can go a long way. Cost of living is FAR cheaper than it is in Atlanta. It's a small town and not part of a megalopolis metro area like Atlanta, NYC or LA.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
20 years ago I was making about $50k. I dont see how a family can survive either.
I remember my net pay every pay stub was about $1400. So about $2800/mth (+ everyone gets two additional pays as it's 26 weeks). Single, no kids. Broke even every month after paying for a condo mortgage, car payments/expenses and everything else. My mortgage was only about $1000/mth too. The only thing I could had saved money is swapping out all the car stuff and take forever to get to work taking a bus as work wasnt even close to a subway line.
Mortgage $1000
Condo maintenance fee $300
Car payments (I think $300)
Car insurance $150
Gas... maybe $150
Student loan $200
Utilities $250
Property tax ($150/mth spliced out)
Food and buying occasional new clothes: the rest $300-ish
$2800.
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D
Deleted member 1159
Unconfirmed Member
Yes but even in areas where cost of living was reliably cheaper, housing prices are going through the roof while employers want to keep wages the same, as if nothing changed. No, I don’t live in SF Bay Area and don’t need my wages adjusted that high, but gone are the days of putting up with the “but it’s cheaper here!” talk when negotiating. Especially with remote work making geography less and less relevant, people should get paid for the work they’re doing, period. Then if a worker wants to work in bumblefuck Nebraska to save on rent, more power to them.
TheMan
Member
The proletariat is waking up and making a statement. There are many different ways this could go, but my gut tells me that small business will die while large business adapt to whatever strategy makes them more money. Maybe fewer workers with slightly higher salaries? Maybe moving faster towards greater automation? In the long run I fear that a lot of people who worked these jobs simply won’t have jobs to come back to if the great resignation isnt resolved quickly.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Anyone working front cash is losing their jobs as more self check out kiosks open up. However, I dont know if back end stock clerk roles or fast food cooks went up to balance it out.
If they have at many businesses, the front cash workers will have to transition to one of those roles. Or find another kind of job. Last few years, Amazon warehouse and Uber jobs skyrocketed.
I never believed the whole "I'm not working due to wanting a better job or it gave me the time to train for one" reasons as legit. The chart below seems to give people multiple answers as it adds up to more than 100%, but even the vague grey Other bar is only at 21%.
Here's why some unemployed workers aren't looking for a new job
The biggest factor keeping workers from getting jobs remains the pandemic itself. But rising wages could be what ultimately brings them back.
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Punished Miku
Banned
Those reasons are legit if you still live with your parents. If you're not actually making a living wage, then you don't actually need that wage to live by definition. Meaning a lot of people were getting help already and could cut their job to look around. Not the case for everyone, but lots of people stay home until 30 now and this could reflect those people.Anyone working front cash is losing their jobs as more self check out kiosks open up. However, I dont know if back end stock clerk roles or fast food cooks went up to balance it out.
If they have at many businesses, the front cash workers will have to transition to one of those roles. Or find another kind of job. Last few years, Amazon warehouse and Uber jobs skyrocketed.
I never believed the whole "I'm not working due to wanting a better job or it gave me the time to train for one" reasons as legit. The chart below seems to give people multiple answers as it adds up to more than 100%, but even the vague grey Other bar is only at 21%.
Here's why some unemployed workers aren't looking for a new job
The biggest factor keeping workers from getting jobs remains the pandemic itself. But rising wages could be what ultimately brings them back.money.yahoo.com
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Hari Seldon
Member
Yeah I figure small businesses are done, large businesses will ride it out with the intention of accelerating the transition to automation.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
I agree. Covid was record sales and profits for the big guys. Just gave them more ammo in the coffers to install kiosks faster. The Walmart near me is one giant self checkout section and a handful of old school lineups with cashiers. Costcos all seem to have self checkouts too. And they are the best self checkouts I've used. Super fast, while some checkout machines at other stores have a slight delay in scanning the code.
Even cheap ass Dollarama has self checkouts. I would had guess they would be the last store to do it.
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Omega Supreme Holopsicon
Banned
Think part of the reason is living costs due to their location. They could easily get more people from india with high iq and high education for pennies.
While the high IQ individuals are thinking similar and stopping from reproducing. Those on welfare and with lower intellect are reproducing without care. In fact the more kids they have the more welfare they're given. It is dysgenics in action. Some youtubers say despite higher iq scores, the iq scores are being misleading due to higher interaction with literacy/computers, they say we've lost significant average intelligence over the last century.
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DeepBreath87
Banned
There is a reordering happening inside the economy. But make no mistake, anyone who thinks the is the “proletariat waking up” has no idea what they are talking about. The proletariat is being squeezed by inflationary pressure, supply chain issues, and automation. The businesses being damaged and destroyed aren’t the “bourgeois” unless you think the bourgeois is the pizza shop in your town owned by some family that lives in your neighborhood.
The actual rich are making out like bandits. All of this printed money eventually makes its way into their hands. That’s why the top percentile is doing better now than it ever has. And I’d be fine with that if the fundamental economy (ie productivity) was increasing as well. Problem is that it hasn’t. It’s all smoke and mirrors after years of quantitative easing and “free” money. It was all good when the economy was expanding to keep pace with what we were doing to the money supply.
But now the economy in real terms has contracted while we have simultaneously absolutely exploded the money supply. So now you have fewer goods, less productivity, and WAY more money. We have been acting like money is the magic thing and if you just gave everyone a few thousand dollars, only good things would happen. That was always bullshit and it’s poor people, the “proletariat” who are going to feel the pain, because they always do.
The actual rich are making out like bandits. All of this printed money eventually makes its way into their hands. That’s why the top percentile is doing better now than it ever has. And I’d be fine with that if the fundamental economy (ie productivity) was increasing as well. Problem is that it hasn’t. It’s all smoke and mirrors after years of quantitative easing and “free” money. It was all good when the economy was expanding to keep pace with what we were doing to the money supply.
But now the economy in real terms has contracted while we have simultaneously absolutely exploded the money supply. So now you have fewer goods, less productivity, and WAY more money. We have been acting like money is the magic thing and if you just gave everyone a few thousand dollars, only good things would happen. That was always bullshit and it’s poor people, the “proletariat” who are going to feel the pain, because they always do.
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D
Deleted member 1159
Unconfirmed Member
There's a lot of truth to that. Everyone I know, with some notable exceptions, that pumped out kids in their 20s are worse off from a career/money perspective than those of us that waited for more stability. Most wives didn't graduate college or are just now getting around to it, while my wife has a graduate degree making good money in healthcare. My career has continued on to where I'm making pretty good money and we are pretty comfortable, and putting off kids allowed me flexibility to move around as we saw fit. But a lot of our friends are still basically paycheck to paycheck, many times only the man can work because they've got 3+ kids and childcare is too expensive because the wife never finished school and working isn't worth it for her...I just wonder what it would've been like for some of them had they just waited a few years before pumping out kids.
Pagusas
Elden Member
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Another thing that saps money isn't just kids and normal expenses that go with them.
In modern day, there seems to be this shitload of parents scraping up money to put their kids in expensive sports and after school activities which they all moan about it costs so much. Well, if it's so costly then before (which I agree as I did shitty soccer leagues on weekends and I remember my dad and me going to a sign up desk and it cost a whopping $40). And it came with a free jersey and shitty trophies at the end. All they had to do beyond that was buy me cleats and shin guards.
The amount of stories I hear listening to parents moan about league fees and buying new gear because they outgrew them is miserable water cooler material to listen to.
If you're already half broke, then tell your kids to ride a bike or play street hockey for dirt cheap. By the sounds of the stories, it seems the parents care more about the league than the kids do. Ya, ya. I've heard the millionth story your kid is awesome. Well unless you roll triple 7s he and she isnt going to be Ronaldo.
So save some cash and get the kids to do less expensive activities.
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Omega Supreme Holopsicon
Banned
I wouldn't be surprised if it's true.
Any case even official data shows Flynn effect peaked and is now being reversed.
edit:
If you go by Flynn effect, either environmental factors have gotten people to score higher despite not being more intelligent than people in the past, as the youtuber suggests, or people in the past bordered on mental retardation.
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Punished Miku
Banned
Do you think it's a complete coincidence that everyone is settling on $15 / hr after prominent person of influence with large mittens made the case for this nationally in
DeepBreath87
Banned
If things continue like they have been, that $15/hr isn’t going to go any further than they old minimum wage did. And they will have crammed a massive number of people right up against it. So where before lots of people were making 2-3x the minimum wage, now everyone making $18 isn’t doing nearly as well as they were. You can’t improve the fundamentals of the economy by playing with the numbers. Productivity is productivity. If the average price of gas doubles, and the price of groceries are up 50%, and it costs 80% more to heat your home, that raise from $12 to $15 doesn’t actually benefit anyone. And that is what is happening right now. A bunch of people at the bottom saw their paychecks go up but are now seeing their lives get more expensive because inflation is outpacing wage growth.
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Punished Miku
Banned
True, but I'm just saying it's a combination of things. The inflation boom is not necessarily driven entirely by wages, but by COVID related and globalization related supply chain dysfunction. While that is happening, proletariat awareness is a small background force contributing to things moving.
DeepBreath87
Banned
Perhaps. But what I see is many, many people being crammed together at the bottom. The guy making $20 an hour felt pretty decent. He now suddenly finds himself within spitting distance of minimum wage. Suddenly that $20/hr doesn’t go as far as it did. The guy making $30 looks a lot more like person who makes double the minimum. He’s taking a pay cut right now. And the whole point was to actually improve the lives up people at the bottom, and while that might happen temporarily, in the long term, the money doesn’t take them any further. Meanwhile, we have pushed lots of people down closer to the floor.
Flattened out the bottom while doing nothing to the top. Of course it is more complicated. But the result is as I’m describing. A flattening of the middle and the bottom.
Haint
Member
The vast majority of businesses don't operate on margins anywhere close to Wolfgang Puck or your corporate firm. $50k + full benefits + FICA/FUTA/SUT/WorkerComp/Insurances/Etc would make the actual cost of those employees around $100k/yr, which is untenable for small businesses to pay low skilled roles. The local restaurant of the guy you're quoting for example, with a cost of $100K+ for every head, would have to hike prices so high they'd be out of business within a month or two. If you somehow managed to make every business pay everyone "fair" salaries with full benefits, inflation would just equilibrate to a point where someone making $50K + Benefits has the same buying power, QOL, and COL as someone making $30K w/o benefits today. The solution to your hypothetical scenario is for both spouses to work for a few years before having kids, in which time they should presumably be able to accrue enough wealth to either afford the 3-4 years of child care, or afford for one of them to stay home until the child at least reaches school age.
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Chankoras
Member
System the requires cheap labor to be sustainable.
Vicetrailia
Banned
Wages matter a ton, but people are rebelling against work in so many different ways. It’ll go back to normal eventually, but Covid made people really question their money, time, and effort against what they were actually getting.
For example people really were working hard and paying for daycare, and were on automatic mode with that. They didn’t stop to think about an alternative situation, they just doubled down on their efforts to make it all work. Then they got a break with Covid and that got exposed.
For example people really were working hard and paying for daycare, and were on automatic mode with that. They didn’t stop to think about an alternative situation, they just doubled down on their efforts to make it all work. Then they got a break with Covid and that got exposed.
Winter John
Member
Things are getting bad when the local "gentleman's club" is opening late because they can't find any strippers. I hear they already run through all the "handsome" ones. I guess they'll be down to amputees soon.
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