Is there a new wind blowing through Capitalism? One can only hope so!
We're literally watching the largest labor movement in modern American history happen in the form of paper signs taped to the windows of fast-food and fast-casual restaurants! pic.twitter.com/yg393GZG0P
— Devita Davison (@DevitaDavison) May 9, 2021
There’s this great big Bolshevik revolution going on, if you hear pop media tell it, where all the low-paid service workers are scurrying away from their greasy deep-fried enslavement to give the McFinger to McJobs. Ostensibly it’s merely about the low pay, but I’m writing this to point out that other factors don’t help the situation.
But yes, the media hype has it that “We All Quit!” It’s just “take this job and shove it,” all day every day. In the background, there’s a political war going on (when isn’t there?) to raise the minimum wage. Of course, the true story here is not that there is a “labor shortage” like these retail slave pits claim, but rather a wage shortage.
OK, employers, the ball is in your court. You’ll have to do better than $7.25 an hour, a figure set nearly a generation ago. But in the meantime, while you fondle your change purse and wonder how you’re going to pay for all this, may I suggest an appeasement measure to your disgruntled workforce, which is also a cost-practical solution?
STOP BEING SUCH ASSHOLES
It is simply amazing how much money your business can save by not being an asshole! Let’s look at this from the practical point of view:
- We call it “work” because people do not want to do it for free. With me so far?
- Why don’t people want to work? Because it is unpleasant.
- What is the wage for? To compensate people for the unpleasantness of work.
- Pay attention now: The LESS pleasant work is, the higher people expect it to pay. At least at the unskilled labor level. Even at the white collar level, the job might be cushy but you still had to go into a lifetime of college debt to get it.
- Therefore, how can we ease employees into accepting lower wages?
- By making it LESS unpleasant!
I don’t know why this simple formula never occurs to anybody, but then that is why everybody should come read my blog. There is a whole layer of nastiness that serves as friction between employer and employee which is unnecessary to both sides. It profits no one.
It costs nothing to be nice to your employees. It costs nothing to treat them as people instead of turds. You will still have to pay a full wage for full time, but perhaps you can shave a few dollars off that figure if you just paid some thought to your people skills instead.
I know, as a freelance blogger, my pay rate starts at an astronomical sum and then I shave off a dollar here, a nickel there, in exchange for “perks.” Perks, from my clients, amount to things like “not setting unreasonable deadlines,” and “actually listening to me when I tell them why their business is on fire and what needs to be done to put it out.” That astronomical number, which admittedly I have never actually charged anyone, is the maximum amount I can bear to charge with a straight face. A penny over that is equal to “I wouldn’t do that for all the money in the world.” I don’t have a minimum wage. I have a maximum wage and then subtract down from there. There are some clients who are such sweethearts, I’ve kept them around for years at 2009 prices.
Ways In Which Employers Can Be Nicer
Let’s just illustrate some clear-cut examples:
End Degree Inflation – You can stop requiring degrees for every stupid little flunkie position.
That link I just linked. Did you follow it? Do you know where it goes? It goes to Harvard Business School! That’s right, Harvard Business School is telling you that requiring everybody down to the poop-scooper at the dog kennel to have a degree is a bad thing.
It’s a bad thing because degree employees expect higher pay than non-degreed employees (what did I just say?), while bringing little and sometimes nothing to the job over the high-school/GED candidate.
But let’s take off the kids’ gloves: I’m over here with no college to speak of, and yet when I was in the job pool I worked elbow to elbow with PHDs, MDs, all the alphabet soup. Guess who had years of book learning and no practical experience? They did. Guess who always got saddled with training new employees? Me, the streetwise kid who’s good at picking up new skills and explaining stuff.
I get it, the world needs doctors and lawyers and rocket scientists and those are the people who need the degrees. But if your job requires nothing but slinging spreadsheets and answering emails? That degree can be the paper airplane you sail out the window. Let’s get rid of everything below “MBA” and start over.
End Workplace Discrimination – You can put your bigotry aside and just let people work.
As that link at Vox points out, we have laws against discriminatory workplace environments and it still happens anyway. Look, here are a few news stories about workplace discrimination from just this last month:
- Silicon Valley trans community faces workplace discrimination, harassment
- Employees at federal civil rights watchdog describe their own workplace discrimination, retaliation in Texas
- EEOC Sues Walmart for Disability Discrimination
- Former Oregon Senate aide sues Legislature, claims discrimination
- Hostile environment: Cardiologists report high prevalence of discrimination and harassment in the workplace
What was that I hear about a “labor shortage” again? It sounds to me like there’s gangs of people who would like to work but they literally got run out of a job by a bunch of irrational hatred against their kind. Once again, employers, it costs nothing to be equal opportunity! All you have to do is consider applicants equally. By sheer statistical numbers, you save money in the H.R. department because you’re not holding out for the one candidate who makes it through all your bigot filters.
Stop Unnecessary Drug Screens – You can drop arbitrary restrictions on perfectly legal, benign substances used in employees’ free time.
That is one story I was driven to cover over at my cannabis industry gig. Amazingly enough, employers in states where cannabis has been legalized for a long time at the recreational level are still drug screening applicants – even if they are medical cannabis patients with a doctor’s recommendation!
In the first place, zero-tolerance drug-free workplaces are a complete myth. I’ve worked at the highest levels of the largest corporations and could still practically trip over the drug paraphernalia. You have drug tests, people fake their way past them, and we all carry on.
I do understand, there are some professions where a drug test makes good sense. Jobs that require driving or operating heavy equipment. But the rest don’t need them. I don’t care if my server or cashier is stoned, as long as I get the right order for the correct change. Nobody cares; it’s an arbitrary barrier set up by managers who are too stupid to tell the difference between worthy candidates.
The Stupidest Reasons I Ever Got Fired
I do understand, the asshole factor goes both ways. We’ve all worked with our share of messed-up coworkers in the rank and file. But how many more of us can unload a dump of horror stories about bad bosses, bad managers, office politics, and bone-headed company decisions? All of us, ten times over, that’s how many.
Part of what drove me to the freelance world is the stability. Being my own boss, I can hang onto the reins of my own destiny. I can set my own workload. I keep the money I make, and know where it goes. But honestly, had I not run into so many assholes, I’d still be working a corporate 9-to-5 with no problem.
I am changing names, faces, and so on to protect the innocent avoid getting sued, but here are actual true stories that have led to my terminated involvement with various companies over the years:
- One small company had such a labor crisis that their office was behind on everything (including payroll, hint). I offered to come in and help out at the office. Boss said, “Sure, if I could put a dress on you?” I walked right out at that second.
- Payday, we lined up at the office to collect checks. The guy handing out checks was different than usual. My turn came and he could not stop making fun of my foreign surname while he pretended to look for my check. We had words about the issue. Finally collected my check and left, muttering that the boss would hear about this hazing in the morning. Returned to work the next morning to discover (a) that was the company owner, and (b) I was fired.
- Warned my manager about a safety hazard in a closet. Manager mocked me to my face for that concern, stormed into the closet, and promptly had several hundred pounds of shelving fall on his head. He was out for a week, came back from the hospital with bloody bandages wrapped around his head. Sent for me immediately and fired me on the spot because I was the only one who knew what happened.
- Spent a week training a new hire on the job, for what must have been the tenth time. Returned to work next week to learn he’d been fired already. The event was hush hush but I, as his trainer, felt a responsibility to own up to any mistake I might have made in training him. Eventually I dug up the fact that somebody on the job did not like him for his race. Was summarily let go before I could blow the discrimination whistle.
Admittedly, this was all at positions I’d sooner not be working right now anyway. It was the chart of my workplace adventures in my early adulthood salad days. I was a naive pup who didn’t know better than to not trust everybody around me to be persons of nobility and character.
Nor is there anything remarkable about my stories, not when I listen to just anybody on this topic. It doesn’t seem to matter if you’re a blue-collar laborer or an Ivy League professional, you all have your work horror stories. None of that experience even counts all the times I was laid off, or companies went out of business or sold out and merged, during the recession-happy 80s and 90s.
Nobody Asked Me But I’m Telling You Anyway
For two decades now, I have been the happy pilot of my own ship and loving every minute of it. Being in business for myself means my employee never lets me down and my boss always has my best interests at heart.
But you out there in wagey land, you guys have a lot to learn about assertiveness. By all means, walk off those jobs! I’ll live without a Big Mac. In fact, if I never saw a fast food crapsack for the rest of my life, it will be too soon. Our restaurant choices begin with places that have a paper menu and salads, and we don’t mind paying what the food and service is worth, considering that they obviously pay enough to not have this same “labor shortage.”
You guys hold out for higher wages. Go for $15/hr. nationwide, for pity’s sake, that’s what I’d assumed you were all getting by now. And after you get that $15/hr., don’t stop there. You’re just getting started!
