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Comment by chillacy | Hacker News Reader

> More than a third of restaurant owners are having trouble filling jobs... And more than 80 percent of workers will change jobs each year, requiring employers to constantly train recruits.

Maybe pay people more and treat them better?

But I can see the appeal of restaurant automation. Machines can work 24/7, don't need health insurance, don't fight for higher wages, don't need to be trusted around cash registers, etc.

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> Maybe pay people more and treat them better?

How very un-American of you. /s

One thing that always staggers me in endless discussion is that nobody ever, ever talks about decreasing profits as a way to fix societies problems.

I mean, in 2018 McDonald's returned $8.5 billion to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends, it announced a 15% increase in its quarterly dividend to $1.16 per share. [1]

I bet the workers would like some of that.

[1] https://news.mcdonalds.com/news-releases/news-release-detail...

I was initially skeptical, so I went looking for some numbers. If the numbers I pulled off of Google are right (and I did the math right), that's something like $850 per employee every quarter. I've got to say, that's not nothing, especially considering many employees are in countries where with lower prevailing wages than the US.

Numbers: Shares outstanding 768,000,000 Employees: 210,000 Percentage of McDonald's that are corporate owned: 20% Dividend per employee: ($1.16 * 768,000,000 * 0.2) / 210,000 ~= $850

About $4,400 per year per employee globally. A large amount of money to most McDonald's workers in the US and an life changing amount of money for a worker in say India.

What have the workers done to "earn" this? They literally signed an agreement to work X hours for Y amount of dollars. They said yes to that. If they wanted a piece of the equity -- the profits, they should have negotiated for that in their contract.

McDonald's and other similar companies are having a hard time convincing potential employees to sign the existing agreement. If they want to convince more people to agree to work for them, one option is to offer more money, which McDonald's at least can certainly afford.

Or, more snarkily, what have the investors done to "earn" this?

What pizza shop offers health insurance?

I completely agree that if you're offering a minimum wage hourly job with no benefits you don't get to complain about difficulties finding staff and retaining them. They have tons of options at that price point if they want to switch jobs. If you want to avoid having to constantly deal with turnover you need to offer more.

Do you really imagine a lot of people would the satisfied working in a pizza restaurant for life?

Yeah, it's funny how the same people who say they're desperate for more/more reliable labor will also tell you that paying their workers better is laughably impossible.

In some businesses, the customers are very price sensitive, so if you can’t make a product with very discernible qualities, the customers will opt to pay less.

This is the situation in restaurants, where most purchases are not going to be willing to pay extra for food to so that the cooks can make more money, because a competing restaurant with acceptable food is almost always available at a cheaper price by not paying the staff as much.

Training any new staff in any industry is a hidden cost; difficult to quantify. We know it in the programming industry as the spin up time to get comfortable in a given code-base - at least 6 months to be properly comfortable, possibly as long as a year to be fully comfortable. The owner of Books Are Magic in Brooklyn † worked to transform his little corner of the industry, reforming as an alcoholic and his restaurant to boot. His reformation lead to a healthier staff that went to bed early and treating themselves better as well. The owner paid for his staff to go to therapy and live better lives themselves. I don't know if its replicatable, or if lower staff turnover and happier staff makes all the different there, but restaurant/bar work is, well, horrible for the soul. It doesn't have to be.

† https://www.bonappetit.com/story/david-mcmillan-sober

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