Workers are 'rage quitting' their jobs as a tightening labor market
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
Happy Labor Day.
It is important to point out that the current system is designed to maximize employment.
It's easy to have a bunch of services that are subsidized by the top 10% paying >50% of >25% of low-paid service workers' wages (through income tax that pays for SNAP, HUD, etc).
Since people are dependent on income for a living - if demand for services drops because the average person is unwilling to pay an extra 25% for services - then these service workers need to be employed elsewhere.
Would there be jobs for them?
Your other option is to just give them money to do nothing - and the average person gets less services.
This doesn't seem ideal for anyone beside the people getting paid to do nothing - who would maybe be 2-3% of the population. And it seems especially unfair for the people who would keep their job - and instead of getting paid to not provide services - they have to actually provide the services!
Piketty was wrong you know, in his book, he argues that the capital income increase (compared to labor income) mean that all productivity gains since the 70s were captured by the capital. But he argue that taking the GDP numbers (inflation-adjusted). Because production is hard to mesure with other tools than GDP/GNI. But other economists argues that GDP - especially since QE, but truthfully since the 90s - do not mesure productivity increase, but a mix of productivity and asset inflation (and GDP is only corrected with "regular" inflation).
So Piketty was wrong. Capital income not only captured all productivity increases since the 70s, it even ate through labor income in proportion.
The only marker that can equalize thing in our capitalist, market-oriented economies is a higher rate of inflation. We should aim for that. We need regular inflation superior than asset inflation.
But… yes. I would like for non-service income (like mine) to be able to buy less services. I grew up poor and made it to the top quintile, and yes, I would like for the gap between where I came from and where I got to slim down more. It would be great if more pressure could hit the top 1%, but if to get there I’m paying, I’m ok with that.
I am curious whether job satisfaction is actually down or whether people just now have a path to leaving.
The 1AM $5 burrito or 11PM Walmart run was always predicated on those workers not having an option to be home with their families.
I am curious if we will see more price differentials for services during evening/overnight/weekend/holiday where we previously did not.
"But what about shift workers?" we got by before by doing our shopping on off days, including and perhaps especially people who worked normal 8-5 mon-fri shifts—it was fine, except that we couldn't always get exactly what we wanted exactly when we wanted it; and, apparently, companies weren't extracting as much money from us as they could (else, why change policy to have longer hours? Maybe that slight delay in purchasing led to us wasting less money on bullshit, go figure), plus they could still be open 12-16 hours per day and cover that use case without being open practically non-stop.
You are treated like a replaceable cog with your hours increased/decreased at managements whim.
Schedules were set week by week and released on Saturday or Sunday for the coming week starting Monday. If you weren't on the schedule over the weekend you'd be responsible to call in and find out your schedule. This has apparently gotten worse with computerized optimized scheduled which can be changed intraweek / people on-call / people sent home early / etc.
So your paycheck & hours week to week is unstable, and even within the week if adjusted.
I can understand the profit motive for doing it, but I cannot understand why they would tell another human being of their intentions.
Another common strategy by established immigrants or children of immigrants I know is to use a new immigrant, usually from their own country found via their own social networks, or maybe even their own distant cousin, and designate them as a manager at the minimum salary for exempt employees ($35.5k) and task them with working 60 hours a week and being on call for the more unreliable lower level employees.
When you dig into it, it is obvious so much of our luxuries are based on others being dealt a shitty hand.
It also happens in other businesses (everyone wants to pay for the least amount of redundancy), but it is especially pernicious in service businesses that are on demand 24/7 operations and the staff simply being physically available is the value they provide (as opposed to businesses that can close or the work can be delayed by a day or two).
For example, in a 24/7 operation, if one of the cashiers/front desk clerks/etc quits, then the manager has to fill in. Owner says manager cannot pay more than $x, and it could take weeks to find someone willing to take the job for $x. Or the people that are willing to take the job for $x are going to bounce in a short time or be unreliable, but the owner can afford to keep this wage at the low $x because they have a manager getting the $35k to $50k who is willing to work 80 hours a week.
Edit: You should have seen the stink that most of the small business owners I know threw when Obama's administration increased the minimum wage for overtime exempt workers:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/obama-overtime-rules_n_573cab...
On that sole basis, most of them voted Republican in the 2016 election. And because they trust Republicans not to take away their 1031 exchange for real estate transactions.
https://www.shrm.org/ResourcesAndTools/legal-and-compliance/...
They are all franchised to individual owners or a small group of partners and usually have 5 to 25 employees or so at most. In these businesses, being a "manager" simply means being the fall guy for the owners and the on call person. Many times it is the owner themselves, but over the years, they can move themselves up. I saw that happen much more years ago though, new entrants do not seem to be able to move up.
I have worked in fast food management (decades ago, started as a minimum-wage burger-flipper while in high school), and the last thing the employee schedules are based on is "management whim." Labor is the biggest controllable cost in a restaurant and you always base schedules on projected sales volume. We had schedules posted at least a week in advance and followed employee's stated availability. I'm sure, though, that not all retail/restaurant businesses are this professional.
And now that $15/hr restaurant jobs are going unfilled, I guess people aren't so easily replacable. I would not want to be running a restaurant in this economy.
The problem with this model is that few of these companies give people more than 20-30 hour schedules.. therefore people usually need to take on 2 jobs, however each of these jobs has a non-fixed schedule, updating weekly..
So some of what may appear us unreliability and flakiness is people needing to call out to go to their other job which is programmatically booked as well.
Add to this any further complexity like childcare or attempt to up skill with education and good luck.
Companies are also not wanting to work people more than 30 hours because they then need to provide healthcare under the ACA. That's a whole other topic but it definitely hurts folks who wanted full-time or near-full-time work but didn't need health insurance.
It nuts how much of one's life it takes up to work there.
60+ hours a week, where commuting to Yountville is a must for most that work there, but the hours and the stress is insane.
Imagine commuting an hour each way to work there, have barely a 30 minute lunch, which is a family meal that is never of the actual quality of anything ever served on the menu, no breaks and being so busy that you cant hardly take a break nor drink water, almost never a weekend off - and so tired that all you do is sleep and eat.
Some people dont last a week, or a month or two - but the demands of being on point at their level is intense.
No vacation time, understaffed constantly...
But not much changes because there is a massive number of people who would want to work there - even though the toll on ones personal life is 100% (one couldnt imagine having kids while working there, no weekends off to spend time with friends/family who work regular m-f schedules, missing out on all social events etc...)
Regardless: Rage quitting a bad job may feel good, but it almost never accomplishes anything positive. Bad employers see a rage quit episode not as an indictment of their management practices, but as confirmation that the employee was a bad apple whose opinions can be disregarded.
If you must escape a company ASAP for whatever reason, submitting a calm resignation with little or no notice is going to send a stronger message than performing one last childish act on the way out. Nobody likes losing a good, professional employee. But if your last act is immature and difficult, they will be glad you’re gone.
Unfortunately, workers are still shooting themselves in the foot by doing this. Having emotional outbursts is always the wrong move and it's one that might haunt you well into your professional future.
And if your (mental) health is in jeopardy at your job, quit. Literally. Clock out and walk out. You're not a slave, although with the screaming fits I've been subjected to and seen, they certainly think so.
That generally is the end of the conversation, not by employee choice.
> So Kendra walked out, and never went back.
> The phenomenon of rage-quitting is as old as work itself. Some people prefer to end things with a bang, not a whimper. So things like bridge-burning, walking off sans a two weeks' notice, or even making a scene are nothing new when leaving a workplace.
So it seems to include just leaving immediately as well as making a scene.
It is thankless, poorly managed, tenuously stable, randomly scheduled work.
No one writes resignation or gives much advanced notice.
It's a good idea for parents to make sure their kid does this kind of work for a summer in their teens at least, gives a bit of perspective.
Interesting that this is pointed out, since I noticed they linked to this article, describing these sorts of jobs being a "teenage rite of passage" to be a myth.
https://www.businessinsider.com/five-huge-myths-about-workin...
> According to researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, about half of the families of front-line fast-food workers depend on public programs, compared with 25 percent of the American workforce.
That being said... the "bit of perspective" likely holds some weight. Many adults having no experience in this kind of hourly work simply do not know what it is like, and make judgements that demonstrate the lack of perspective.
The hyperlink's text claims it is a myth, but the linked article does not refute the idea that working this kind of job is considered by our culture to be a significant growth step for teenagers.
People are now busy forcing their kids through various pre-college resume polishing activities/clubs/sports/courses/etc rather than making some minimum wage over the summer..
Anyway one could do a little google instead of just replying in the negative without backing.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/06/07/during-the-...
"In 2019, 35.8% of teens worked over the summer. As recently as 2000, more than half (51.7%) of U.S. teens could expect to spend at least part of their summer vacation lifeguarding, selling T-shirts, dishing up soft-serve ice cream or otherwise working for pay."
But yes - it is common for teenagers to take on hourly jobs.
When you spend less money, it's a lot easier to forgo making more money.
And as you mentioned, it's especially easy when you have more savings.